Frank T Piller

Frank T Piller
RWTH Aachen University · School of Business and Economics

Professor of Management, Dr.rer.pol.

About

346
Publications
400,271
Reads
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14,486
Citations
Introduction
Frank Piller a professor of technology and innovation management at RWTH Aachen University, Germany, (Research Area TIME, School of Business and Economics). Frank is regarded as one of the leading experts on strategies for customer-centric value creation, like mass customization, personalization, and innovation co-creation. His recent research focuses on need of established corporations to deal with disruptive business model innovations and supporting organizational structures and cultures.
Additional affiliations
April 2007 - present
RWTH Aachen University
Position
  • Professor (Full)
January 2007 - January 2016
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Position
  • Co-Founder, Smart Customization Group
September 2004 - February 2007
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Position
  • Research Associate

Publications

Publications (346)
Article
Full-text available
James Euchner [JE]: I would like to focus our conversation on mass customization, an area where you have made many contributions. You have addressed the subject from the perspective of the customer and also from the perspective of the manufacturer. You have chronicled its ups and downs and how new technologies have shifted the landscape. How would...
Chapter
Full-text available
Organizational transformation is a complex and multifaceted process that involves a fundamental change in the way an organization operates and delivers value to its stakeholders. It can be triggered by a variety of internal and external forces, such as technological change, shifts in the competitive landscape, or changes in market demand. To succes...
Chapter
Full-text available
This Handbook is the first reference created for the large, diverse, and growing field of Open Innovation. Four editors, 75 reviewers, and 136 contributors collaboratively developed 57 handbook chapters. These present the current state of the growing body of work in Open Innovation from leading scholars and researchers in the field. It brings toget...
Chapter
Full-text available
The global environmental crisis, technological developments, the COVID-19 pandemic, and ongoing economic and political globalization are just a few of the developments that are massively increasing the pressure for transformation on regions, companies, and society as a whole. In addition, the digital age is accelerating transformation processes tha...
Chapter
Full-text available
The Internet of Production (IoP), the global and integrated use of production data, will completely reshape how organizations operate and interact with each other. We introduce how these developments will affect the usage phase including value creation and capture in the future manufacturing ecosystem. Our analysis highlights requirements and impli...
Chapter
Full-text available
The work stream CRD-C.I of the Cluster of Excellence Internet of Production focuses on the topic of agile product development in order to enable reduced lead-times as well as exceeded customer and user satisfaction in product development. The main emphasis of the research lies on the associated processes and structures. In the course of the first 3...
Chapter
Full-text available
Many companies in the Industry 4.0 (I4.0) environment are still lacking knowledge and experience of how to enter and participate in a platform-based ecosystem to gain long-term competitive advantages. This leads to uncertainty among firms when transforming into platform-based ecosystems. The article presents a structuralist approach to conceptualiz...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
When planning, creating, and evolving systems throughout their lifecycle, it is essential to assess their impact on our world. Despite this pressing need, existing structured methods for systematically assessing social, economic, and environmental impacts are not related to targets of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. Moreover, exi...
Conference Paper
The vision of the Internet of Production (IoP) is focused on optimizing manufacturing processes, with the help of Industry 4.0 technologies (I4Ts). However, considering global megatrends such as climate change and the need to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is a growing imperative for the manufacturing industry to become more s...
Preprint
Full-text available
When planning, creating, and evolving systems throughout their lifecycle, it is essential to assess their impact on our world. Despite this pressing need, existing structured methods for systematically assessing social, economic, and environmental impacts are not related to targets of the United Nations' sustainable development goals. Moreover, exi...
Chapter
Full-text available
The work stream CRD-C.I of the Cluster of Excellence Internet of Production focuses on the topic of agile product development in order to enable reduced lead-times as well as exceeded customer and user satisfaction in product development. The main emphasis of the research lies on the associated processes and structures. In the course of the first 3...
Chapter
Moving towards circular business models (CBM) may contribute to the achievement of a more sustainable society while strengthening the competitive advantage of organizations. Consumers and other key players should intensively and closely participate in CMB due to its essential role in closing loops. Mass Customization (MC) is discussed as a way to w...
