Dual strategy process in open strategizing

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Jing Cai and Ignacio Canales unravel the dual process of open strategy by delving into the relationships between transparency and inclusion from a longitudinal case study.

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Institution: University of Aberdeen

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Jing Cai and Ignacio Canales unravel the dual process of open strategy by delving into the relationships between transparency and inclusion from a longitudinal case study.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 7, 2024

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This video video discusses the concept of "open strategy," which builds on the idea of open innovation and highlights its evolution since the 1960s. Originally, strategic planning was viewed as a top-down process where executives devised strategies that were implemented by subordinates. However, research reveals that involving middle managers and other stakeholders in strategy development yields better outcomes and adaptability to changing environments.

The notion of open strategy was notably popularized in 2005 by Richard Whittington, who proposed broadening stakeholder involvement in strategic planning to include not just top and middle management but also frontline employees and customers. This video video participatory approach is driven by the need for transparency and inclusion.

This video video emphasizes that while broader participation can enhance strategy creation, it is essential to balance it with considerations of transparency—how much information should be shared internally and externally—and inclusion—determining the level of say stakeholders have in the decision-making process.

Moreover, recent studies since the millennium indicate that open strategy is particularly effective in platform-based organizations where various external stakeholders are involved, necessitating guided openness. The research also aims to explore the nuances of transparency and inclusion, proposing subdimensions to better understand these interactions within a platform setting.

In conclusion, the text highlights that open strategy is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but rather a flexible tool that can adapt to the distinctive dynamics of different organizations. The findings suggest that the interplay of transparency and inclusion can significantly enhance these strategic processes.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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Open strategy draws from this notion of open innovation.

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But I, I, I need to tell you a little bit of background of h

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how and why did open strategy come to be in,

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I don't know, the 1960s.

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I, I'm pretty sure none of us were born then.

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Uh, there was this, wave called strategic planning,

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and that's where kind of strategy become to be used

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as a term in business and in strategic planning.

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The assumption was that there was a boss

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and they designed the strategy

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and there were followers that implemented

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or did the strategy.

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And if, actually, if you dig a bit, in many organizations,

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that's is still the assumption, but that is not the reality.

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And on one, on the one hand, the,

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the development of academic academia,

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regarding strategy has included other people

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in making strategy.

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Let, let me give you an idea.

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In, in, there was this big shake,

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mostly in America on the, on this, in the eighties,

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where the middle managers were fired, really?

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And that affected many big corporations

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because a big part

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of the knowledge was kept by middle managers.

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So there were a, a couple of, academics

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who started researching

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how important middle managers were in

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the developmental strategy.

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And their main finding was that

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although, well, you would tend to think that if you,

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spread decision making across the organization,

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you get more commitment.

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Uh, however, their, results were counterintuitive

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because what they actually found is that the quality

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of the strategy being produced was better.

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It was more attuned to the environment,

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which is counterintuitive

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because you would think that you, you just

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because we have this mind frame that there's a boss

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and the boss says, kind of military mind frame.

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Uh, and from then on in academia spec especially,

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there's been a lot of development of the effects

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and the power that middle management

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can have in developing strategy.

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And another finding has been

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that it depends on the industry.

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So in, in, in some industries, for example,

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where there's much more research

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and development, you need much more involvement

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of middle managers in developing the strategy

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because you need to be closer to the customer in, in, in,

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in, in, in how the environment changes

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as the company changes in,

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environments, which is more stable.

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There're not that many of those,

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but, for example, the car industry there is,

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there's less, well, they would hate me to say this,

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but it's a bit more steep.

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It, it seems like a, a more top down approach works better.

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However, in the

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after the millennium, it has been, kind of studied

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that actually it goes beyond that.

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And you can actually think of

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companies in which the strategy is being made not only

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by top managers, middle managers, frontline managers,

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but stakeholders in general, even customers.

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And that, I mean, when, when you think about it,

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it really rings a bell

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because how many clever input can

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customers give you a lot,

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especially in a rapid changing environment.

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So you, you are asking there who,

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which are the main authors?

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So in, in about 2005,

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a colleague

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and friend called Richard Whittington came up with this idea

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of open strategy, trying to broaden how strategy is created,

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which is so, which was a super clever story,

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but obviously there's no paradise here.

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So it's not, the more you open it,

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the better strategy will be.

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And there are caveats to that.

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And those two caveats are transparency and inclusion.

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That's why those are so important as I dimensions,

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because the more you open strategy, the more

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you inclusion you have.

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But how much transparency do you need?

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How much transparency should you have?

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Are you gonna show your, I don't know, pilot projects

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to the competition?

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Is it gonna go that far so that it becomes then,

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a trade off?

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How much open strategy do you want?

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And how much inclusion

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and how much transparency do you want?

