Oliver Gassmann

University of St.Gallen · Institute of Technology Management

Digital transformation enables novel opportunities for incumbents and new entries to collaborate and jointly create value in ecosystems. Ecosystems can be considered as aligned and integrated business models along the customer journey. Using two illustrative examples from financial services, we explain what ecosystems are and which factors must be...

In the contemporary business landscape, the imperative for innovative approaches to business model innovation (BMI) is more pronounced than ever, especially given the pressing grand challenges, technological disruptions, digital transformation, and pressing environmental and social concerns of our era. The prevailing discourse in business model and...

How can companies use data and AI to better manage transformations? As knowledge workers use ever more software tools, they leave digital footprints which form an untapped treasure trove for people analytics. This allows for a real-time, data-driven understanding of how the work in the organization actually gets done. We illustrate with a diverse s...

Scaling a business presents a unique set of challenges that demand innovative solutions. In this chapter, we delve into the art of managing growth challenges through collaborative scaling, exploring the following key strategies: Increase Collaborations in a Targeted Manner: Learn how to strategically increase collaborations to support your growth o...

How can companies get their transformation done? Open organizations build collaborative advantage by renewing their capabilities through partnerships and acquisitions in the face of market turbulence and technological changes such as digitalization. This chapter explores effective strategies to break down silos and transmit transformation throughou...

Partnerships have become a cornerstone of modern business strategy, and they can be powerful catalysts for transformation. This chapter explores the strategies and tactics for leveraging partnerships to drive meaningful transformation: Apply Collaborative Practices to Maintain Your Advantage as You Grow: Discover how collaborative practices can be...

How can managers thrive in the new competitive environment characterized by unprecedented volatility and uncertainty? The best leaders build unapologetically open organizations that allow them to seamlessly leverage resources from their entire ecosystem. This collaborative advantage takes the lessons from agile product management and applies them t...

How can companies innovate faster than the world changes? Open organizations build collaborative advantage by involving customers much earlier in the innovation process and leveraging flexible cooperations with external partners such as start-ups. This chapter explores the key dynamics of this collaborative innovation and how they shape the future...

Effective leadership is at the core of collaborative innovation. This chapter explores the strategies and practices that leaders can employ to drive innovation through collaboration: Lead for Collisions, Not for More Meetings: Discover how effective leadership encourages creative collisions, fostering innovation without overwhelming teams with unne...

How can companies unleash hypergrowth and scale up their successful innovations? Open organizations build collaborative advantage by focusing on their core capabilities and leveraging their ecosystem to scale up faster in a way that limits complexity. This chapter explores the art of hyperscaling through strategic collaborations and networks, highl...

Artificial intelligence (AI) will have a substantial impact on firms in virtually all industries. Without guidance on how to implement and scale AI, companies will be outcompeted by the next generation of highly innovative and competitive companies that manage to incorporate AI into their operations. Research shows that competition is fierce and th...

R&D productivity continues to be the industry's grand challenge. We analyzed the R&D input, output, and outcome of 16 leading research-based pharmaceutical companies over 20 years (2001-2020). Our analysis shows that pharma companies increased their R&D spending at a compound annual growth rate of 6% (2001-2020) to an average present R&D expenditur...

Overall, the top 20 companies launched 36 blockbusters in the last decade, representing 70% of total sales by new drug launches. Among these launches, the seven strongest-performing new drug launches (4%) generated 28% of all revenues from new drugs. The new drugs launched between 2011–2020 generated an R&D cost-adjusted revenue of $280 billion, in...

Digital health and digital pharma are considered supportive tools for patients and healthcare providers (HCPs), making the market highly attractive for industry players. Not surprisingly, Tech Giants have started to move into this area. We utilized established management models and publicly available information sources, such as annual company repo...

Ecosystems are one of the major trends today. They are based on complementarities, which can take the form of supermodularity or uniqueness and appear on both production and consumption side. Different configurations of complementarity lead to different characteristics of ecosystems with different implications. But which configuration of complement...

The patent history in the field of biomedical‐related inventions began in 1873 when microbiologist Louis Pasteur received a patent for his improved yeast‐making invention. Since then, research, inventions and patent protection have become heavily developed along with ethical standards and the legal patent system. Here, we demonstrate practical impl...

Without fundamental institutional change, such as a change in laws and regulations, many new technologies cannot achieve their full potential. Efforts to induce institutional change in favor of such technologies are, therefore, increasingly critical for innovative firms. To study how German automotive firms induce change that accommodates autonomou...

Open innovation (OI) holds promise to accelerate, diversify, and innovate research and development (R&D) in the pharmaceutical industry. It remains to be assessed in which way and to what extent OI is leveraged in practice by current pharmaceutical R&D organizations. Therefore, here we comprehensively analyzed 21 research-based pharmaceutical compa...

Ecosystems have become a major trend in research and practice alike. Within an ecosystem, the so-called orchestrator is considered to be one of the most important roles. However, extant research falls short of explaining how and why this orchestrator role and the resulting tasks of orchestration are allocated to specific ecosystem members. Based on...

This article documents the rise and fall of Cambridge Analytica, one of the most controversially and frequently discussed companies in the political space. It showcases how the ingredients for its considerable impact both in the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit referendum came together in the form of technological developments, the soci...

This introduction article lays out a path for successful business innovation, based on several successful practices in several industries. In order to successfully build businesses, companies have to understand the game changing trends in the networked economy where ubiquitous connectivity opens up new opportunities but technologies become commodit...

