(Innovation) portfolio management literature is extensive but barely touched upon in the public context. Portfolio management is instrumental in resource allocation and strategic decision-making, directing investments toward strategic priorities. This thesis explores how innovation portfolio management (IPM) is performed at the Dutch Ministry of Defense, and a comparison is made with private and public sector literature available. Key findings illuminate pronounced disparities between the MoD’s IPM methodologies and those established in the private sector. Notably, the MoD’s IPM framework places subjective risk-reward metrics at the forefront of decision-making, diverging from conventional private sector emphasis on monetary considerations. Furthermore, the MoD’s IPM approach primarily revolves around project-level evaluations, constraining portfolio-level prioritization decision-making. The conspicuous absence of a articulated innovation strategy and the decentralized nature of portfolio oversight serve as additional distinguishing features of the MoD’s IPM practices. Moreover, the MoD’s unique procurement model, which relies extensively on external development, and its innovation strategy, predominantly shaped by market dynamics, set it apart from IPM practices commonly observed in the private sector. Existing public sector literature has provided valuation methodologies across diverse sectors; however, these contributions have often neglected to provide a comprehensive under standing of how IPM is executed and have been relatively under-referenced. Within the MoD, this thesis reveals that the valuation of IPM, while exhibiting variations among different departments, predominantly relies on multi-criteria analysis (MCA) with a retrospective focus. Notably, subjective measures such as relevance and urgency are employed as yardsticks for assessing project value. This research enhances our understanding of IPM in the public sector and underscores the need to further explore and refine IPM methodologies within public organizations. It highlights the distinctive characteristics of IPM within the MoD and emphasizes the importance of aligning IPM practices with organizational objectives and strategies to optimize resource allocation and decision-making. With the results of this thesis, public entities have guidance on how to organize portfolio management and how prioritization can be performed.

Maritime sectors have been notorious for their slow paced innovation efforts and although it is an efficient sector, it has big impact on the environment just because of the size of the industry (M. Rahim, et al. 2016). There is a lot of activity on the seas, changes in this sector could make a big difference when making our world become more sustainable. However, the sustainable field is a field that is faced with wicked problems. There are always many stakeholders involved and their interests and expectations on these matters can vary wildly. Conversations are important to bring alignment and understanding across stakeholders (Whitemore, 2013). These conversations involve the political and social sciences to investigate. A list of stakeholders was drafted and they were assessed on the grounds of their discourses. A discourse is “a way of shared, structured ways of speaking, thinking, interpreting and representing things in the world.” (Guardado, 2018, p 72) The following RQ was formulated: How can different stakeholders regarding the sustainable transition of the maritime industry be assessed using the discourses of Dryzek? With a basis of Q-methodology, a list of statements was created that, based on Dryzek’s discourse theory, is then used to judge the respondents on their environmental beliefs. Also the sustainability reports of selected companies where investigated. It was possible to identify the main themes that could count on agreement/disagreement and controversy. Nature and the existence of limits to our activities where rated highly, while the way to solve it remained controversial. People are more imaginative than their company’s current policies indicate. People see the limitations to the systems that surround them. The willingness of the employees is there, or there is a lack between the strategy of the board and the values of the employees. Further action is required to bridge the gap. It is indeed possible to asses different stakeholders and firms on their discourses and the research shows two methods to do it. The set up of the interview and the statements proved to be able to provide information about the environmentalism of the stakeholder. This information gives an insight into the social context of environmentalism and brought forward interesting observations about the willingness of the employees and the stance of the companies. The reports indicate a gap between what is needed (and wanted) and what is currently being done. The companies should be more radical and imaginative in both their vision and their solutions, instead of focussing on the solutions alone. Vision is often omitted from the reports, an important oversight. Overarching vision and motivation can be uncovered but the specific points of departure for technological advancement remain hidden. The thesis brings a contribution to investigations on stakeholder alignment in the clean shipping sector and uncovers some important issues. The firms specific operating context remains to be investigated with more detail, as to properly find the barriers that hold back solving wicked problems. However a good effort is made to indicate the grounds for disputes from the actors.