Chapter
Full-text available
The Internet of Production (IoP), the global and integrated use of production data, will completely reshape how organizations operate and interact with each other. We introduce how these developments will affect the usage phase including value creation and capture in the future manufacturing ecosystem. Our analysis highlights requirements and impli...
Article
Full-text available
Digital twins (DTs) are virtual representations of real‐world entities like production assets, processes, or products. They are updated at a defined fidelity and frequency along the entire life cycle from development and engineering over the production or implementation of a product or process until its usage stage. Interconnected digital twins (ID...
Article
Full-text available
Manufacturing firms that engage in digital transformation develop increasingly smarter versions of their tangible products to reinvigorate growth in shrinking markets. However, they often struggle with translating their investments in digitalization capabilities into actual returns in the form of sales growth. The associated technological advantage...
Chapter
Full-text available
Many companies in the Industry 4.0 (I4.0) environment are still lacking knowledge and experience of how to enter and participate in a platform-based ecosystem to gain long-term competitive advantages. This leads to uncertainty among firms when transforming into platform-based ecosystems. The article presents a structuralist approach to conceptualiz...
Article
Full-text available
Digital manufacturing technologies offer many opportunities for established companies to innovate. They promote data‐driven gains in operational efficiency and enable the transformation of current business models or the creation of entirely new differentiation opportunities. However, many digital innovation projects in manufacturing fall short of t...
Article
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The use of transformer‐based language models in AI has increased adoption in various industries and led to significant productivity advancements in business operations. This article explores how these models can be used to augment human innovation teams in the new product development process, allowing for larger problem and solution spaces to be ex...
Chapter
Full-text available
The text discusses the concept of hybrid intelligence, which is a form of collaboration between machines and humans. It describes how this concept can be used in manufacturing to help improve productivity. The text also discusses how this concept can be used to help humans learn from machines. There is a debate in the intelligence community about t...
Chapter
Next Generation Manufacturing describes a vision of an open network of sensors, assets, products, and actors which are not restricted to a focal organization or a closed supply chain. A core principle of the digital shadow is that it collects and shares data about the usage of products within and across organizations, allowing them to optimize oper...
Article
Full-text available
Distant search has evolved from the open innovation literature as an efficient mechanism to access external knowledge from heterogeneous fields of expertise. Despite its popularity and proven benefits, companies face multiple barriers to benefitting from distant search. In this study, we explore a local open innovation approach in which the spatial...
Article
Full-text available
Transformer-based language models are a new type of machine learning model that have shown great promise for many applications, including knowledge extraction and generation. In this paper, we explore the potential of transformer-based language models for innovation processes and identify some example use cases. We discuss the benefits of using tra...
Conference Paper
The future of industrial manufacturing and production will increasingly manifest in the form of cyber physical production systems. Here, Digital Shadows will act as mediators between the physical and digital world to model and operationalize the interactions and relationships between different entities in production systems. Until now, the associat...
Chapter
The Delphi method is a structured scientific approach used to organize and structure an expert discussion in order to gain insights about the future. In order to develop scenarios for the future of Next Generation Manufacturing, an innovative real-time Delphi survey was conducted with 35 experts from industry and academia. The survey involved evalu...
Chapter
Full-text available
Transferring the idea of the Internet to the manufacturing landscape—the Internet of Production (IoP)—fundamentally changes our understanding of how products are developed, produced, and utilized. A key concept of the IoP is digital shadows that connect data, products, and equipment and are shared in cross-organizational data spaces. These developm...
Chapter
Based on the results of a rigorous Delphi study, we present scenarios that portray a most probable future of Next Generation Manufacturing in 2030, enabled by connected data (digital shadows) shared in cross-organizational data spaces. We provide individual scenarios for the dimensions governance, organization, capabilities, interfaces, and resilie...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Die Arbeitsgruppe „Digitale Geschäftsmodelle“ stellt zehn Thesen auf, wie digitale Geschäftsmodelle Nach-haltigkeit in der Industrie 4.0 fördern. Frank Piller war der koordinierende Autor dieser Arbeitsgruppe. Der deutschen Industrie kommt eine besondere Verantwortung zu, den Wandel zu einer ökologisch wie sozial nachhaltigen Wirtschaft zu gestal...