This article discusses the opportunities and risks that come along with patents in the new tech business. It takes into account several examples from tech companies that experienced lawsuits and conflicts with competitors over inventions in scheme, code, technology, and shape. With the rise of automated monitoring, communication, and travel, compan...

Delivering transformative therapies to patients while maintaining growth in the pharmaceutical industry requires an efficient use of research and development (R&D) resources and technologies to develop high-impact new molecular entities (NMEs). However, increasing global R&D competition in the pharmaceutical industry, growing impact of generics and...

Scholars have recently argued that startups and incumbents play differential roles in the disruptive transformations of industries toward sustainability and that the transformations are only likely to succeed if both startups and incumbents contribute. To understand their respective contributions and, thus, to understand how industries make the tra...

Comparative analysis of the R&D efficiency of 14 leading pharmaceutical companies for the years 1999–2018 shows that there is a close positive correlation between R&D spending and the two investigated R&D output parameters, approved NMEs and the cumulative impact factor of their publications. In other words, higher R&D investments (input) were asso...

Contrary to existing literature, startups can be successful orchestrators of ecosystems. Based on nine qualitative case studies, this article introduces four archetypes that shed light on how a startup can fulfill the tasks of an orchestrator and overcome challenges. The findings identify dimensions of standardization/customization and sources of v...

Prominent political and societal stakeholders argue that business models (BMs) are pivotal in making a successful transition to a circular economy (CE). However, the existing CE literature has paid little attention to design choices that allow companies to implement circular business models (CBMs) that meet the requirements of their specific situat...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) reshapes companies and how innovation management is organized. Consistent with rapid technological development and the replacement of human organization, AI may indeed compel management to rethink a company's entire innovation process. In response, we review and explore the implications for future innovation management....

A challenge for patent management is to identify ideas worth patenting and to evaluate them appropriately. A structured procedure for the evaluation and selection of patents as well as a continuous review of the patent portfolio are indispensable for cost–benefit optimization. Various qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods have been establ...

Successful patent management in a company is rooted choosing the right organizational form. Various internal organizational choices, such as establishing a separate patent department, or directly integrating patent activities into the business subunits, must be done according to the objectives of the patent management. Alternatively, it is also pos...

Successful patent management differs from industry to industry. This chapter provides examples from the pharmaceutical, chemical, crop-science, life-science, and consumer goods industries, as well as from electrical engineering and telecommunications, automotive and mechanical engineering, nanotechnology, computer science, financial services and fi...

This chapter provides more than references. It looks at some of the broader statistical trends, delves into how to read patent documents, their codes, and classifications. It gives some practical tips on how to search patents, also detailing the large legal jurisdictions, such as the European Patent Office and the European Union Intellectual Proper...

Successful patent management also differs depending on the technological domain. This chapter looks at technological fields that are on the rise, fields such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, industry 4.0, software, artificial intelligence, and the blockchain. Managing these technologies requires different approaches to patenting and commercializat...

The importance of patent commercialization has increased in recent years. The worldwide increase in licensing activities makes this apparent. A distinction must be made between two types of patent commercialization: internal and external. In this chapter, the typical motives and various forms of patent commercialization are explained. This chapter...

How do you develop business in a world certain to be dominated by Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and the Economy of Things? This book brings together leading scholars from academia, established practitioners, and thought-leading consultants who analyse and provide guidance to answer this question. Case studies, checklists, success fac...

This book provides an overview of the common concepts and building blocks of patent management. It addresses executives in the areas of innovation, R & D, patent and intellectual property management as well as academics and students. The authors give valuable information on the characteristics of patent and intellectual property management, based o...

Innovation represents both value through creative effort and is a source of competitive advantage, and as such, has always been susceptible to the dangers of imitation. Only effective innovation protection can ensure sustainable business success, but the protection of innovation using intellectual property rights can help capture value. This assert...

A successful patent strategy fits with the corporate strategy. How the company positions itself in terms of products, services, markets, and technologies should also be reflected in the patent strategy. This chapter examines various forms of patent strategies: preventative, defensive, offensive. It discusses both offensive and defensive patenting a...

Ecosystems are formed by organisations that jointly create a value proposition that a single firm could not create in isolation. To deliver this value proposition, the partners need a focal firm, the orchestrator, to be align them towards the joint value proposition. Thus, how orchestrators design the alignment structure of an ecosystem is at the v...

We investigated the state of artificial intelligence (AI) in pharmaceutical research and development (R&D) and outline here a risk and reward perspective regarding digital R&D. Given the novelty of the research area, a combined qualitative and quantitative research method was chosen, including the analysis of annual company reports, investor relati...

Today, virtualizing pharma R&D is increasingly related with data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), technologies that have been developed by software companies outside the healthcare sector. The process of virtualizing pharma R&D is closely related to the technological advancements that result in the generation of large data sets ranging f...

Immer mehr Unternehmen sind Teil einer jungen, digital geprägten Firmengeneration. Angespornt von den Vorbildern im Silicon Valley revolutionieren sie mit innovativen Technologien und ausgefeilten Geschäftsmodellen gesamte Industrien. Während Google und Co. bereits zu den etablierten Konzernen zählen, arbeiten sich Start-ups wie der Lieferservice D...

Business model innovation is a process that allows firms to build and maintain competitive advantages. However, it imposes major challenges to managers who rely on incomplete cognitive representations while attempting to understand the environmental dynamics that determine a business model’s prospective performance. System Dynamics is a computation...

Research Summary Recent research suggests that effectuation principles such as flexibility, precommitments, and affordable loss may differ substantially from one another. Responding to the call to clarify the effectuation concept, our study introduces the distinction between promotion‐ and prevention‐focused effectuation principles. It argues that...