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And that's why it has become so important

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because many companies that want to grow

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or want to develop new ways to compete it,

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explore new procedures

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or new processes to compete, and lay

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after Richard, there have been people like Julia, hows,

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for example, or David Seidel

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or Christian Staler, who is Christian is,

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is selling his open strategy book all over the world

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and hopefully, effectively, who have kind

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of consulted an open strategy

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and helped companies develop open strategy.

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And it's become kind of a, a, a bit of a fashionable thing.

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Now, is it a solution for every problem companies have?

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Of course not. But it is, it is a cool tool.

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Yeah. Just to add to my, Tono comments, you know,

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for this research, we really, the starting point is

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we build on Wittington

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and his colleagues the two dimensions.

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But, nowadays more

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and more researcher trying to see,

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is this just the two broadly dimensions?

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Are there sub dimensions? I think we take a step further.

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We want to see what are the, you know, like,

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additional sub dimensions can be used to indicate the depths

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and the level of transparency.

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Like you just gave example, what kind of information,

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some information like r

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and d are very ins, secrecy to the companies.

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Well, and, and, and, and most of the companies were open.

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They open in terms of a procedure.

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We could have a roadmap X, y, z one after another.

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What is the process?

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We make a decision, but it's kind of the information

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that is very difficult to, justify which kind

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of information might be strategically important

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to company will have to keep it in house.

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And also inclusion as well.

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You include a wide range of people,

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but what kind of responsibility

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and entitlement you,

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you decision making rights you will give to

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internal employees or more

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dramatically external, stakeholders.

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And also what would be their commitment.

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Some of them might be very active,

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some might be very passive.

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So I think we build on that.

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This paper is really trying to find those nitty gritty,

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taking a granular approach.

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And in addition to that, we're trying to take a very,

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a unique example.

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It's not in traditional companies, we apply those dimension,

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expand those dimension to understand, you know,

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sub dimensions in the platform setting.

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So that is something is quite,

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move very fast.

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So, so that the, the main drive behind is to see,

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in which way we understand it can be applied

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to a platform setting. The

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Literature basically covers transparency

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and inclusion to a certain degrees.

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And, the, the literature is very, well, not very,

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but a little bit normative in, in that they're

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encouraging companies to follow open strategy.

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Uh, of course there, there are not, not all of them,

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but there's this a kind of push to towards using,

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open strategy.

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Uh, and we also want to explore

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how these two dimensions work

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because it's, it's very easy to say, well, no, you,

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you give one dimension, you give one dimension,

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and you don't give another dimension.

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But what we go is in depth into each dimension,

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and the literature doesn't go in that much depth

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into each dimension.

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And the other thing is that they, the literature tends

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to apply the, the concept of open strategy

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to any organization.

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And that's one of the reasons why we pick up a platform,

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which is what Jing mentioned.

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And the platform model is really, prevalent today.

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If you think the, the organization that you work

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for is a platform,

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because you bring together different players,

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so you don't control the players, you don't actually, even,

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even, there's no contractual obligation

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and everything you get is from this collaboration.

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Uh, so well, I'm gonna give up what we found in the end,

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it turns out that for platforms,

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open strategy is a match made in heaven

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because it's the way, platforms better operate.

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Uh, so we contribute in many ways, well, hopefully in

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that way, but, by talking about a specific type

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of organization, which is a platform,

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and how open strategy is a valid tool for a platform.

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And well, gene will carry on, we'll develop that further.

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But how does transparency

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and inclusion nuances affect our platforms? Operate

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It's ambitious project.

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Uh, we collect the data from 2009, actually up

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until 2022, because for this, its ongoing project.

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But for this, research, this paper,

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we used the data from 20, 2000,

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the interview data from 2009 to 2017.

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But we also collect the, you know, meeting reports.

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And also, there, a number of

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statistics of the company growth, like a number

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of participants, what kind of knowledge they gather,

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in which way, the use of their knowledge.

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So, so basically it's a, we could track 10 years growth

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of this platform from 27 the year.

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It, the company

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was incept in inception stage is is established

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up until 2017.

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So the reason we want to, we, we did five rounds of,

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inter we used the five rounds of the interview.

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So the, I said it, it, it,

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it was a very ambitious project in several ways.

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The first, we believe that, open strategy one company,

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it itself, it's a venture business

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and trying to incorporate external, all the,

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individual players, actors trying to involve them.

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It, it's, it's a evolution, which means it evolves.

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And they, they make mistakes of a strategy at the beginning,

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for example, a completely open, they want to say, okay,

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let's do it like a, a similar idea of open source,

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and we encourage everybody,

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let's co-design this like a community, but it didn't work

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because they give too much power to individual.

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And the individual, like academics, I do, I cycle,

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because they don't understand how important to,

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to, they don't understand how to pitch the commercial value

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of their academic outputs.

