dr. Tine Nagy is a new doctor of philosophy (Ph.d.). He was young researcher at UP Faculty of management and finished his Ph.D. study at the Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana under the mentorship of prof. dr. Boštjan Antončič with the thesis title - USER DRIVEN INNOVATION: developing a construct and a model. Other commission members were prof. dr. Tanja Dmitrovič and prof.dr. Mitja Ruzzier (se photo below).
The abstract of the diseertation is as follows:
In general, in the literature there are increased
contributions to the theory regarding user research, user involvements and
their collaboration in innovation processes. An emphasis on users is not a new
phenomenon. There are numerous authors which argued that users are one of the
most important factors of successful innovation. Previous researches are
focused on different ways and roles of user’s involvement into companies’
activities in order to better understand markets’ needs. Recent analyses are
exploring the characteristics of innovation processes where users collaborate
in different ways. The activities and methods that are used in user driven
innovation process are partially related to design thinking methodology of
researching users’ needs. And this is the point where literature of design and
user driven innovation is very consistent. So far in the literature theoretical
links at scientific level between these two fields are not shown, but there are
substantial similarities in quoting phenomena. In only few academic papers more
attention is dedicated on the effects of cooperation with users and their
impact on innovation capabilities or success. Only few researchers were
discussing about the connection between the company's managerial strategy and
ways to approach the innovation.
Doctoral dissertation contributes to upgrading the
theory and conceptualizing of the user driven innovation. Conceptualization
model used in dissertation is based on multidimensional construct of user
driven innovation as consists of three dimensions: (1) company managerial
orientation as principles of design thinking methodology, (2) organization of
the company, (3) user-oriented activities & methods used in innovation
process. In addition, the doctoral thesis introduces additional insights on the
relationship between the user involvement into process of innovation,
innovation performance and company’s results. The theoretical part starts with systematical
review of the literature regarding user driven innovation. The empirical part continues
with the presentation of design research and methodology for analysis of
conceptual model of user driven innovation and connection to innovation
performance and company’s results. The empirical verification of the concept of
user driven innovation motivated and its connection to innovation performance
and company’s results, is a pioneer work. The key research questions are: (1)
whether the user driven innovation model is inspired by multidimensional
construct consisting of the few dimensions, (2) what is the influence of the
user driven innovation on the innovation performance and company’s results.
In the survey, which was carried out from October 2011
to January 2012, participated Slovenian small and medium-sized enterprises. The
respondents were mainly managers of the companies, or the founders of
entrepreneurs, or functional manager, or persons on other decision-making
positions. There were 201 companies involved, among those quite various ones mainly
from production and service activities with a minimum of 5 to a maximum of 250
employees. The results of this analysis (based on a sample of 201 Slovenian
companies) have shown that user driven innovation is leveraging innovation
performance and the results of Slovenian companies.
Key
words: users, open innovation, design,
design thinking, innovation performance, growth performance, financial performance
