[email protected] <[email protected]> 2012年4月9日下午8:41
收件者： [email protected] 09-Apr-2012
Dear Junyi Wu:
It is a pleasure to accept your manuscript entitled "An examination of first-mover (dis)advantages of ICT-driven innovation in the service industry" for publication in the 18th Americas Conference on Information Systems.
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images/amcis2012_paper_template.doc). Important: Do not forget to include author contact information (per the template) when resubmitting your paper. Papers without contact information on the title page cannot be included in the proceedings.
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Thank you for your fine contribution. We look forward to your continued contributions to the Meeting.
Sincerely,
K.D. Joshi and Youngjin Yoo AMCIS 2012 Program Co-Chairs
Mini-Track and Track Chair Comments to the Author:
Track Chair: 1
Comments to the Author:
Make a solid revision based on the first two reviewers' suggestions.
Mini-track Chair: 2 Comments to the Author:
The paper tries to address an interesting topic. The idea of looking at first-mover (dis)advantages of ICT-driven innovations in services and comparing to manufacturing is interesting. Two reviewers have recommended accepting subject to revision and one has recommended rejection. Based on the reviews and our evaluation, we recommend a rejection. We strongly recommend that the study has a lot of potential, subject to the authors frame it in a richer and innovative way, taking into consideration the existing literature.
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The paper will be enriched by examining the literature of first-mover advantages and accordingly positioning the intended contributions. As R3 points out, currently, the paper does not provide much new insights.
Several early and recent studies have provided a richer explanation to the concept of "first-mover"
dis/advantages, that the authors can refer to refine the paper (e.g., see Piccoli and Ives (2005), Adner and Kapoor (2010), Franco et al. (2009), and may be Suarex and Lonzolla (2008) for the scope and directions for future research). May be a detailed review of existing studies can provide a lot of insights on how to move the paper forward.
Methodologically, the authors should specify if they follow a positivist or interpretive case study approach. In its current form, the paper reads like a exploratory case. In such as scenario, the 9 advantages /
disadvantages should then can be presented as hypothesis. On the other hand, if the authors used these points as initial starting codes for the data analysis process, then it is not clear what theory emerged from their data analysis. There are no new and novel insights that have emerged that are adequately divergent from the start codes, which currently signals a theoretical bias (Eisenhardt 1989).
Further, the paper needs to provide more explanation regarding the choice of cases and how these contribute towards literal replication logic as well as theoretical replication logic. Also provide information regarding data collection process and data coding techniques. Utilize and include context charts and explanatory effects matrix to enable the formation of rich and well grounded theory in the within case analysis. Similarly, may be they can use meta-matrices in the cross-case analysis process.
We believe this research is a good start, but is still very early-stage in development and needs significant work. We hope these suggestions and comments will be helpful to you and we wish you best wishes as you further develop this research.
References
Suarez, F.F., and Lanzolla, G. 2008. "Considerations for a Stronger First Mover Advantage Theory," Academy of Management Review (33:1), pp 269-270.
Franco, A.M., Sarkar, M., Agarwal, R., and Echambadi, R. 2009. "Swift and Smart: The Moderating Effects of Technological Capabilities on the Market Pioneering--Firm Survival Relationship," Management Science (55:11), pp 1842-1860.
Adner, R., and Kapoor, R. "Value Creation in Innovation Ecosystems: How the Structure of Technological Interdependence Affects Firm Performance in New Technology Generations," Strategic Management Journal (31:3), pp 306-333.
Eisenhardt, K. 1989. Building theories from case study research. Academy of management review 532-550.
Piccoli, G., and Ives, B. 2005. "Review: It-Dependent Strategic Initiatives and Sustained Competitive Advantage: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature," MIS Quarterly. (29:4), pp 747-776.
Reviewer Comments to Author:
Reviewer: 1
Comments to the Author
The paper aims to investigate the first mover (dis)advantage of ICT enabled innovation in the context of service industries. As highlighted in the paper that service sections become important component of national and global economy, it is critical and emergent for research to understand of service innovation. Since services is different from goods in four ways i.e. IHIP, it is important for researchers to test whether previous knowledge or theory holds in the context of service innovation. For this purpose, this paper tests whether there are first mover advantages of ICT enabled service innovation. Through a case study, this paper found that there are similar first mover advantages of service innovation except incumbent inertia. This is an interesting plausible finding.
However, in my opinion, there are several limitations to this paper. First, the cases selected are not
discussed in detail. There is not so much case evidence to support the findings. Since the paper is based on the publicly available second hand data, the specific sources should be listed and specific data extracted from them should be quoted in the paper. Second, since the IHIP difference of service, the authors have not connected the differences of service characteristics and the first mover advantage in service industry. Previous researchers have found that service is easy to be imitated and copied by others (e.g., Sundbo 1997). This
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may alleviate the first mover advantage in service industry. Third, the findings are not surprising except
incumbent inertia. The authors will try to answer the question why the first mover advantage of service industry is similar to those of manufacturing industry.