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They, they're thinking, okay, I want to,

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sell my product or my, patent.

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I just upload a few, like, the files

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and I could have like my academic paper for stuff, but,

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and customer, they're not interested business,

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they're not interested.

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So at the beginning, they completely lose the control.

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And in the middle stage, they have to,

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enforce much more regulation control standard at the end,

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then they become open more, but with this guided openness.

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So, so that's why we have this, a five round interview,

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allow us to see how the strategy evolves over time.

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But also when we design this sub dimensions,

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we want to see whether there is a consistency across

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10 years development, this kind of validated.

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So having said it's a mixed method, we wanna identify

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to see whether there is any relationships

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between transparency and inclusion.

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And also when we design the sub, dimensions, we want

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to see in which way is there any particular sub dimension

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influence, particular sub dimension of inclusion.

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So we wanna map out the kind of relationships.

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So the, the, the interviews, the qualitative parts of this

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research give us a little bit direction.

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Then we, at the end, we also use a little bit simple

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statistics regression to find whether we could convince

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what, the relationships that we,

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anticipated.

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So, so, so, so that is, so, so the database,

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you know, we have these interviews.

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We also have this, you know, the sta statistics, statistics,

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you know, as well as, you know, the company report.

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So it's, it's, it's quite, unique set

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for the transparency

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because we, having said we applied it to a,

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platform setting, and,

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we borrowed the idea from Waitington

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and, his two colleagues, 2011 publication.

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So, so we borrowed the procedure transparency,

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we're thinking, okay, about the decision, whether the steps,

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the information, whether you, you,

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you put on your website clearly, who will be part

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of this decision making,

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and then, to what extent we're going to disclose the

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decision we've made.

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And, in addition to that, we found that

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because the platform, it's, it's kind of,

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include quite a lot of external stakeholders,

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that individual, in this case, for example, those individual

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businesses who want to buy technology, patent

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or academic, output from academics.

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So, so those academics

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and the businesses, those are two very important group of

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for external stakeholders.

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So therefore, we found that for platform to work, you must

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disclose what would be the personal information.

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Because it's interesting is if I, I,

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let's just say I'm academic, I have a patent,

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I have the ownership, whether I use which platform,

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the platform doesn't have ownership of my knowledge.

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So it's up to me what, how much information I want

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to disclose and whether it will,

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have some ramification impact on my

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follow up patent.

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So I have to be careful.

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So, so that is kind of, so

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therefore, in terms of transparency in the platform setting,

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we think, yes, procedure is important,

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but also whether to what extent the individual, they want

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to disclose their information, their assets.

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So that's also important in terms of inclusion.

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We also, still,

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retain waiting terms, the idea of range of a participant,

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we found that that's important.

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But most important, we think to what extent the platform

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will entitle the individual players the kind

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of the rights to be part of decision, do they allow them

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to decide who do I want to work with, how,

16:26.145 --> 16:30.085
and what kind of collaboration format I want to work with,

16:30.145 --> 16:32.845
in which way I want to sell my technology,

16:33.185 --> 16:37.925
and how much control in, in that, negotiation I have.

16:38.345 --> 16:41.565
So, so, so that we add another dimension, inclusion

16:41.715 --> 16:44.605
that is participant, entitlement.

16:45.105 --> 16:49.845
The third one we wanna, include is to, to, enhance

16:50.785 --> 16:52.085
on, ton's

16:52.345 --> 16:55.005
and original, research is

16:55.025 --> 16:57.885
to include participants commitment,

16:58.315 --> 17:02.765
because some academics there, they're more active, they want

17:02.765 --> 17:05.645
to give time, effort to help

17:06.305 --> 17:09.125
to improve the platform development.

17:09.235 --> 17:13.845
Some are less, some just saying, okay, I do my bit as long

17:13.845 --> 17:16.605
as I can sell my, my technology,

17:17.345 --> 17:20.725
and whether to certain extent whether I want to help

17:21.275 --> 17:22.325
with the functions

17:23.025 --> 17:26.125
and the features of platform, I don't care that much.

17:26.625 --> 17:28.325
So we, we want to differentiate that.

17:28.585 --> 17:31.085
So therefore, we kind of included,

17:31.385 --> 17:35.085
having said in transparency, we included, you know,

17:35.275 --> 17:37.845
individuals, asset knowledge

17:38.545 --> 17:43.445
and, for the inclusion, we included that entitlement.

17:43.585 --> 17:46.605
And, the commitment

17:49.225 --> 17:51.005
for the, transparency

17:51.305 --> 17:53.645
of individual's assets and information.

17:54.025 --> 17:56.205
We also designed the three attributes

17:56.425 --> 17:59.285
to see whether their information, the diversity

17:59.465 --> 18:03.205
of their information, density of their information, as well

18:03.205 --> 18:05.245
as the quality of their information.