This study explores the decisive aspects during an evaluation for the viability of an existing innovative interorganisational partnership. This research focuses on six interorganisational partnerships within the maritime sector, using semi-structured interviews conducted with eleven participants from two perspectives, the strategic and the operational. The analysis found three aspects to be decisive during an evaluation, which are the task-related, the partner-related and the environment-related aspect. Among these three aspects, ten categories are found. This research provides academic contributions and practical recommendations for organisations and individuals involved in an innovative interorganisational partnership. Among these practical recommendations, the trigger for an evaluation, the criteria for an evaluation, and the involved individuals who should execute the evaluation are provided.

The energy transition requires the adoption of various hazardous chemicals to generate, transport and utilize energy. In this adoption process, value conflicts between stakeholders need to be considered to foster the social acceptance of these chemical molecules. To be able to anticipate on these value conflicts, this study aimed to develop and evaluate a methodological framework for analyzing and addressing value conflicts in the adoption of hazardous chemicals in the energy transition. By integrating principles from systems engineering and value-driven design methods, as well as input from experts in both fields, a framework was developed. The developed methodological framework consisted of three steps being: 1) Applying Systems Thinking to define the socio-technical system the chemical is adopted in and conceptualize stakeholder values (conceptual investigation), 2) Identifying values and value conflicts (empirical investigation) and 3) Classifying and addressing value conflicts (technical investigation). This approach innovates upon the default tripartite value-sensitive design approach by incorporating Systems Thinking in the conceptual investigation phase to suit the broader context of socio-technical systems design rather than just the design of physical technological artifacts like wind turbines and nuclear reactors. Furthermore, it combines parts of existing VSD frameworks in the empirical and technical investigation phase in a novel way. The methodological framework was evaluated by conducting a case study on the adoption process of ammonia in the Dutch energy transition. To inform the empirical investigation, 11 expert interviews with policy advisors, industry players and research experts provided in-depth information about the values and value conflicts at play. However, it was noted that the broad nature of the interview questions limited the ability to derive specific technical design requirements, suggesting that future studies should adapt the interview questions to focus on particular parts of the socio-technical system if desired. In the empirical investigation phase, value hierarchies were constructed from the value level to the norm level, which provided useful for identifying value conflicts. The results of the empirical investigation revealed seven major values which play a role in the adoption process of ammonia in the Dutch energy transition being: efficiency (of both spatial planning and the energy transition in general), competitiveness, cooperation, safety and health, environmental sustainability, transparency, and (procedural and distributive) justice. The values identified in this study were found to be comparable with those found in related works on the adoption of technologies like nuclear energy and wind turbines. Seven value conflicts were identified by comparing the norms related to each value and the framework was used to address and classify them. This allowed to derive policy implications. There is a need for more transparent communication with the public about the energy transition, available technology alternatives to reach net-zero, the associated risks of those alternatives, and the ethical dilemmas that the government is facing. It was established that local communities are willing to bear risks if the government clearly states what the ethical dilemmas are in the energy transition and the choices made in these dilemmas. This vision can build social acceptance from the industry and local communities and address the identified value conflicts between safety and health, justice, and efficiency. In this vision, the government should also address their standpoint on the ethical desirability of adopting certain chemicals in the energy transition. Therefore, it is necessary that the government has specified the intended use-cases for chemicals like green ammonia. This clarity can help address value conflicts related to competitiveness and environmental sustainability. Furthermore, it is important that the government keeps fostering a strong collaboration between industry and government. This is especially important when adopting chemicals that are new and where the government possesses limited expertise on. As the industry could possess the necessary technical expertise, the government could set regulatory boundaries upon collaboration with industry, enhancing regulatory preparedness. Moreover, to ensure that imported ammonia is produced green, certification standards should be put in place. These interventions could address the identified value conflict between environmental sustainability and competitiveness, fostering the social acceptance of ammonia adoption.

