Master thesis : "How to innovate enterprise software more efficiently by becoming an ambidextrous organization ?"

Abstract

This dissertation is focused on how to organize an organization, which is currently a sustaining organization, to be able to become an ambidextrous organization. The purpose of this study is twofold: First, to validate the current organization is not an ambidextrous organization and is suffering from the innovator’s dilemma. Secondly to propose an innovation process, enabling the organization to become an ambidextrous organization. A research approach was set up using 2 stages. A first stage to validate that the current organization is a sustaining organization. A second stage proposing an innovation process, to help the organization drive its change to become an ambidextrous organization. In the first stage, a survey in the organization benchmarking the business group with the product development group has been executed. As a conclusion it can be stated that the current organization is a sustaining organization focusing mainly on the high-end enterprise market and is suffering from the innovator’s dilemma, where the focus is mainly on solutions instead of customer problems. The approach to develop products and to detect customer needs is mainly driven by internal conversations using the inbound process and experience-based priority judgement instead of using frameworks which focus on detecting and ranking customer problems. In the second stage, the solution proposed in accordance with the innovator’s solution is a process which is integrated in the existing product development process. The proposed innovation process, which is able to support as well disruptive as sustaining innovation, puts proper focus on customer problems by leveraging design thinking, the right markets, and is able to determine the priorities of problems to provide maximum customer satisfaction by leveraging the integrated Kano approach. Due to these characteristics, the innovation process is capable to support the organization to act as an ambidextrous organization.