18:05.585 --> 18:08.805
We use it as the usability of their information.

18:09.185 --> 18:12.885
So those are the main constructs of this research.

18:13.145 --> 18:15.805
We found that both ways

18:16.555 --> 18:20.765
that the transparency influence the inclusion,

18:21.345 --> 18:22.605
and, to a certain extent,

18:22.825 --> 18:26.005
the inclusion also influence the transparency.

18:26.665 --> 18:29.925
So we don't found that, the procedure, both procedure

18:30.025 --> 18:32.125
and the individual's knowledge

18:32.345 --> 18:35.645
and asset will altogether

18:36.295 --> 18:40.125
equal influence simulate simultaneously all three

18:40.805 --> 18:42.885
a inclusion sub dimensions.

18:43.435 --> 18:47.965
What we found that is if you increase the procedure

18:48.385 --> 18:52.805
and the processes that will encourage more people to join in

18:52.805 --> 18:56.885
that range of participant as well as their entitlement,

18:56.885 --> 18:59.725
because you make your procedure very transparent.

19:00.185 --> 19:03.525
You allow people to post their interest,

19:03.635 --> 19:05.245
they wanna do X, Y, Z.

19:06.105 --> 19:10.765
Um, in comparison, we found that the individual,

19:11.025 --> 19:15.565
if you disclose individual, their, knowledge assets,

19:16.155 --> 19:19.085
that will increase the participant commitment.

19:19.705 --> 19:23.925
So we found those separate influence, like,

19:24.825 --> 19:27.485
going back, when we look at

19:27.625 --> 19:31.565
how inclusion influence transparency, we found,

19:31.565 --> 19:35.925
three attributes of the transparency, particular in terms

19:35.945 --> 19:37.805
of the individual's assets.

19:37.985 --> 19:41.365
We found that the, the, the wider

19:41.905 --> 19:45.205
the people participant, of course, they

19:45.795 --> 19:48.485
broaden the range of their knowledge, assets,

19:49.435 --> 19:51.525
deposit on the platform.

19:52.225 --> 19:56.685
And also when the participant give them more,

19:57.225 --> 19:59.805
entitlement responsibilities,

20:00.835 --> 20:03.445
they will increase the density.

20:04.115 --> 20:08.205
That means, accumulated numbers of knowledge

20:08.745 --> 20:09.965
in particular field.

20:10.545 --> 20:14.725
And we also found it's very important for the participant

20:14.785 --> 20:18.725
to increase their commitment to the platform,

20:19.145 --> 20:20.165
decision making.

20:20.385 --> 20:23.805
By doing that, it, vice versa, it

20:24.515 --> 20:26.645
will increase the quality.

20:27.075 --> 20:30.325
That means the usability of the participants,

20:30.335 --> 20:33.485
their knowledge, deposit on the platform.

20:33.785 --> 20:37.365
So that would be the main funding of this research. Before

20:37.365 --> 20:40.005
Going into the conclusions, I, I want to give kind

20:40.005 --> 20:44.645
of a dumb down version of what Jing very brilliantly said,

20:45.145 --> 20:47.725
because I, I can understand somebody

20:47.725 --> 20:49.525
who hasn't taken part in this project

20:50.175 --> 20:51.485
won't see what's the value of this.

20:51.485 --> 20:55.045
And, and this is the, I'm, I'm gonna really dumb it down,

20:55.105 --> 20:59.405
but when you go to a friend to consult on a decision

20:59.405 --> 21:03.725
that you need to make, you share with that person, well,

21:03.865 --> 21:05.885
I'm saying a friend, but a colleague could be anybody.

21:05.885 --> 21:07.765
You share with that person a lot of the information

21:07.765 --> 21:10.085
that you have to make the decision, because

21:10.085 --> 21:12.005
otherwise the person won't be able to help you.

21:12.425 --> 21:14.845
And then, well, you take on board the advice that the person

21:14.875 --> 21:16.205
that that friend could give you,

21:16.745 --> 21:17.965
and you're gonna make the decision,

21:18.265 --> 21:21.485
but then you are obliged to go back to the person

21:21.625 --> 21:23.365
and tell them, well, how did it go?

21:23.945 --> 21:25.645
Did, did it, was it the right decision?

21:25.705 --> 21:26.885
Was your advice useful?

21:27.585 --> 21:32.565
And this dynamic happens when you are creating value

21:32.995 --> 21:36.485
with a partner, eh, which doesn't

21:37.395 --> 21:38.445
have anything to gain.

21:38.445 --> 21:39.845
There's no contractual agreement.

21:39.845 --> 21:43.125
So you have to gain their conf, their, their trust

21:43.665 --> 21:47.045
and gain, their willingness to help you.

