A Proposal for a Standard With Innovation Management System

Brendan Galbraith et al.
Competiveness in Innovation Programme. A key part of the innovation strategy of the PARTERRE
project was to pilot a series of pan-EuropeaneTMworkshops that were aimed at addressing a range of
public policy issues and the learning outputs from these pilots wereto help ascertain the level of user
engagement andcommercial viability of the eTM. The aim of thispaper isto investigate how effective
the eTM is as a tool to engage with communities of ‘lead users’ in the context of developing public
policy. The findings in this paper are conceived from eight eTM case studies that took place in
Northern Ireland. Therefore, the structure of this paper will review relevant literature in eParticipation,
user innovation and innovation communities. Then, an overview of the research methodology and
case studies will be discussed, followed by findings and conclusions.
2. Literature review
2.1 eGovernment and eParticipation
While early studies in eGovernmentfocused on researching the issues surrounding implementation
(e.g. Layne and Lee, 2001; Gant and Chen, 2001;Irani et al., 2007), more recent efforts have looked
at adoption and diffusion, including e-participation and digital divide (e.g. Brandtzæg et al., 2011).
However, in the context of adoption, “citizen satisfaction” in e-government has been an area that has
had little research (Irani et al, 2012).
Research on user satisfaction in e-government context has highlighted that e-government cannot be
successful if there is a weak affiliation between the citizens (users), ICT and government authority
(employees).Hence,if the systems are used by citizensas a service provisionthen it is must satisfy
their needs (West, 2004; Irani et al, 2012). Although understanding the emerging field of
eParticipation is not straightforward – given the lack of an agreed definition and unclear research
boundaries – recent emerging technologies, government reports and academic programmes
demonstrate an increasing level of interest in the subject (Sæbø et al., 2008). However, as the
literature in eParticipation expands, researchers have articulated key challenges. Charalabidis et al
(2009) argue that the main barrier resides on the non-technical aspect as the problems and issues
that have to be dealt by eParticipation are far more important than drawing a technical plan that will
lead to sophisticated eParticipation technical functions that are offered by computer
systems.MacIntosh et al (2008) have called for further research on the applicability ofeParticipation
tools to particular contexts, and to integrate fieldwork methods to assess social acceptance of
eParticipationand represent the diversity of views obtained from citizens, community groups and other
stakeholders.
The linkages with eParticipation and user innovation
There has been considerable interest in innovation resulting from user activities (Rothwell et al. 1974;
1988). Many explored innovations are at least directly initiated by requests and concrete needs of
users (Biemans 1991; Utterback et al. 1976; Mansfield, 1988) and the idea or the concept for
innovations often stems from the user (Voss 1985; Baker et al. 1986). There are many different
approaches and denominations for user involvement such as; design for, with or by users (Kaulio,
1998), customer as co-producer (Wikström, 1995), participatory-design (Namioka and Schuler, 1993),
user-centered approaches (Newman and Lamming, 1995) and living labs (Galbraith et al. 2008;
Galbraith and McAdam 2012).
It has been shown that users are frequently the first to develop and use prototype versions of what
later became commercially significant new products and processes (von Hippel, 1988; Vanderwerf,
1990; Shaw, 1985). Moreover, it was found that innovation by users tended to be concentrated
among ‘lead users’ of those products and processes (von Hippel, 1986). The lead users experienced
needs for a given innovation earlier than the majority of the target market – early adopters (von
Hippel, 1986). Urban and von Hippel (1988) found that users in their lead user cluster adopted
technologies on average seven years before users in their no-lead user cluster.An important
conceptual component of user innovation and lead users is ‘sticky knowledge’ (von Hippel, 1993).
Von Hippel (1993) argues information that is often used in technical problem solving is costly to
acquire, transfer, and use in a new locus – making it ‘sticky information’. Von Hippel (1993) states that
there are several dimensions of ‘sticky knowledge’. For example, to solve a problem, needed
information and problem-solving capabilitiesmust be brought together - physically or "virtually" - at a
single locus.Moreover, intensity and iteration are crucial dimensions of knowledge combination
(internal and external knowledge) processes - especially, in cases of sticky knowledge (Andersen and
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