Sundbo, J. 1997. Management of innovation in services, Service Industry Journal 17 (3) 432-455.
Reviewer: 2
Comments to the Author
An examination of first-mover (dis)advantages of ICT-driven innovation in the service industry
In this paper, the authors have conducted a case-study based research on ten service industries to
understand the adoption of ICT for service innovation and how the advantages and disadvantages of traditional manufacturing’s first-mover advantages hold in service innovation scenario. This paper is an excellent attempt to understand the differences in the service context as the world is increasingly moving towards growth based on services and service innovation. I would like to congratulate the authors in trying to explore this topic which is timely and relevant.
What I found interesting in this paper was that the authors initially tried to build a sound logic on why this study is important and then tried to elucidate the principles from manufacturing that were borrowed and employed in this study to examine them in the services context. The theoretical background was built logically and consistently thus motivating the reader to look forward to read the rest of the paper. The
literature review and the theoretical background were built using past research on first-mover theories and this was a job well done. The layout of the first few pages show the clarity of thought and the story was told in a simple way thus captivating the attention of the reader except for a few grammatical errors that were more prevalent in the first two pages. These grammatical errors are trivial and are mostly concerned with past tense and singular vs plural numbers. I would request the authors to clean up the document a bit on these grounds to make the reading smoother.
My next few sections in this document highlight several areas of improvement and I hope it will help increase the objectivity, validity and generalizability of your findings.
1. In the first page, you have mentioned that the environment has changed, challenges the first-mover theory and thus you embark on this new study in the service context. You have given examples of Walmart and Barclays Bank which was a good way to begin your argument. But your positioning of the Barclays Bank example and your argument around it could be tuned better to fit to the context. For example, you may argue that despite ATM being a service innovation strategy, why it could not take-off. You may reason for it and you may say you will try to identify the reason in the course of your study. It would be a nice segue to the
concluding sentence of the section on what the endeavor of your paper is.
2. In the first paragraph of your theoretical background section, you have made an absolute statement about ICT-driven innovation not being exhaustively discussed. This may raise a few concerns and you may need to be tame down your argument a bit. There is ample literature on how new technologies around smart devices, new paradigms of computing and new technologies like RFID (which was one of your items of interest) were fundamentally changing service composition and delivery. You may tone down your rhetoric here and be clear on what problem you found, what gap you found, whether it is an empirical gap and how you are going to fill it in your research. This clarity should be strengthened in this section of the document and a few citations may help reinforce your point.
3. Your paper has an inherent strength in trying to address a relevant area but the changing dynamics of the area itself make the facts and past research continuously past the prime. For example, you built a paragraph on page 2 to explain how ICT is changing service innovation. But a discerning reader may question your last paragraph on ‘benefited from the internet, the lower transaction cost makes customers easier to switch competitors’. For example, one may argue that the switching costs are becoming even tougher if you see the case of Amazon or NetFlix which hold a lot of data about consumers and thus make personalized service experience possible for consumers based on the data they hold. As an additional example, you may look at ecosystems of innovation made possible by the technologies of 2010 that are increasing the switching costs.
What I would suggest here is to go back to literature and find an argument in past research that will strengthen your argument in this paragraph in addition to what Prof. Porter said per one of your citations. It will make your argument more meaningful in today’s age of Apple and Google. If that is not possible, you may build a new argument around how the switching costs are increasing despite some past research said that
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internet brings down the switch costs. This may be tough to defend in an empirical study but you have devised a case-study approach by sampling on the dependent variable and your method may facilitate this to some extent. In sum, as you are addressing a research problem saying that service innovation is morphing, you may make it more current to fit today’s world.
4. You have highlighted 9 features about the first mover advantage. These were well built based on past research but you did not substantiate why you have chosen these 9 advantages and disadvantages and why they are important and why others are not important. It was not clear on how you zeroed in on these 9 features to study. You have claimed in the first line of page 3 that these are elaborations of ‘every property of first movers’. But there was no robust evidence on if this list is comprehensive or not or if you have chosen these features as objects of interest in your study. Please take a look at this to make it fool-proof and explain in undeniable terms on why these 9 are important or why you have picked these 9 advantages and
disadvantages.
5. You have spent a lot of text on elaborating these 9 features and it is necessary and important. But you may need a few improvements here to increase the relevance and coherence of your study.
a. The last line of page 3 was discussing about ‘uncertainty of technology and it needs an examination in service industry’. Why it was specifically mentioned for this point while your entire study is about the same?