21:47.465 --> 21:49.805
And that's where all these, the, the interactions

21:49.805 --> 21:52.285
between transparency and inclusion occur

21:52.595 --> 21:55.085
because in, in, in the case it happens

21:55.115 --> 21:57.485
that the platform opens inclusion,

21:58.105 --> 22:00.125
and then nobody wants to participate,

22:00.125 --> 22:03.005
and they don't want, they, the ones who participate,

22:03.005 --> 22:04.045
don't do it in the right way.

22:04.425 --> 22:08.845
So the platform has to develop procedures for transparency

22:09.385 --> 22:12.325
to invite people to participate.

22:12.465 --> 22:15.285
And then it's where the, these, interactions

22:15.285 --> 22:17.965
between transparency and inclusion start to occur

22:18.305 --> 22:19.645
and start to be relevant

22:19.645 --> 22:23.325
because there is a creation

22:23.325 --> 22:26.085
of value from the interactions of this, of,

22:26.085 --> 22:27.485
of transparency and inclusion.

22:27.785 --> 22:31.285
The conclusions are, are, are, well firstly, the,

22:31.305 --> 22:35.285
the concept of the platform, the, the concept that in

22:36.125 --> 22:40.765
platforms this well open strategy is made for platforms.

22:41.265 --> 22:44.365
And in platforms, these interactions between transparency

22:44.465 --> 22:46.365
and inclusion are very important.

22:47.065 --> 22:51.245
Uh, and so we speak to procedural transparency and,

22:51.265 --> 22:52.845
and tell, tell the authors

22:53.185 --> 22:55.885
who have developed procedural transparency, which is mostly

22:55.955 --> 22:58.685
with internal and colleagues and side as well.

22:59.425 --> 23:00.845
Uh, we go back to them

23:00.845 --> 23:03.925
and tell them, well, trans procedural transparency is super

23:03.925 --> 23:06.765
important to allow for this interaction

23:07.235 --> 23:09.765
between inclusion and transparency.

23:10.965 --> 23:13.465
Eh, we also, eh,

23:15.165 --> 23:18.185
by adding these sub dimensions that don't exist,

23:18.925 --> 23:22.145
we open new avenues for, for research or,

23:22.145 --> 23:24.545
or new avenues for, discussion.

23:25.085 --> 23:28.545
Uh, maybe this doesn't work in, in, in, I don't know,

23:28.545 --> 23:29.625
in more closed companies.

23:29.835 --> 23:34.385
Maybe it works, in different ways in network companies.

23:34.805 --> 23:36.905
All that, would be interesting to study.

23:37.845 --> 23:42.635
Um, there's also the, this,

23:43.305 --> 23:46.405
evolution between transparency and inclusion,

23:46.785 --> 23:49.245
and we have kind of opened the box on that.

23:49.435 --> 23:52.725
Obviously there are tons of things that could be done,

23:53.265 --> 23:55.965
better or, or, or in, in different contexts.

23:56.545 --> 24:01.205
Um, and finally that we contribute by pointing out

24:02.065 --> 24:05.005
the three specific links between strategy, inclusion

24:05.785 --> 24:07.565
and the attributes of participation,

24:07.565 --> 24:09.725
which in calls the assets and resources.

24:10.545 --> 24:12.245
Uh, that's it.

24:12.425 --> 24:15.445
And we hope that, other scholars

24:15.445 --> 24:17.765
or maybe even ourselves will be able to build on that.

24:18.345 --> 24:21.765
Our research is just to give one

24:22.585 --> 24:24.885
as like illustrative example,

24:25.585 --> 24:28.725
the open strategy in particular implementation,

24:28.755 --> 24:30.565
open strategy is very complex.

24:31.595 --> 24:35.965
It's not like, you know, like openness as a closure.

24:36.475 --> 24:37.645
It's not a binary.

24:38.345 --> 24:42.845
You either go extremely open or you go extremely close.

24:43.075 --> 24:46.045
It's kind of continue, you know,

24:46.045 --> 24:48.805
many organization embrace a little bit open,

24:49.025 --> 24:50.405
but still have control.

24:51.185 --> 24:54.365
And, there are quite a lot of, you know,

24:54.365 --> 24:56.765
factors influence, you know,

24:56.945 --> 24:59.525
and which should be open

24:59.785 --> 25:03.885
and to what extent the degree of openness.

25:04.225 --> 25:08.165
So, so it, it's a com It, it's likely to have a combination

25:08.225 --> 25:10.605
of both open under control

25:11.185 --> 25:15.405
and it's, it's having said, it's quite, complex

25:15.915 --> 25:18.445
process, so we just shows

25:19.095 --> 25:21.485
there might be some relationships in there.

