سازماندهی متقابل بین بهره برداری و اکتشاف: در مورد توسعه تعاملی یک سیستم اطلاعاتی

Every company needs to exploit on its current technological solutions while also working on developing new ones, i.e. exploring new or modified solutions. The ways in which a company deals with these issues are closely connected with how it organises the interaction among actors within the firm as well as with external counterparts. In this paper we present a case study of a company that combines the two issues so that product features developed in interaction with specific customers can be systematically taken advantage of in future standard solutions. Owing to various interdependencies within and across products and product versions over time, this is not an easy task and the organising of interaction across projects, functions and firm boundaries can be seen as a key challenge. The paper ends by suggesting that new innovative ways of organising interaction are needed to cope with increasingly complex interdependencies that span organisational boundaries. We also suggest some key aspects of organising that need to be taken into account in such endeavours.

The literature emphasises the interaction between technical and organisational factors in product development projects carried out within a firm. However, owing to specialisation resulting in increasing interdependence and technological complexity at the interfaces between firms, firms face increasing challenges in organising their activities not only within but also across their boundaries (Gadde et al., 2010 and Håkansson et al., 2009). Dubois and Araujo (2006) analyse how interaction cuts across boundaries at the levels of the firm, dyadic relationships and networks of connected relationships. This points out the importance of not limiting the analysis of product development to individual projects or internal activities but of recognising how the development relates to different scopes in time and space within and across project and firm boundaries. In this paper we address these challenges by focusing on a key theme in innovation literature: exploitation versus exploration. The aim of the paper is to inquire into how a company can organise the interaction among specialised actors within and across its boundaries in order to explore and exploit innovative effects from systematic interaction. We take the perspective of the supplying firm and scrutinise a case in which a company develops an information system in interaction with its customers. We conclude by suggesting that it is possible, using innovative ways of organising the interaction among a set of actors, to foster productive interplay between exploitation and exploration of technical solutions developed in interaction. In the next section we present and discuss some key theoretical notions, beginning with the concepts of exploration and exploitation of technical solutions. We then discuss organising internal as well as external. Based on these notions, and before introducing the case, we present a model for the case analysis.