Please take a look.
b. Your section on ‘First-mover advantages: uncertainty of the buyer choice’ provides exactly the same opportunity as I mentioned earlier about the increasing relevance of switching costs. You may consider strengthening here on how switching costs are playing a new role in this new age of digitization.
c. Your research question on page 4 is where you highlight the crux of the problem you are addressing in this study. You have mentioned a comparison to manufacturing but I suspect your have meant it differently as the paper has an investigation focused on service industry than taking up a comparative analysis. This led to a slight confusion as the rest of the paper was about investigating these parameters in the service context while your research question was sounding to be comparative. If your research question reflects your real intent of this study, you may take some examples from manufacturing and then compare with examples from service industry. This will show the difference very well. You may consider this in future research. Even within the sample of 10 firms you have taken, many of those technologies are decades-old and I am not sure of the relevance today. Future research may focus on two samples of old and new technologies and see if you find any systematic similarities or differences.
d. I found a trivial flaw in your Research Methodology section that you mentioned that the technologies you were considering were from the last decade but the table shows that they date back to 1962. See if this is typo.
6. My biggest concern with your paper is the generalizability of your findings. While case study approach constrains it a bit, you have spent a lot of time explaining about past research but have focused very little on your own contribution from this paper.
a. You should expand on your methodology and explain in more detail how you collected the data and how it was determined to be substantially non-subjective. You need to explain what was done once you started the data collection and how you have collated the information once you collected it. A brief mention was made about data collection but your brief description on the methodology and findings sections did not help your cause.
b. You have mentioned that you have discussed the findings with a panel of experts. I think this is a wonderful opportunity to create credibility around your findings. You need to explain what you did here, why you did so and what discussions transpired to make you feel more confident about your findings.
c. The above two points should target towards removing the subjectivity of your methodology to increase the validity of your findings. So please take a look at how you can leverage your methodology to your advantage.
d. On page 5, paragraph 1, you have taken patents as a measure of TL. I am not sure if you can argue better here by bringing together complementarities angle into your argument and say that firms today are creating advantage by creating ecosystems around the core technology or by strengthening the complementarities to support the core technology etc. If you observe the real world, while patents are protecting to some extent, it is this holistic approach that is making Apple or Amazon or NetFlix beat others when the network
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externalities, switching costs and other advantages gain more strength. You actually did this in your First Finding where you indirectly mentioned about the complementarities giving the edge when things were outsourced.
e. Your ‘Final Finding’ can also be substantiated by using examples like eBay and Amazon who constantly push new features on their site in a proactive mode than reacting to what competitors are doing, thus keeping themselves alert and not lazy for too long.
f. Your findings raise some concerns. For example, it was not clear why SC and UBC were weighed so high despite they having only 2 markings and it did not differentiate much from TL which had 1 marking in First-mover advantages. It is understandable that PSR and NE have many markings but it was not clear on how 2 markings were placed on the positive side while only 1 marking was placed on the negative side. What made you conclude? Please explain this further. Again, you eliminated TL by equating it just to patents but there may be much more than patents that can give the technology leadership in the service context.
g. I am worried that you spent very little time in explaining your findings. Your ‘conclusions’ section was also very common without emphasizing what your contributions are. You did not mention any limitations and implications in your study. This study has some insightful contributions which may be relevant to researchers and practitioners and you have not emphasized on that. If a submission has a page limit, I suggest that what is more important for you is to highlight what your contribution is. You can salvage this missed opportunity by going back to your text and focus more on what you did to extend the body of research than on what others did to build a body of research prior to your study. In summary, you should highlight your contributions, your suggestions for future researchers and for practitioners. Limiting your original contribution to 1 page out of 7 is not helping highlight your hard work. I would say this paper needs a substantial revision about your own work and bring to light the subjectivity in it and also the effort you have put in and the contribution you are making.
g. I am worried that you spent very little time in explaining your findings. Your ‘conclusions’ section was also very common without emphasizing what your contributions are. You did not mention any limitations and implications in your study. This study has some insightful contributions which may be relevant to researchers and practitioners and you have not emphasized on that. If a submission has a page limit, I suggest that what is more important for you is to highlight what your contribution is. You can salvage this missed opportunity by going back to your text and focus more on what you did to extend the body of research than on what others did to build a body of research prior to your study. In summary, you should highlight your contributions, your suggestions for future researchers and for practitioners. Limiting your original contribution to 1 page out of 7 is not helping highlight your hard work. I would say this paper needs a substantial revision about your own work and bring to light the subjectivity in it and also the effort you have put in and the contribution you are making.