Utvärdering av innovation : Skapande av ett ramverk för att utvärdera potentialen förtillväxt av visionär innovation inom den svenska IT sektorn

Over the course of history, innovation has been the forefront of industrial change. New innovations have continuously surpassed old solutions, which have contributed to the trajectory of mankind. In today’s market IT has an increasingly important role. Innovation within IT is characterised by high degrees of visionary thinking and optimism towards the success of the venture. This has contributed to bubble effects emerging in the economy of a highly speculative nature.A central issue lies in the complexity of evaluating innovation and especially more radical and visionary ones. In general terms of evaluation, innovations are evaluated in two main phases: internally and externally. For visionary innovations it is not evident how and on what grounds the innovation should be evaluated both internally in terms of feasibility and externally in terms of market response. In that aspect there is a gap in evaluation and especially how visionary innovation can be evaluated. The aim of the research is to investigate the phenomenon of visionary innovation and contribute with knowledge about the characteristics that influence growth and adoption.The research is based upon a two-step qualitative investigation. Firstly the research is imed at constructing a framework for evaluating the innovation and thereafter objectifying the characteristics on case studies within the IT sector.The research has found three major areas for evaluation: (1) the eco-system, (2) the ustomer behaviour and (3) the target market. The eco-system is focused towards the ompetitive environment, the technology and the infrastructure. The customer behaviour ddresses customers’ existing behaviours, their needs and demands and the surplus value he new offering brings. In terms of the customer behaviour the switching costs and benefits of other alternatives is also important to consider. Finally, the target market onsists of the market characteristics, the customer segmentation and the overall ttractiveness of the market. Based on the characteristics of these factors and the market nd industry, constraints and drivers can be identified to either support or contradicts the peed of adoption of new solutions.The main findings of the report are that growth is dependent on and influenced by positive and negative drivers. The three elements the drivers are thus connected and correlating, in the sense that the drivers can have different levels of severity. For instance, a negative driver that is negatively correlated with another element has a high level of severity related to growth.