25:21.865 --> 25:24.125
But I think in reality particular

25:24.225 --> 25:28.285
for individual organizations, they, there, there are

25:28.915 --> 25:32.845
more story behind that, haven't been discovered

25:33.345 --> 25:34.165
by scholars.

The Evolution of Open Strategy Dynamics

00:00:00 - Open strategy draws from this notion of open innovation. But I, I, I need to tell you a little bit of background of h how and why did open strategy come to be in, I don't know, the 1960s. I, I'm pretty sure none of us were born then. there was this, wave called strategic planning, and that's where kind of strategy become to be used as a term in business and in strategic planning. The assumption was that there was a boss and they designed the strategy and there were followers that implemented
00:00:34 - And if, actually, if you dig a bit, in many organizations, that's is still the assumption, but that is not the reality. And on one, on the one hand, the, the development of academic academia, regarding strategy has included other people in making strategy. Let, let me give you an idea. In, in, there was this big shake,
00:01:06 - where the middle managers were fired, really? And that affected many big corporations because a big part of the knowledge was kept by middle managers. So there were a, a couple of, academics who started researching how important middle managers were in the developmental strategy. And their main finding was that although, well, you would tend to think that if you,
00:01:37 - you get more commitment. however, their, results were counterintuitive because what they actually found is that the quality of the strategy being produced was better. It was more attuned to the environment, which is counterintuitive because you would think that you, you just because we have this mind frame that there's a boss and the boss says, kind of military mind frame. and from then on in academia spec especially,
00:02:11 - and the power that middle management can have in developing strategy. And another finding has been that it depends on the industry. So in, in, in some industries, for example, where there's much more research and development, you need much more involvement of middle managers in developing the strategy because you need to be closer to the customer in, in, in, in, in, in how the environment changes as the company changes in,
00:02:41 - There're not that many of those, but, for example, the car industry there is, there's less, well, they would hate me to say this, but it's a bit more steep. It, it seems like a, a more top down approach works better. However, in the after the millennium, it has been, kind of studied that actually it goes beyond that. And you can actually think of companies in which the strategy is being made not only

Navigating Open Strategy: Transparency and Inclusion

00:03:13 - but stakeholders in general, even customers. And that, I mean, when, when you think about it, it really rings a bell because how many clever input can customers give you a lot, especially in a rapid changing environment. So you, you are asking there who, which are the main authors? So in, in about 2005, a colleague and friend called Richard Whittington came up with this idea
00:03:47 - which is so, which was a super clever story, but obviously there's no paradise here. So it's not, the more you open it, the better strategy will be. And there are caveats to that. And those two caveats are transparency and inclusion. That's why those are so important as I dimensions, because the more you open strategy, the more
00:04:13 - But how much transparency do you need? How much transparency should you have? Are you gonna show your, I don't know, pilot projects to the competition? Is it gonna go that far so that it becomes then, a trade off? How much open strategy do you want? And how much inclusion and how much transparency do you want? And that's why it has become so important because many companies that want to grow or want to develop new ways to compete it,
00:04:46 - or new processes to compete, and lay after Richard, there have been people like Julia, hows, for example, or David Seidel or Christian Staler, who is Christian is, is selling his open strategy book all over the world and hopefully, effectively, who have kind of consulted an open strategy and helped companies develop open strategy. And it's become kind of a, a, a bit of a fashionable thing. Now, is it a solution for every problem companies have?
00:05:20 - Yeah. Just to add to my, Tono comments, you know, for this research, we really, the starting point is we build on Wittington and his colleagues the two dimensions. But, nowadays more and more researcher trying to see, is this just the two broadly dimensions? Are there sub dimensions? I think we take a step further. We want to see what are the, you know, like,
00:05:56 - and the level of transparency. Like you just gave example, what kind of information, some information like r and d are very ins, secrecy to the companies. Well, and, and, and, and most of the companies were open. They open in terms of a procedure. We could have a roadmap X, y, z one after another. What is the process? We make a decision, but it's kind of the information