Much research has been conducted regarding which steps to take to enhance the likelihood of entrepreneurial success. However, entrepreneurs often turn to practical books for insights on what steps to take, resulting in a research-practitioner gap. This thesis aimed at combining different models and methods into one integral yet simple framework that is practically applicable for startup founders in the early phase: customer discovery. The scientific literature for these models and methods was included. The framework included the Customer Development Model, Diffusion of Innovations Model, Technology Acceptance Model, the Mom Test method and the Lean method. This framework was then tested on a practical use case to test the applicability of the different aspects in a real-life scenario. This use case was the company Plense Technologies, a startup I recently co-founded and still in the customer discovery phase. The metric of learnings and insights was used to assess the framework during this phase. Although the initial framework proved to be insightful, some additions were made. These four additions were (1) the distinction between directive- and non-directive interviews at the different phases of the customer development insight cycle, (2) interviewing suppliers, (3) the benefit of startup coaches and (4) doing an internship to get a better understanding of the customer. With these additions, the resulting framework proved to be integral and simple to apply in a practical context. Entrepreneurs can use the models and methods in the framework to rapidly iterate and improve the business model, ultimately increasing the chances of entrepreneurial success. Factors mentioned that may influence how the framework can best be applied are the financial climate, regulatory environment, culture, market segment, market type, product type, the role of the customer and the relevance of deep tech. These should be further assessed in future research to validate their applicability in different contexts.

Public-private partnerships (PPP) that focus on innovation are excellent methods to improve the innovative capabilities of both partners, however, within the complex dynamics of this cooperation, literature and management would benefit from an analysis of barriers, success factors, and strategies employed within the PPP. This research can be used as a springboard for further research by analyzing a novel research setting: Defense Ministries and Defense Industries. This novelty was compounded by taking a qualitative, explorative approach. A focus on experimental development was taken to limit the large amount of innovative activity present in the sector. Focus was kept on the effects on individual projects, as opposed to innovation systems or networks. This leads to the following research question: What are the barriers and success factors in public-private partnerships that focus on experimental development, and how do the participants cope with the barriers, and utilize the success factors? From the literature a theoretical framework was set up based on four categories of factors influencing the innovation process. The categories are organizational, contextual, interaction-specific, and innovation-characteristic. Literature suggested that interaction-specific barriers were the main source of barriers. The main strategies in literature revolve around interaction-specific solutions to these interaction-specific barriers. A contextual model was set up. Dutch Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Dutch Defense industry provided a novel research setting with hard-to-define innovation goals. Individuals from both sides of the PPP with practical experience in PPPs that focus on experimental development were interviewed. Within the Dutch MoD these were innovation coordinators within sub-organizations and within the Defense Industry these were leaders of small to medium-sized companies. The data was gathered through 13 interviews, of which 11 were used as sources of data. The data was first deductively coded through the four categories and then inductively coded based using the terminology of the interviewees. This coding strategy led to three organizational factors: ‘process rules’, ‘culture, vision & implementation’ and ‘scale-up’, five contextual factors: ‘procurement: general’ ‘procurement: prior knowledge’, ‘procurement: perception’, ‘privacy’ and ‘technology-related’, one innovation-characteristic factor: ‘uncertainty’ and three interaction-specific factors: ‘contact with end-user’, ‘shared understanding’ and ‘expectation management’. The factors were described as ‘barrier’, ‘success factor’, ‘strategy’, and ‘not a barrier’. Organizational and contextual factors were the main factors influencing the success of the innovation process. ‘Process rules’ was named the most influencing factor for the innovation process. ‘Procurement law’ was the most prominent contextual factor. Innovation-characteristic factors were often considered to not be relevant to the cooperative innovation process. Lastly, the interaction-specific factors were occasionally cited as a barrier and often named as a success factor, specifically ‘contact with end-user’. Interaction was key to most strategies employed to overcome barriers. In conclusion, this study has provided a unique insight into a collaborative phenomenon in a scarcely researched setting. The findings can be used in comparison with other research on PPPs with innovative goals, especially those that have taken place in the Netherlands. Compared to literature, the appearance of interaction-specific strategies is not unique, but in their broad application to overcome a plethora of barriers is. Further research focusing on communication dynamics within PPPs is recommended to enhance collaborative efforts and drive impactful innovations in the Defense sector. In a practical sense, reviewing process and contextual rules and reviewing the accessibility of the PPP to newcomers in the sector would enhance innovation programs, fostering effective collaboration between public and private entities.

