Everyone at the department of informatics would like to congratulate Jesper Lund who, at September 25, successfully defended his PhD thesis in Informatics, receiving his doctoral degree.
In his research, Jesper Lund has studied digital innovation, which is the innovation process for digitalisation of products and services.
– Digital innovation is challenging. It is mainly characterised by the need of different actors to come together in innovation networks in order to create new digital products and services. Collaboration in innovation networks will result in more complex processes, since actors from different areas – with different backgrounds, knowledge and goals – are working together, says Jesper Lund.
The thesis includes two studies, where the first one is about digitalisation of the traditional newspaper.
– In this case, the newspaper or media companies can continue to produce the content, but they have to collaborate with a range of different hardware, network and service suppliers when developing digital news services. In addition to this, groups of consumers have to be involved to create digital products and services of value for the readers, says Jesper Lund.
The other case study is about digitalisation of door locks that makes it possible for development of digital products and services for an increased sense of safety for elderly people that live alone. These digital services have been designed in an innovation network of companies, care givers, researchers and a user group of elderly people and their families.
Through the two studies, Jesper Lund has identified around 20 network activities that are important to organise. The activities form the base in a model that suggests how network activities can be organised in digital innovation. The model also defines the need to be both proactive and reactive in order to successfully meet digital innovation challenges.
– With an increased understanding about essential activities in digital innovation, and how these can be organised, innovation actors can better orchestrate digital innovation processes in the future, says Jesper Lund.