Exploring Open Strategy in Platform Settings

00:06:27 - of information might be strategically important to company will have to keep it in house. And also inclusion as well. You include a wide range of people, but what kind of responsibility and entitlement you, you decision making rights you will give to internal employees or more dramatically external, stakeholders. And also what would be their commitment.
00:06:57 - some might be very passive. So I think we build on that. This paper is really trying to find those nitty gritty, taking a granular approach. And in addition to that, we're trying to take a very, a unique example. It's not in traditional companies, we apply those dimension, expand those dimension to understand, you know, sub dimensions in the platform setting.
00:07:30 - move very fast. So, so that the, the main drive behind is to see, in which way we understand it can be applied to a platform setting. The Literature basically covers transparency and inclusion to a certain degrees. And, the, the literature is very, well, not very, but a little bit normative in, in that they're encouraging companies to follow open strategy.
00:08:01 - but there's this a kind of push to towards using, open strategy. and we also want to explore how these two dimensions work because it's, it's very easy to say, well, no, you, you give one dimension, you give one dimension, and you don't give another dimension. But what we go is in depth into each dimension, and the literature doesn't go in that much depth
00:08:31 - And the other thing is that they, the literature tends to apply the, the concept of open strategy to any organization. And that's one of the reasons why we pick up a platform, which is what Jing mentioned. And the platform model is really, prevalent today. If you think the, the organization that you work for is a platform, because you bring together different players, so you don't control the players, you don't actually, even,
00:09:04 - and everything you get is from this collaboration. so well, I'm gonna give up what we found in the end, it turns out that for platforms, open strategy is a match made in heaven because it's the way, platforms better operate. so we contribute in many ways, well, hopefully in that way, but, by talking about a specific type

Exploring Open Strategy's Role in Platforms

00:09:33 - and how open strategy is a valid tool for a platform. And well, gene will carry on, we'll develop that further. But how does transparency and inclusion nuances affect our platforms? Operate It's ambitious project. we collect the data from 2009, actually up until 2022, because for this, its ongoing project. But for this, research, this paper,
00:10:05 - the interview data from 2009 to 2017. But we also collect the, you know, meeting reports. And also, there, a number of statistics of the company growth, like a number of participants, what kind of knowledge they gather, in which way, the use of their knowledge. So, so basically it's a, we could track 10 years growth
00:10:35 - It, the company was incept in inception stage is is established up until 2017. So the reason we want to, we, we did five rounds of, inter we used the five rounds of the interview. So the, I said it, it, it, it was a very ambitious project in several ways. The first, we believe that, open strategy one company, it itself, it's a venture business
00:11:10 - individual players, actors trying to involve them. It, it's, it's a evolution, which means it evolves. And they, they make mistakes of a strategy at the beginning, for example, a completely open, they want to say, okay, let's do it like a, a similar idea of open source, and we encourage everybody, let's co-design this like a community, but it didn't work because they give too much power to individual.
00:11:41 - because they don't understand how important to, to, they don't understand how to pitch the commercial value of their academic outputs. They, they're thinking, okay, I want to, sell my product or my, patent. I just upload a few, like, the files and I could have like my academic paper for stuff, but, and customer, they're not interested business,
00:12:11 - So at the beginning, they completely lose the control. And in the middle stage, they have to, enforce much more regulation control standard at the end, then they become open more, but with this guided openness. So, so that's why we have this, a five round interview, allow us to see how the strategy evolves over time. But also when we design this sub dimensions,

Exploring Transparency and Inclusion in Platforms

00:12:45 - 10 years development, this kind of validated. So having said it's a mixed method, we wanna identify to see whether there is any relationships between transparency and inclusion. And also when we design the sub, dimensions, we want to see in which way is there any particular sub dimension influence, particular sub dimension of inclusion. So we wanna map out the kind of relationships.
00:13:20 - research give us a little bit direction. Then we, at the end, we also use a little bit simple statistics regression to find whether we could convince what, the relationships that we, anticipated. So, so, so, so that is, so, so the database, you know, we have these interviews.
00:13:52 - you know, as well as, you know, the company report. So it's, it's, it's quite, unique set for the transparency because we, having said we applied it to a, platform setting, and, we borrowed the idea from Waitington and, his two colleagues, 2011 publication. So, so we borrowed the procedure transparency, we're thinking, okay, about the decision, whether the steps,
00:14:21 - you put on your website clearly, who will be part of this decision making, and then, to what extent we're going to disclose the decision we've made. And, in addition to that, we found that because the platform, it's, it's kind of, include quite a lot of external stakeholders, that individual, in this case, for example, those individual
00:14:52 - or academic, output from academics. So, so those academics and the businesses, those are two very important group of for external stakeholders. So therefore, we found that for platform to work, you must disclose what would be the personal information. Because it's interesting is if I, I, let's just say I'm academic, I have a patent, I have the ownership, whether I use which platform,
00:15:25 - So it's up to me what, how much information I want to disclose and whether it will, have some ramification impact on my follow up patent. So I have to be careful. So, so that is kind of, so therefore, in terms of transparency in the platform setting, we think, yes, procedure is important, but also whether to what extent the individual, they want to disclose their information, their assets.

