Turning from Laggard to Leader in National Radical Innovation and Beyond

Stefan Hüsig ()
Additional contact information
Stefan Hüsig: University of Regensburg
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Stefan Huesig

Chapter Chapter 9 in Knowledge Perspectives of New Product Development, 2012, pp 175-198 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter describes and analyzes the case of the rise of a late entrant in the area of electronic road tolling systems – Mannesmann AG – from a laggard nation – Germany – in the traditional market of road tolling equipment which was dominated by a number of established incumbents with conventional technology. By faster anticipating and combining previously unrelated trends in the technological, institutional, and market domains plus transforming them into a new radical approach, the newcomer company managed to introduce the core of the new high-tech system for electronic road tolling in Germany – the so called “On-Board-Unit.” This case was reconstructed with hindsight using a large amount of internal and public documents combined with several interviews with key persons in charge of the project. The analyzed innovation project was called ROBIN (Road Billing Network) and was initiated by the innovation unit of the German Mannesmann AG called “Mannesmann Pilotentwicklung” in 1992 and was introduced in the market in 2005. It combined the upcoming traffic telematics with new communication and location technologies. Important application fields were identified in the area of electronic road pricing, navigation, and traffic management. Using a multilevel and multistages framework based on literature from NPD as well as the strategy/innovation literature, this case provides interesting propositions on how various challenges regarding multiple uncertainties in the institutional and firm context as well as multiple newness dimensions in technology and applications can be managed over a time period of over 8–10 years, including a hostile take-over of the firm by Vodafone. Of specific interest in this context is the role of the innovation unit “Mannesmann Pilotentwicklung” and their strategies to help this project to finally succeed.

Keywords: Innovation Process; Radical Innovation; Innovation Project; Road Toll; Electronic Toll Collection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:innchp:978-1-4614-0248-0_9

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9781461402480

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4614-0248-0_9

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Innovation, Technology, and Knowledge Management from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().