Article
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We investigate what fosters or inhibits data sharing behaviour in a sample of 173 innovation management researchers. Theoretically, we integrate resource-based arguments with social exchange considerations to juxtapose the trade-off between data as a proprietary resource for researchers and the benefits that reciprocity in academic relations may pr...
Article
Full-text available
In this study, we shed light on the unexplored potential of customer co-design in a mass customization (MC) setting to contribute to the promotion of sustainable consumption. We theoretically derive and empirically test several opportunities for companies to improve sustainable consumption and production in a joint effort with consumers. Our resear...
Article
Full-text available
The German textile industry is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with limited resources and specialized skills producing customized technical textiles following an engineer-to-order approach. To expand their skills, SMEs form business networks. The development and production of customized technical textiles in networks are high...
Article
Industrie 4.0 stellt einen potenziell starken Treiber für neue Geschäftsmodelle und Innovationspotenziale dar. Viele dieser Chancen sind aber bisher nicht oder nur in Teilen realisiert worden. In diesem Artikel analysieren wir 10 Thesen zur Auswirkung von Industrie 4.0 auf Geschäftsmodelle, die wir zusammen mit vielen Unternehmen 2016 in einem VDI-...
Chapter
Full-text available
The economic strength of nations worldwide is increasingly dependent on its research systems to sustain innovation and new product and service development. Besides research, education and entrepreneurial innovation are seen as core factors to promote a dynamic and competitive modern economy and nearly all governments in the world pursue research an...
Chapter
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The use of Internet platforms such as open innovation platforms is a quite new strategy in innovation management that marks a rethinking from classical principles of coordination in innovation processes. Instead of relying exclusively on the internal expertise of their own researchers and developers, companies are increasingly integrating external...
Article
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This study adds to the literature on household sector (HHS) innovation by investigating how user and professional designer teams differ in their ability to translate knowledge diversity into collective creative output. We test our hypotheses on a unique data set of more than 5,000 board game design projects conducted by either teams of professional...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Many incumbents have the ambition to become ecosystem leaders when transitioning an established business model into a platform-based one. Prior research predominately has studied established consumer markets. Our study extends the empirical knowledge on ecosystem dynamics with a focus on platforms providing services based on (shared) industrial dat...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The German textile industry is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are characterized by limited resources and highly specialized skills. To expand their skills, SMEs organize in business networks, working closely with other local SMEs, which complement their skill set. The development of custom technical textiles is highly...
Article
Recent studies have shown the significance of disruptive innovation activities in the context of digital transformation for incumbent organizations. These companies strive to move towards data-driven business models through applying digital technologies which were attested a disruptive nature. However, it is unclear why many of those innovation pro...
Technical Report
Full-text available
The COVID-19 pandemic is challenging politics, society and the economy to an unprecedented extent. Its effects are so drastic that it requires companies and industries not only to manage the crisis in the short term, but also to develop strategic options for the future. Although we have not overcome the crisis, it is already becoming apparent that...
Article
Kurzfassung Ziel von Mass Customization ist, von Unterschieden zwischen Kunden zu profitieren, indem bestimmte Prinzipien die effiziente Bereitstellung von Waren und Dienstleistungen ermöglichen, die den persönlichen Bedürfnissen der Kunden entsprechen. Auch in der aktuellen Diskussion um Industrie 4.0 ist Mass Customization ein häufig genanntes We...
Article
Core Results & Findings of the Third RWTH OPEN INNOVATION ACCELERATOR SURVEY OIA 2020 Today open innovation has become a gold standard for successful new product and service development. Its core idea to engage an open, undefined network of people in form of an open call or open direct search is transferrable to a large variety of innovation tasks...
Article
Full-text available
Established organizations need to adapt their current business models (BMs) to match dynamic changes in their environment. Alternatives to the established BM usually incorporate a different logic of how value is created, offered, and captured. When selecting and implementing the best BM alternative, organizations have to make decisions on several h...
Book
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A market study of intermediaries, brokers, platforms, and facilitators helping organizations to profit from open innovation and customer co-creation. This market study surveyed 106 intermediaries, investigating their open innovation services offered, project specifics, business model, productivity, and characteristics of their participant pool. In...
