Skills
Low-end Innovation
What is a low-end innovation?
Low-end innovations are new products strategically positioned in a market segment with a below-average price. They enable companies to conquer new markets and generate profits. Moreover, they also satisfy consumer needs for new, affordable products and contribute to solving social challenges related to socially and environmentally sustainable development. Although low-end innovations have the potential to enter markets of consumers with a with low ability to pay and benefit poorer consumers, we know little about these innovations.
Concrete activities and projects
In our research we attempt to answer the following questions, among others:
- What motivates innovators and founders to promote low-end innovation?
- Which organizational success factors and business ecosystems require low-end innovation?
- In what contexts are low-end innovators to be found?
We tackled these questions in our project "Low-end Innovation: An Investigation of Key Individuals and Organizational Ecosystems", funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Decision Making
What does decision making mean?
Decision making describes the decision-making behaviour of individuals in organizations and in the context of consumption. The decisions of key persons such as managers, entrepreneurs or opinion leaders in the consumer sector have a decisive influence on how organizations strategically position themselves, which innovations are driven forward and which products fail. Since the decision-making behavior of individuals has a significant impact on markets and social processes, it is essential to understand how individuals arrive at decisions. Particularly in the course of digitization, there is still uncertainty about how decision-making behavior changes.
Concrete activities and projects
In our research we attempt to answer the following questions, among others:
- How does digitization change consumers' information search behaviour and information processing?
- How does digitization change our final decisions and our satisfaction with them?
- How is the sharing economy altering our consumption decisions?
We tackled these questions in the research projects "Rethinking Decision Making in the Digital Society" and "Rebound Effects of the Sharing Economy", both funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Strategic Entrepreneurship
What does strategic entrepreneurship mean?
Strategic entrepreneurship refers to the targeted strategic behavior of new companies and company founders. Start-ups are always associated with high levels of uncertainty and risk, therefore strategic action on the part of the entrepreneurs are required for them to be successful.
The start-up sector is not only economically important for Switzerland, but also constantly initiates new social and ecological problem-solving approaches. A central interest of our institute is therefore to prepare entrepreneurs optimally for the challenges of setting up a business and to equip them with the relevant tools and success factors.
Concrete activities and projects
In our research we attempt to answer the following questions, among others:
- Which factors influence the success of social entrepreneurship?
- To what extent do personality traits of founders determine the success of companies?
- What role does entrepreneurial thinking and action play in SMEs and large companies?
