=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3231/iStar22_paper_4
|storemode=property
|title=iStar Support to Open Innovation Management
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3231/iStar22_paper_4.pdf
|volume=Vol-3231
|authors=Lucía Méndez-Tapia,Juan Pablo Carvallo
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/istar/Tapia022
}}
==iStar Support to Open Innovation Management==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3231/iStar22_paper_4.pdf
iStar Support to Open Innovation Management
Lucía Méndez-Tapia 1,2, Juan Pablo Carvallo 1
1
Universidad del Azuay (UDA), 24 de Mayo 7-77 Ave., and Hernán Malo, Cuenca, Ecuador
2
Universitat Politècnica de Valencia (UPV), Camí de Vera, s/n, 46022, Valencia, Spain
Abstract
The Open Innovation business paradigm promises relevant competitive advantages and at the
same time, it presents important challenges at strategic level. Particularly, issues like
coworking, incorporation of external innovation, creation and value capturing, and evolution
of the entire business model, must be incorporated into early modeling stages, in terms of
actors, goals, resources, and tasks. In this context, iStar constitutes a suitable and well-known
goal-oriented modeling tool, that can be applicable to any problem domain; nevertheless, in
the case of Open Innovation, there is lack of support to manage the issues previously
mentioned. In response, the present work proposes an iStar extension that allows the modeling
process in a consistent, clear and intuitive way.
Keywords 1
iStar extension, Open Innovation, Goal-Oriented Modeling.
1. Introduction
Nowadays, independently of its nature or size, organizations are operating in a highly dynamic and
competitive environment characterized by flexibilization of geographical barriers, permeability of
boundaries among enterprises, global changes guided by knowledge and technological development,
among others. In this context, the innovation constitutes an essential component that all business models
must have not only as a factor of differentiation and survival. This innovation can originate from internal
and/or external sources, and demands both strategic internal changes and the opening to generate
synergies with its environment. In this context, Open Innovation (OI) arises as a business paradigm,
based on inbound and outbound flows of value and knowledge that allows organizations to align with
its partners, customers, collaborators, competitors, and other stakeholders [1].
No matter the business paradigm applied, its subjacent goal model has the mission of facilitate the
communication of the business model, establishing a common vocabulary among its different areas,
and creating a common understanding of the organizations. Hence, the adequate selection and
application of a goal modeling tool is critical.
iStar constitutes a well-known goal modeling tool that brings a set of elements capable to represent
the intentionality of business, and in order to identify which elements support the modeling of intrinsic
characteristics of OI, we perform a bibliographic review. The work of [2] analyses a broad research
works about iStar extensions. For our objective, we review the work related to the following areas:
Enterprise, General Development, and Other NFR extensions. In the case of Enterprise, the authors of
[3] develop the concept of Added Value as a “principle result”, that is the result of following a specific
guideline about achieving goals efficiently; and Future State as a situation that would be attainable (if
a principle is applicable) and so contributed positively to high-level goals. The work of [4] introduces
the elements of Completition, Duration, Fulfillment Condition, and Precedence; all of them to develop
an extended notation for tasks that gives timeline information. In the case of General Development, [5]
deal with Collaborative Systems elements as Awareness Resource, Awareness Soft-Goal;
Collaboration, Communication, Coordinator, Individual, and Priority Tasks; and Participation and
iStar’22: The 15th International i* Workshop, October 17th, 2022, Hyderabad, India
EMAIL: lmendez@uazuay.edu.ec (L. Méndez-Tapia); jpcarvallo@uazuay.edu.ec (J. P. Carvallo)
ORCID: 0000-0002-4087-5931 (L. Méndez-Tapia); 0000-0001-6678-4774 (J. P. Carvallo)
©️ 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)
Responsibility Links. Finally, in other NFR extensions, the work of [6] proposes a method to combine
a qualitative assessment of goal models to quantitative assessment based on time cost; hence, this work
manages entities as Time Indicator to tasks, and Satisfaction Value with which a task is completed.