In 2006 already, Clive Humby said: “Data is the New Oil!” and like oil, data needs “infrastructure” to be gathered, analyzed and used. This infrastructure is called data governance and it is essential in today’s data-driven era to ensure availability, quality and security of an organization’s data. This is especially true for financial services firms, which deal with massive amounts of highly-sensitive personal data, such as names, dates of birth and bank details, and operate in a highly regulated environment. Therefore, it is essential that any new data governance policies, such as a transition to a cloud-based data governance policy, are implemented as quickly and efficiently as possible. Research thus far has primarily focused on the importance of data governance and developing data governance models. However, the implementation of data governance proves to be not without its barriers. Some research has been done into what barriers organizations encounter when attempting to implement new data governance policies, but strategies to deal with these barriers have not been found in existing literature. Therefore, this research seeks to answer the question: “How do managers at financial services firms in the Netherlands deal with the barriers to successfully implement new data governance?” This thesis used a literature study, twelve individual interviews with PwC employees who were heavily involved in data governance implementation processes at financial services firms in the Netherlands and a focus group interview with experts from PwC to determine what barriers financial services firms face when they are implementing new data governance, which strategies they use to deal with these barriers and what key factors influence the decision-making in this implementation process. These three elements were then used to find the answer to how managers at financial services firms in the Netherlands successfully implement new data governance. The research attempts to close the gap in the literature surrounding the general strategies that are used to navigate the barriers that inhibit (new) data governance implementation. Furthermore, it can help further identify which barriers (financial services) firms face when attempting to implement new data governance and aid in the development of more effective data governance framework. Additionally, the improved understanding of how financial services firms navigate the barriers that inhibit data governance implementation can help maintain trust in financial services firms and the financial system as a whole and it can aid in the development of more effective regulatory frameworks to increase how fast financial services firms are able to comply to them. The barriers financial firms face to implementing data governance that were found in this thesis were sorted into four broad categories: “Organizational culture/structure”, ”Senior management priority”, ”IT performance” and ”Lack of information”. Examples of these barriers are: a “restrictive mindset”, “unfocused strategy”, “incompatible IT systems” or a “lack of information on technoliii ogy”. The strategies the firms used to deal with these barriers were also sorted into four different categories: “Senior management vision/championing”, “Technological tools/skills”, “Stakeholder involvement/consensus” and the “Business case” strategy. Examples of these strategies are: “developing a global vision”, “standardization of technology”, “stakeholder involvement” and “building a broad business case”. A complete overview of the barriers and their corresponding strategies that were found in this thesis can be found in figure 4.1...

Public projects play a crucial role in societal development yet managing them effectively requires a nuanced understanding of the expectations and concerns of different stakeholders. This paper explores the complex landscape of public projects, with a particular focus on understanding the diverse perspectives of various stakeholder groups and their perceptions of the tangible and intangible impacts of these initiatives. The existing literature has provided valuable insights into specific stakeholder perspectives and regional nuances, but it remains fragmented, leading to a piecemeal understanding of the broader landscape. Addressing this gap, the research introduces a structured model that combines the RACI model for stakeholder identification and the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) approach for categorizing impact factors. This model aims to bring clarity and consistency to the assessment of stakeholder priorities in public projects. The research question guiding this study is: How do distinct stakeholder groups perceive the intangible and tangible impacts of public projects? To assess the validity of the proposed model, we explored the practical application within the context of smart street lighting projects. utilizing semi-structured interviews with 16 stakeholders across the four RACI categories. The findings reveal shared concerns across stakeholder groups, particularly regarding privacy and security issues associated with smart lighting. However, notable differences also emerged, such as manufacturers’ willingness to compromise social responsibility for economic gains and citizens’ feelings of exclusion from decision-making processes. Based on these findings, several suggestions were made: 1) Establish a regular dialogue mechanism with stakeholders, ensuring that each group, especially citizens, is included in the decision-making process; 2) Address privacy and security concerns by incorporating robust data protection and cybersecurity measures into the smart street lighting systems; 3) Encourage manufacturers and other profit-driven stakeholders to align more closely with social and environmental responsibilities; 4) Use the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) approach to regularly measure and (publicly) report the economic, social, and environmental impacts of the smart street lighting project to maintain transparency. This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by providing a nuanced understanding of stakeholder perspectives in public projects, offering a structured model for future studies, and paving the way for more informed and inclusive decision-making processes. The limitations of the study, primarily related to its regional focus and potential biases in participant selection, are acknowledged, underscoring the need for further research to validate and refine the proposed model.