Article
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Open Access to Full Text: https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0048733319301428?token=7472367578BC5761F554EAF12B6DA11F84F38F939EEDE22540D8430AD4A46F20F72B9A97B62158618784F4FBA8F8604F
Article
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Intermediaries are an inherent part of value creation in open innovation. They connect organisations seeking external solutions for an innovation-related problem (seekers) with potential solution providers (solvers). To bridge between the innovation problem and external knowledge sources, intermediaries deploy different search strategies. This stud...
Article
Non-renewable resources form one of the boundaries of our current linear-growth model. Moving from product-oriented to product-service systems (PSS)-based business models may contribute to the circularity of resource flows while strengthening the competitive advantage of organizations. Scholars have been studying the win-win potential of circular b...
Article
Full-text available
Manufacturers operating in long tail markets attempt to generate sales by offering countless product varieties, with each targeted to one or a few customers. The research on mass customization suggests that modular products, flexible automation, a flexible workforce and effective toolkits are requisite business model elements to successfully operat...
Article
Full-text available
Additive manufacturing (AM) allows to build components and finished series products directly from 3D data, without the need for tooling or other setup cost. An often discussed, but hardly investigated opportunity of AM is to establish economical and scalable local production facilities for innovating consumers (who turn into “prosumers”). In this p...
Article
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In recent years, public sector organizations have increasingly focused on citizen contribution by adopting instruments known from open innovation. By collaborating with the periphery and leveraging external knowledge, government institutions initiate social innovation and stimulate a positive change for society. This article examines the involvemen...
Article
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This articles is an introduction into a Special Issue (SI) on “Innovation in the Digital Age: From Stage-Gate to an Agile Development Paradigm?”. This issues explores whether traditional product development models such as Stage-Gate (Cooper, 1986, Cooper, 2008) are still fit for purpose in today's digital age or whether they are set to be widely re...
Article
This paper investigates how potential backers' perception of user entrepreneur characteristics influences the success of a crowdfunding campaign. We hypothesize that the accentuation of user entrepreneur characteristics is associated with higher crowdfunding success, i.e. with the chance to reach a campaign goal successfully. Data from 963 Kickstar...
Article
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In recent years, crowdsourcing has emerged as a promising open innovation strategy for firms searching for solutions to technical problems. Previous research has shown that crowdsourcing can provide quick access to distant knowledge at relatively low costs, when compared to other forms of innovation governance such as internal sourcing or contract...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Nowadays, a highly volatile environment and the growing demand for customized products challenge manufacturing companies. Radically new technologies, such as Additive Manufacturing (AM) and Laser-Powder Bed Fusion (L-PBF), help companies to fulfill these needs. However, due to the novelty of these technologies, research on how to evaluate the inher...
Article
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We investigate in the context of crowdsourcing how seekers can increase open innovation performance, measured as received attention by potential contributors, by making two strategic decisions: selecting innovation tasks that are well suited for crowdsourcing and choosing between the potentials of status signalling through identity disclosure versu...
Article
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Open innovation is an established approach to improve innovation performance, but many organizations have failed to embed open innovation in their innovation processes permanently and at scale. Building on an investigation of 756 international organizations, we show that the existence of distinct routines and organizational structures can explain w...
Article
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Practitioners increasingly use innovation contests to harness the knowledge of external crowds for internal innovation purposes in exchange for prize money. While some innovation contests have the objective to attract professional experts from distant fields to obtain technical solutions, other innovation contests primarily target customers or user...
Book
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This proceedings volume presents the latest research from the worldwide mass customization & personalization (MCP) community bringing together new thoughts and results from various disciplines within the field. The chapters are based on papers from the MCPC 2017. The book showcases research and practice from authors that see MCP as an opportunity t...
Article
Full-text available
Firms use ideation contests to generate ideas from consumers. This type of collaboration provides access to new knowledge and reveals latent consumer needs. But it also is risky, as firms give up control to an unknown crowd. Some contestants use ideation contests to post content that is unintended and unwanted by contest hosts, a behavior that repr...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Non-renewable resources are the boundaries of our current linear growth model. Among manifold strategies, moving from product-oriented business models to Product-Service Systems (PSS) may contribute to the circularity of resource flows while strengthening the competitive advantage of organizations. Scholars have already studied the benefits of circ...