All works reviewed support the modeling of different enterprise areas, but not the specific ones of
OI business models presented in [7]. We group these issues into three areas: a) Intentionality; b)
Creation and Capture of Value; and c) Knowledge generated from Coworking. Each of these areas
present diverse restrictions when we use only standard characteristics of iStar to model them. These
restrictions are resumed as follows:
a. To model intentionality: OI requires to model occasional cooperation between the organization
and external actors. Due that iStar does not manage occasional relationships, the solution might
be to elaborate one model without the cooperation, and another model with the cooperation and
its implications. However, the elaboration and maintaining of two (or more) models for each
issue previously described, reduces the modeling agility and can be source of confusion,
misunderstanding and errors.
b. To model value management: OI requires differentiate goals involved in value creation (like
“To increase product availability in retailers”) from goals involved in value capture (like “to
obtain additional revenue due optimization of retailers agreements”). iStar does not allow to
differentiate this nature in goals and qualities.
c. To model the knowledge originated in coworking activities: When iStar models the goals of
knowledge management, it does not differentiate whether this knowledge comes from external
actors, or is generated within the organization. This differentiation is important because allows
to quantify the level of dependence on external actors.
In response to the difficulties previously explained, we identify the need to propose a specific iStar
extension that brings: independence of business nature, feasibility and clarity to model IO issues; and
ease of integration with other iStar extensions involved in enterprise modeling.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Section 2 presents the fundamental concepts and
definitions that support proposal; Section 3 describes the proposal itself; finally, Section 4 shows the
conclusions.
2. Fundamental concepts and definitions
The present research arises from the convergence of several concepts that we briefly introduce
below. The first one is the transdisciplinarity, referred in [8] as the universalization of concepts and
categories, and applied to develop research beyond boundaries of diverse knowledge areas. The second
one is the relationship between enterprise management and biological concepts that is not recent: in [9],
the author refers to the enterprise as a “Living Organization”, which has particular characteristics like
identity, identifiable boundaries, autopoiesis (ability of a living organism to reproduce and maintain
itself); and capabilities to perceive the environment, to design its own strategy, among others. The third
one, as appears in [10] also treats enterprises in light of biological concepts: synergism, DNA and genes,
and considers the companies as a “cells of market economy”.
Following this trend and based on our experience on OI modeling and adoption, we propose a set of
extensions to iStar. We start with the biological definition of Adaptation given by [11]: “Evolutionary
adaptation, or simply adaptation, is the adjustment of organisms to their environment in order to
improve their chances of survival in that environment. In this reference we also found two types of
adjustment: biological (related to alterations in body functions with permanent character) and
behavioral (related to changes in actions that organisms exhibit in response to temporary environmental
factors).
Creating a parallelism for our work, the adjustments denotes a set of changes to improve the business
efficiency and/or effectiveness, while trying to reach the organizational mission. If the business benefit
resultant of these adjustments is considered constant over time, we say that there is a (permanent)
adaptation, usually involving a loss of skills, capacities, resources, structures or processes that have
ceased to be used. On the other hand, if the business benefit has a limited lifetime beyond which it only
represents costs to the organization, we say that there is a (temporal) transformation; in this does not
exist loss, and there is a mechanism to return to previous state (of course, this mechanism has a specific
cost).
A business is a system in permanent change because both internal factors like process improvement,
technologies adoption, human talent rotation, customer offer renewal; and external factors like market
competition, threat of substitution, threat of new entry, buyer power, supplier power, government
regulation [12]. Nevertheless, not all of these changes should be considered an adaptation. In fact, most
of the changes are transformations: a short or medium-term actions that reflect the daily operation.
The Table 1 shows the differences and similarities between adaptations and transformations.
Table 1 Characteristics of Business Adjustments
Characteristic Description
Start All adjustment has a start event, which arises by identifying some external product / service
/ information that contributes to satisfy a need or to create an opportunity.
Duration Period in which the adjustment represents a business benefit in terms of incomings,
process improvement, knowledge increment, customer benefits, or similar. Only
transformation has a specific duration, which is measured in periods (time units, months,
fiscal years, trimesters, semesters, calendar years)
End If the adjustment has an end point, it is a transformation, and can and return to the
previous state when: a) the business benefit disappears; b) the external threat disappears;
or c) the cost or risk of maintain the transformation is greater than its benefits.
If the adjustment has not an end point. It is a business adaptation, and it is considered
permanent.