This thesis explores the dynamics of customer satisfaction and its relationship with product attributes while modeling the natural decay of delight associated with these attributes. The research analyzes online reviews of Philips Airfryers to provide valuable insights for businesses aiming to enhance customer satisfaction and remain competitive in a dynamic marketplace. The study offers several insights into the concept of the natural decay of delight, which refers to the diminishing satisfaction experienced by customers over time. It reveals that the availability of alternative products influences this decay, indicating that as more alternatives become available, the initial delight associated with a product tends to diminish. This understanding underscores the importance of managing customer satisfaction throughout the product life cycle. The thesis delves into the impact of product attributes like capacity, repurchase intention, and value for money on customer satisfaction ootnote{Keywords: Capacity, Value for Money, Repurchase Intention, Total Alternatives, Airfryer, Customer Satisfaction, and Natural Decay of Delight.}. It identifies these attributes as significant factors affecting customer satisfaction levels. Capacity, when aligned with customer expectations, enhances satisfaction. A positive repurchase intention fosters greater satisfaction and brand loyalty. Moreover, customers perceiving good value for money report higher satisfaction. The study also explores the moderating role of external variables, such as the number of alternatives, in shaping these relationships, providing valuable insights into customer preferences and behavior. Moreover, the research incorporates external factors, including the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, sales channels, and regional variations. These external influences are crucial in shaping customer satisfaction and require consideration in product management and marketing strategies. The practical implications of the findings are significant for businesses. They emphasize the importance of understanding the natural decay of delight and managing product attributes to optimize customer satisfaction. By strategically considering moderating variables, companies can enhance their investments and overall customer satisfaction. Additionally, the study highlights the significance of adapting to changing market dynamics by incorporating external factors in product strategies. In conclusion, this thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of customer satisfaction dynamics, product attributes, and external influences. The insights gained can guide businesses in developing effective strategies to manage customer satisfaction, adapt to market changes, and maintain a competitive edge. By understanding and addressing customer preferences and factors influencing satisfaction, businesses can optimize their efforts and drive success in today's fiercely competitive marketplace. Businesses should prioritize actively managing product attributes, continuously seeking customer feedback, and proactively adapting to evolving customer demands with the support of their data analytics teams. These actions aim to enhance overall customer satisfaction and foster loyalty.