Enhancing Participation Through Inclusion and Transparency

00:15:57 - We also, still, retain waiting terms, the idea of range of a participant, we found that that's important. But most important, we think to what extent the platform will entitle the individual players the kind of the rights to be part of decision, do they allow them to decide who do I want to work with, how,
00:16:30 - in which way I want to sell my technology, and how much control in, in that, negotiation I have. So, so, so that we add another dimension, inclusion that is participant, entitlement. The third one we wanna, include is to, to, enhance on, ton's and original, research is to include participants commitment,
00:17:02 - to give time, effort to help to improve the platform development. Some are less, some just saying, okay, I do my bit as long as I can sell my, my technology, and whether to certain extent whether I want to help with the functions and the features of platform, I don't care that much. So we, we want to differentiate that.
00:17:31 - having said in transparency, we included, you know, individuals, asset knowledge and, for the inclusion, we included that entitlement. And, the commitment for the, transparency of individual's assets and information. We also designed the three attributes to see whether their information, the diversity
00:18:03 - as the quality of their information. We use it as the usability of their information. So those are the main constructs of this research. We found that both ways that the transparency influence the inclusion, and, to a certain extent, the inclusion also influence the transparency. So we don't found that, the procedure, both procedure
00:18:32 - and asset will altogether equal influence simulate simultaneously all three a inclusion sub dimensions. What we found that is if you increase the procedure and the processes that will encourage more people to join in that range of participant as well as their entitlement, because you make your procedure very transparent.

Enhancing Commitment Through Transparency and Inclusion

00:19:03 - they wanna do X, Y, Z. in comparison, we found that the individual, if you disclose individual, their, knowledge assets, that will increase the participant commitment. So we found those separate influence, like, going back, when we look at how inclusion influence transparency, we found,
00:19:35 - of the individual's assets. We found that the, the, the wider the people participant, of course, they broaden the range of their knowledge, assets, deposit on the platform. And also when the participant give them more, entitlement responsibilities, they will increase the density.
00:20:08 - in particular field. And we also found it's very important for the participant to increase their commitment to the platform, decision making. By doing that, it, vice versa, it will increase the quality. That means the usability of the participants, their knowledge, deposit on the platform. So that would be the main funding of this research. Before
00:20:40 - of a dumb down version of what Jing very brilliantly said, because I, I can understand somebody who hasn't taken part in this project won't see what's the value of this. And, and this is the, I'm, I'm gonna really dumb it down, but when you go to a friend to consult on a decision that you need to make, you share with that person, well, I'm saying a friend, but a colleague could be anybody. You share with that person a lot of the information
00:21:10 - otherwise the person won't be able to help you. And then, well, you take on board the advice that the person that that friend could give you, and you're gonna make the decision, but then you are obliged to go back to the person and tell them, well, how did it go? Did, did it, was it the right decision? Was your advice useful? And this dynamic happens when you are creating value with a partner, eh, which doesn't have anything to gain.
00:21:39 - So you have to gain their conf, their, their trust and gain, their willingness to help you. And that's where all these, the, the interactions between transparency and inclusion occur because in, in, in the case it happens that the platform opens inclusion, and then nobody wants to participate, and they don't want, they, the ones who participate, don't do it in the right way. So the platform has to develop procedures for transparency

Interactions of Transparency and Inclusion in Platforms

00:22:12 - And then it's where the, these, interactions between transparency and inclusion start to occur and start to be relevant because there is a creation of value from the interactions of this, of, of transparency and inclusion. The conclusions are, are, are, well firstly, the, the concept of the platform, the, the concept that in platforms this well open strategy is made for platforms.
00:22:44 - and inclusion are very important. and so we speak to procedural transparency and, and tell, tell the authors who have developed procedural transparency, which is mostly with internal and colleagues and side as well. we go back to them and tell them, well, trans procedural transparency is super important to allow for this interaction between inclusion and transparency. Eh, we also, eh,
00:23:18 - we open new avenues for, for research or, or new avenues for, discussion. maybe this doesn't work in, in, in, I don't know, in more closed companies. Maybe it works, in different ways in network companies. All that, would be interesting to study. there's also the, this, evolution between transparency and inclusion,
00:23:49 - Obviously there are tons of things that could be done, better or, or, or in, in different contexts. and finally that we contribute by pointing out the three specific links between strategy, inclusion and the attributes of participation, which in calls the assets and resources. that's it. And we hope that, other scholars or maybe even ourselves will be able to build on that.
00:24:22 - as like illustrative example, the open strategy in particular implementation, open strategy is very complex. It's not like, you know, like openness as a closure. It's not a binary. You either go extremely open or you go extremely close. It's kind of continue, you know, many organization embrace a little bit open,
00:24:51 - And, there are quite a lot of, you know, factors influence, you know, and which should be open and to what extent the degree of openness. So, so it, it's a com It, it's likely to have a combination of both open under control and it's, it's having said, it's quite, complex process, so we just shows

Untold Stories Behind Organizational Realities

00:25:33 - But I think in reality particular for individual organizations, they, there, there are more story behind that, haven't been discovered by scholars.

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