Wide scope The adaptation involves some business areas considered critical for the business survival,
and constitutes a critical success factor.
On the other hand, the transformation generally belongs to a specific business area, and
has a low impact.
The reasoning technique applied to construct the proposal is the analogy of organizational behavior
with the behavior of living organisms. This business analysis approach is called Living Organizations.
The decision making of go back an adaptation or transform an adaptation in a transformation, was
conducted applying Conditional Probability, environmental analysis (extended PESTLE and Porter’s
Five Forces).
The organization requires a mechanism to decide if an adjustment has an endpoint (in other words,
a mechanism to decide if the organizational changes are sustainable over time). We suggest that a
quantitative metric that works around the point of no return might be considered as this mechanism.
The metric works with conditional probability:
𝑃(𝐴 ∩ 𝐵) (1)
𝐵𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑓𝑖𝑡𝑃𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦 =
𝑃(𝐵)
Where A is the event of TotalBenefitAdaptation-TotalCostAdaptation is positive
B is the event of Trigger is maintained
Trigger is the external thread or opportunity that origins the adaptation
The acceptation range to continue the adaptation depends on the environment
variability.
3. Proposal description
In this section, we describe our proposal using the PRISE process [13]. We selected PRISE because
it focuses on critical quality aspects like completeness, consistency and conflicts reduction.
Additionally, it provides a large set of previously modeled iStar extensions which have been validated
by experts.
3.1. Application of Process to support iStar Extensions (PRISE)
The main process of PRISE is composed by an initial sub-process, three intermediate sub-process
which are developed in parallel with a monitoring task, and finally a closing task. An excerpt of this
application is shown in Table 2. Due to the fact that our proposal is a new initiative to bring support to
OI, we adopt an iterative approach to conduct the PRISE process. In the first iteration, we work with
identification, definition, supporting and conceptualizing issues, in order to build a version of iStar OI
extension that can be reviewed by external visions: OI experts and iStar experts.
Table 2 PRISE application (Excerpt)
Sub-Process Application
1 Extension Specification:
Analyses the need There are three areas of OI to which iStar does not provide support to: a)
for extension. Intentionality; b) Creation and Capture of Value; and c) Knowledge generated from
Coworking. All of them are referred to OI application area.
Task 1.1 Set of references identified:
Review the Open Business Models [7], Open Innovation Maturity Model oriented to Open
domain/application Source Software Adoption [13].
area
Task 1.2 List of concepts in Intentionality:
Identify the concepts Adaptation goals and Transformation goals.
to be introduced by List of concepts in Creation and capture of business value:
the extension Creation goals and Capture goals.
List of concepts in Knowledge generated from Coworking:
Link types to build relationships among goals and qualities:
Absorption Links and Generation Links.
Purpose of the Brings: application independent of business nature, feasibility and clarity to model
extension IO issues; and ease of integration with other iStar extensions involved in enterprise
modeling.
Test 2 to Test 5 Open Innovation issues to be modeled are described in [7]; the goal model for each
OI model is referred in [13].
The proposal not uses the default iStar. Proposal does not use the default iStar
notation, reasons are provided in Introduction Section.
Our proposal should be reviewed by other experts in domain/application area of OI
in order to obtain additional feedback.
Sub-Process 2
Describe concepts of iStar Extension
Task 2.1 List of constructs with its own graphical representation:
Search and selection
of constructs to be Transformation : Adaptation :
reused
Creation: Capture:
Absorption : Generation :
Task 2.2 List of concepts to be introduced [with concepts description]:
Describe extension’s List of concepts in Intentionality:
concepts Adaptation goals: they represent a permanent modification of process, politics,
adaptation made permanent).
Transformation goals: they allow the organization to establish a non-permanent
adjustment in order to obtain a specific business benefit.
List of concepts in Creation and capture of business value:
The creation goals, which can support the achieving both creation goals of higher
level, or capture goals.
The capture goals, which can support the achieving of creation goals only to model
a new business innovation.
List of concepts in Knowledge generated from Coworking:
Link types to build relationships among goals and qualities:
Absorption: represents the incorporation of external knowledge that is new for the
organization
Generation: represents the internal creation of knowledge, with or without an
external knowledge component.