90% out of all startups fail, which is the cause of several reasons like lack of funds, lack of market need and bad management among other things. Digitalization can help startups to solve these problems, by performing processes more efficient than when they are performed manually. The objective of this research is to build a model to estimate the average influence of digitalization on the success of a startup in all phases during their lifecycle among other established factors, according to their own input. Moreover, this research will investigate the current use of digitalization at industrial startups and how digitalization can help industrial startups to accelerate their innovations. Additionally, this will result in a few examples of how digitalization is used today at startups and a number of recommendations for further research. This research focuses on industrial startups that are located in the Netherlands, because the Netherlands is a leading high tech country with a world class technical university and science hub and for the reason that similar research has been done in several other countries, only no research has been found on the impact of digitalization (on industrial startups) in the Netherlands. This research will answer the following main research question and sub-questions: Main RQ: How can digitalization help industrial startups to accelerate their innovations? SQ1. What are the obstacles that industrial startups in the Netherlands run into during the startup and transition phase? SQ2. How do startups evaluate their digitalization strategy? Employees from eight startups have been interviewed during qualitative exploratory expert interviews. These eight startups are divided in two groups. The first group will entail five startups that are currently in the early stage startup phase and the second group will entail three startups that are currently in the scale up phase. During the analysis of the data, the startups (and their data) in the first group are compared with each other. After this, the startups (and their data) in the second group are compared with each other and at last, (the startups in) both groups are compared with each other. The different obstacles from startups resulted from different research methods. The obstacles that were found during a literature review are: a lack of funds, lack of market need, lack of experience, bad management, premature scaling and a strong competition. From the interview with the investment director of YES!Delft the following obstacles resulted: lack of long term vision, producing everything in-house, going to the market too late, not separating main and side issues & not clearing obstacles in the near future before they run into them. The startups came up with some similar obstacles, but also different ones, like finding (new) people, sales and/or customer acquisition, cybersecurity, lack of funds, big geographical distances, strict/heavy legislation, finding suitable (scalable) software programs, maintaining high quality standards, long negotiation times with customers and decisions of widening/narrowing the product portfolio. All startups stated that digitalization is very important (one even called it a key success factor), however only three startups could give some kind of definition of what it is exactly and only two startups have a digital roadmap. Even though several startups stated that they would recommend to other startups to start as early as possible with digitalization, they all stated that digitalization is the least important in the first two phases of a startup compared to the last two phases. The examples of applications that startups mentioned, range from the more simple examples like online meetings and 3D modelling software, to the more advance examples like an ERP system, MES system, machine learning models and newly created API’s. With the help of these applications of digitalization, startups can save time and money in the long run. During this research it became clear that digitalization can accelerate the innovations of industrial startups, but it is not the most important factor and cannot carry a startup on its own. Digitalization is a tool to get somewhere and not a goal on itself. The contribution of this research to the literature is a conceptual model that has been used during this research to measure the influence of digitalization (among other variables) on the success of industrial startups in the Netherlands. The practical contribution of this research for startups is to create awareness among startups about the influence of digitalization, the fact that startups can read about the obstacles that they could encounter and some possible solutions for these obstacles as well. Companies that offer applications of digitalization can use this research as orientation for the creation of tailormade digitalization solutions for startups. Recommendations for further research are: to dive deeper into the phenomenon digitalization, to investigate why some startups say that digitalization needs to be used early, but then contradict themselves with filling in the conceptual model, the influence of digitalization at startups in other sectors and the influence of digitalization among larger corporations.

Standardisation plays a crucial role in driving long-term productivity, competitive growth, and innovation in various industries. Its primary objective is to streamline processes by establishing consensus among different stakeholders, such as firms, users, academia and governments. Standards provide classifications such as quality, compatibility, safety, or measurements to ensure that products and procedures meet specific requirements and can be reliably used across different domains. In spite of the importance of standardisation, there is a lot to learn about the factors that influence standard success. As of now, literature in this field is mostly exploratory in nature. This study investigates the factors influencing the success of standardisation efforts, in particular, it examines the impact of technological diversity and geographical diversity within standard setting organisations (SSOs) or standards consortia on achieving standard success. Additionally, the study explores the role of the size of these SSOs or standards consortia in influencing the likelihood of standard success. Next to that, the influence of the definition of standard success is also examined, by providing three different theoretical definitions for standard success. This study adds on to the literature by providing larger scale qualitative research in an attempt to better understand the dynamics of standard success. In this study an original dataset was created of standards consortia in the context of Renewable Energy (RE) and Sustainability, Efficiency, and Green Initiatives (SEG). The chosen context is significant for addressing the global climate problem, a complex and multifaceted wicked problem that requires collaborative efforts. Therefore, the understanding of which factors influence the success of standards is essential to tackle climate change's adverse impacts. Standards are important in providing universal guidelines, products and protocols that are needed to combat climate change. The results indicate the presence of a U-shaped relationship between technological diversity and standards success, this result has not yet been found earlier and implies that instead of an optimum range of diversity, managers should to be at either extreme end of the technological diversity spectrum. Moreover, we observe a positive relationship between consortium size and standard success, meaning that whenever possible, managers should aim to increase consortium size. This study provides a better understanding of how the characteristics of standards consortia influence standard success which can also aid managers in making well-educated choices when setting up standards consortia.

Global warming is one of the biggest societal problems in 2023. The share of IT usage within this problem has been growing rapidly in the last decades, and this is likely to continue. To stop the increasing footprint of IT (usage) a significant change is required. However, due to the pervasive nature of IT integration in our daily lives, this is a very complex undertaking. Greening the IT sector would require multidimensional changes in technologies, behaviors, regulations and so on. Apart from the need of IT in society, most people within society are not aware of the consequences of IT usage...