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The third study was performed at the previously mentioned established firm which has been a global player in the personal care industry for many decades. The company is developing and manufacturing diapers, feminine pads and incontinence products. These products have in common that they are mainly based upon absorption technology. The industry can be regarded as technologically mature and well consolidated. There are a couple of large companies such as Kimberley-Clark and Proctor & Gamble which dominate the industry on a global level.

From the 1980s onward, the studied company lost market shares in Europe within the diaper and feminine pad categories due to increased competition. The firm pioneered the incontinence market in the 1970s and is a dominant actor in this business today. Over the years, the company has sought to sustain its leading position by launching innovative incontinence products, but it has remained a follower in the diaper and feminine pad markets. Incontinence products are sold to end-consumers, retirement homes and hospitals. The performance of these products in terms of absorption capacity has increased steadily over time, and thus the company has focused increasingly on new attributes over the last decade.

The study at this company was initiated after the aforementioned innovation audit had been performed by the Center for Business Innovation in November 2007. One outcome of the audit was that the company needed to better understand how discontinuous innovations could be selected and developed. A five-month research project was started which aimed to understand how discontinuous innovations had been both rejected and developed in the past. This input would in turn generate recommendations regarding how the firm could design its development process related to the recently launched New Business Development unit. Though it was not obvious that the study would ultimately fit into this thesis, it resulted in an article that met the overall purpose of the thesis, and therefore it was included. The project was performed together with Ralf-Geert Osborne, master thesis student from Delft University. In total, the evolution and fate of eight discontinuous innovation projects were studied and documented through semi-structured interviews with both current and former employees at the company.

Two rounds of interviews were conducted within the scope of this study. The interviews were carried out by two researchers, thereby eliminating any potential personal bias. All interviews were recorded, transcribed and listened to afterwards. This work has been documented in Osborne (2008) and should be regarded as important background information about innovation activities at the studied company. In the first round of interviews, the questions were more general and open-ended. The respondents were asked to identify innovation projects which had been discontinuous to the firm as well as the main inhibitors and triggers of them. All the respondents had worked at the company for a long time and were able to explain how different innovation initiatives had evolved. A majority of the respondents were working in the R&D department and others were more involved in market- related activities (see Table 4); thereby insights were gained regarding both technological and more commercial issues.

Respondent title Respondent function Interaction Manager of Innovation and

Knowledge Responsible for the development of the screening process. Primary contact person during the course of the study.

Two interviews, about one hour each. Extensive interaction by phone. The respondent read and validated the paper emerging from the study.

Research Director In charge of research at the

studied firm. Two one hour interviews.

Two fellow scientists and one

former fellow scientist The most senior position for scientists. Two one hour interviews per person in all but one case.

Two senior scientists The second most senior

position for scientists Two interviews per person, approximately one for each session. Three persons in charge of

product portfolio management Responsible for the development of the resource allocation process for more incremental product

development projects.

One 90 minute interview with all three respondents and to individual 60 minute follow-up

interviews with two of the respondents.

One sales manager In charge of supporting and

developing the sales of heavy incontinence products.

One interview which lasted about 90 minutes, discussions by phone. The respondent also proofread the resulting article.

One manager of the idea system

Responsible for the idea management system and had been working previously on developing a discontinuous product innovation.

One interview by phone which lasted for about one hour.

Table 4 provides information about the people who were interviewed within the scope of this study (adopted from Osborne, 2008).

The gathered data were compared and contrasted to existing literature on discontinuous innovation and business model renewal through a cross-case analysis. Some of the cases were discontinuous with regard to the firm’s established competence base whereas other cases were more related to the customer and the surrounding value network. After this analysis it became clear that one of those eight projects had some disruptive characteristics and was therefore deemed to be particularly interesting for this dissertation. It was identified as more relevant in relation to the other ones since value networks and business models seemed to play important roles in determining the success or failure of this product launch. In addition to this, the case provided an opportunity to understand how challenges related to the value network can be managed since the studied product started as a commercial failure but

eventually took off after a couple of business model changes had been made. In this sense, the case was interesting since it was largely related to the second research question that is dealt with in this thesis.

More emphasis was put on this case in the second round of interviews. As the challenges of particular interest were related to the commercialization aspects, people in charge of those issues were specifically targeted. All of the interviews were recorded and transcribed except the two interviews which were performed by phone. The case description that emerged from this research was later on read and validated by the person who had been working with the main business model changes that this product had implied, and by the innovation manager. A within-case analysis was now conducted where the gathered data were compared to existing challenges related to business model renewal. This analysis resulted in the fifth appended paper. After the termination of the project, a final presentation was given to the company where the main findings and conclusions were communicated. During this session, the general interpretation of the collected data could be validated one more time.

Hence, this study was in many ways a collaborative one in the sense that it involved an interaction with a firm which in turn had specified a couple of deliverables from the project. Collaborative research is often criticized for reducing the reliability and replicability of the undertaken research. However, this should not be regarded as a major concern for the study above. The main reason is that while some of the research has created recommendations that have in some cases been enacted by the company, this was not the case for the parts of the studies that the related paper and its conclusions were based upon. These recommendations were concerned with the evaluation of business ideas within the scope of the new business development unit. The paper that emerged from this study is based on a case that the authors have not been influencing during the course of the study.

As can be seen above, an abductive approach has been employed in this research project. It started as a general exploration of inhibitors and triggers of discontinuous innovation; several different cases were identified, and after a cross-case analysis one seemed to be of particular interest, which in turn triggered further research into this case. As can be seen in this study and the previous one, a broad approach results in a lot of freedom, which in turn may imply that some of the gathered data are eventually not of direct use for the dissertation. Nevertheless, they have generated important insights which have been further developed in other studies and corresponding papers.