Sub-Process 3
Develop iStar Extension
Task 3.1 Adaptation, Transformation, Creation, and Capture goals are constructs introduced
Define metamodel on iStar as specialization of goal.
for extension Absorption and Generation are constructs introduced on iStar as specialization of
neededby link and contribution link, respectively.
See Fig. 1
Task 3.2 There are not additional validation rules required by the extension.
Define validation
rules for extension
Task 3.3 The consideration that OI extension requires in Strategic Dependence (SD) diagram
Define concrete is indicated in 2.2 task, in relation to how associate the creation and capture goals.
syntax for extension During goal evaluation, the Absorption and Generation links has the same behavior
that contribution links.
The OI extension has no impact on SR diagram.
Table 3 shows the fulfillment of the guidelines provided by [12]
Table 3 Application for the iStar Community
Guideline Fulfillment
G1 — Preserve the language (iStar) original Our extension is conservative, which means that
syntax conserves all nodes and links of iStar syntax.
G2 — Carry out consistent, complete and without Our extension is proposed following a specific process;
conflicts extensions and follow a process/method it is not an ad-hoc creation.
to do them
G3 — Perform a literature review, consider the We perform a literature review.
participation of domain experts and iStar experts, The participation of OI domain experts and iStar
and model systems of application area before experts is planned as part of studies that are developed
extending in parallel way with the present research.
G4 — Describe a clear definition of the extension All concepts are described in the present research.
concepts
G5 — Propose concrete and abstract syntax of Abstract and concrete syntaxes are provided with our
the extension proposal
G6 — Check consistency between abstract and The correspondence between abstract syntax
concrete syntaxes (metamodel) and concrete syntax (in our case, the
graphical representation proposed) was verified.
G7 — Relate concepts introduced by the The concepts introduced by our proposal were related
extensions with the iStar concepts to the iStar concepts through specialization.
G8 — Define extensions with a smallest possible Our proposal has a minimized number of modifications
number of modifications and new in order to maintain the iStar scalability.
representations in order not to complicate the
use of the modelling language (iStar)
G9 — Propose careful and simple graphical The graphical representation proposed is simple and
representations, able to be drawn on paper easy to draw, as well as iStar.
without a tool
Fig. 1Integration of iStar extension components
In the Fig. 2 we present an example of iStar extension applied to an organization that adopts one
form of OI: The Open Source Software (OSS). This example shows the environment constituted by
three actors: the adopter organization (OSS Adopter), the OSS Developers Community (OSS-DC), and
the consulting firm which offers training courses in OSS.
Fig. 2 Example of OI iStar extension application
4. Glossary
Term Description
Adaptation From Latin adaptō, denotes the change(s) that an entity must develop at level of
structure, behavior and/or functionality, to guarantee its survival and health relationships
with this environment.
Coworking Defines a collaborative work in which, the activities are shared by people from different
roles and disciplines, with the aim of generating synergies and creating and strengthening
knowledge networks
Critical Success Business element considered vital to achieve the organizational mission. its non-
Factor compliance prevents success; however, its compliance does not guarantee success.
Environment The business environment is dynamic, and is the resultant of interrelation forces at micro
variability level [14] (Porter’s five forces: competition, threat of substitution, threat of new entry,
buyer power, supplier power) or macro level [15] (political, economic, socio-cultural,
technological, legal, ecological, geographic factor analysis)
Point of no Originated in air navigation, denotes the point in which, to continuate the process or
return course of action is the only way possible, because the high consumption of
resources/efforts makes its current amount insufficient to return the point of origin.
Term Description
Transformation Permanent business change originated in an adaptation (progressively) or in a change of
evolutive stage (disruptively).
Value capture Involves a set of related activities that allow retain for the organization, a part of the
value that was created for the customer.
Value creation Involves a set of related activities that brings value to the product / service / information
that the organization offers to the customer.
5. Conclusions
This work focuses on the main aspects of Open Innovation business paradigm, and search an optimal
way to be modeled through iStar language. In conclusion, we proposed a set of entities and relationships
that support the fundaments of Open Innovation: Intentionality; Creation and Capture of Business
Value; and Knowledge generated from Coworking. All of them are structured around the Adaptation
concept, which in analogy with the biologic adaptation, brings the perspective to model the business
open up.
6. References
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