Ideation Approach for IT-based Services in the Car (IDEA)

In recent years, mobile IT-based services have entered nearly all areas of life. Since then they shape users’ personal and occupational everyday life. In addition, they have become increasingly important sources of value creation in the automobile industry. First, the connected car offers many opportunities for building and cultivating customer relations. Second, the development of innovative and profitable mobile services for the connected car supports effective and sustainable individual mobility. Yet, the central question is: How can innovative digital services, which lead to customer acceptance, reflect the brand image and contribute to the company’s value creation, be created in a systematic manner?

A very important development stage of innovative digital services is the discovery phase, in which innovative ideas are generated and the most promising ideas are elaborated into innovation concepts by project teams. Here, the development of creative proposals for solutions as well as the exploration of alternatives plays a central role. Thus, the aim of this project is to gain a deeper understanding of the factors that foster or inhibit a team’s creative performance during exploration and concept development in order to shed new light on how to manage teams at the discovery phase of innovation projects more effectively.

The project’s focus is on applying and analyzing selected methods and processes for the exploration of innovative solutions. We apply an iterative process in order to provide our business partner as soon as possible with preliminary findings and use their feedback to guide our further research.

Comparison between science and practice in relation to the management of exploration activities
Iterative application and analysis of selected methods
Inclusion and evaluation of facilitating information and communication technology
Evaluation and final documentation

The project goes along with the current innovation process of Audi Car IT Concepts to support it methodologically and improve it incrementally through the application of our research findings. The results of the project are recommendations for action in order to manage the discovery phase of innovation projects more effectively and enhance the creative performance of project teams during the concept development of innovative mobile services for the connected car.

Technische Universität München, Chair for Information Systems (Prof. Dr. Krcmar)