The role of temporal Frugal Engineering

coordination in virtual (EP60044)

teams for the fuzzy Assignment 2
front-end of innovation. Group D
 Group D
● Banoth Rajashekar
(19BT30008)
● Pritam Sarkar
(18PH20017)
● Guguloth Jithender
(19GG20011)
 Introduction
The fuzzy front-end of innovation: The early phase of the innovation
process is also known as the fuzzy front-end (FFE) because of it's highly
labyrinthine, unstructured and uncertain nature. It is the most vital phase
of the innovation process to manage.
Virtual teams: Virtual teams (VTs) are different from the traditional,
physically collected teams. In virtual teams the members are from
geographically dispersed locations, they are from different parent
organizations and technology-dependent.
Our aim is to know: how does the temporary character of VTs influence
the coordination of FFE activities?
Temporary Virtual teams: Temporary VTs appear to have a typically short and
predefined lifespan. Such short VT lifecycle is not without challenges;
• It may have an adverse effects on the quality of relationships and
interactions among team members, especially on the development of trust
and team cohesion.
• It may have effect on teams’ ability to innovate and meet their goals, by
challenging team climate and enhancing outcome uncertainty.
Studying the impact of temporary VTs on the FFE is essential for two reasons:
1. The highly unstructured and complex nature of FFE activities, combined with
the temporary and virtual nature of contemporary innovation teams, could
significantly influence the overall development cost and project success.
2. The members of temporary VTs may not have the opportunity to develop
strong interpersonal relationships or trust, which may have an impact on their
level of creativity.
Advantages of virtual teams: VTs have the potential to access geographically
dispersed talent, thus connecting members with expertise which is not available
locally. Members’ dispersion across different time zones and the opportunity to
work ’following the sun’s may enhance speed and quality that can aid innovation.
Challenges of temporary VTs:
1. The idea generation phase might be compromised, due to limited
brainstorming and higher communication barriers between members from
multiple functions with diverse backgrounds.
2. Decision making uncertainty could be escalated, due to increased pressure
and role conflict experienced from FFE participants in meeting project
deadlines instigated by the temporary character of VTs.
3. Understanding other participants’ perspective becomes harder due to limited
face-to-face (F2F) interaction, which might discourage the advancement of
radical ideas.
Key FFE activities: The key FFE activities includes:
• Preliminary market assessment
• Opportunity identification
• Idea generation, refinement, screening, evaluation,
exchange
• Idea selection and concept testing
• Product strategy formulation
• Product definition
• Project planning
etc.
Through a qualitative, comparative case study approach to
will try to find how temporal coordination unfolds in the FFE
phase of innovation within VTs. The approach was longitudinal,
allowing us to study the teams from start to end.

Two cases from two Industry-Academia collaboration projects

where selected as two extreme examples of temporary VTs:
1. With lifespan of only 24 h
2. With lifespan of five months.
 Table 1: Similarities and differences between two cases
case-1 (24-h) case-2 (5-months)

global (2 european countries) global (4 european countries)

geographical . 3 different nationalities . 4 different nationalities
diversity . 3 different native languages . 4 different native languages
. educational / professional . educational /professional
Similarities diversity diversity

relation to inter-organizational(2 inter-organizational(4

organization institutions) institutions)

level of temporary( project-based)

community

team size <10 members

type of project industry-academia collaboration projects

type of task project-based: product design

Differences time-span 24-h 5-months

 Table 2: Data collection
case-1 case-2

Observations • 24 h of Country A subgroup activity • 1 video-conference session (2 h) in Phase

(video- or • 13 video-conference/Skype sessions (5 • 1 video-conference session (2 h) in Phase
logbook-recorded h) • 1 week (40 h) of F2F work in Phase 4
)

Interviews • Informal chats prior to, and during, the • Informal chats with team coach throughout
(individual and project the project
focus groups) • 5 individual interviews after the project • 2 members interviewed in focus groups in
• 5 informal chats before the project Phase 1
• 4 individual interviews in Phases 2 and 3
• 6 members interviewed in a focus group in
Phase 4 in Country C

Other data • Project documentation • Project documentation

• Country A subgroup design outputs (on
flipchart, electronically)
• Photographs of team working together
and design outputs
• Communication outputs (e.g. emails)
• Reviews and evaluation forms at each phase
• Design outputs (electronically)
• Photographs of team working together (on
VCS and F2F) and design outputs
 Findings
Case 1: This 24-h VT adopted an approach that included frequency of
e-meetings, preference for synchronous technologies and tight time frames. The
artificial character of video-conferencing system (VCS) inhibited the VT's
quality of communication, for example by influencing the participants’
spontaneity. Some of the known VT challenges (e.g. linguistic differences,
geographical dispersion) where found to influence the VT’s coordination and
technology choice.
Case 2: In this case also the team faced similar challenges to the previous team
(e.g.artificial character of VCS, linguistic differences), yet developed a
different approach to coordinating the FFE activities, which was looser, allowing
dispersed members to engage in different, complementary aspects of different
FFE tasks.
 Table 3: Cross-case analysis
Case-1
Temp • Participants available to work on the project
orary for its whole 24-h lifespan.
chara • Participants avoided working on other tasks or
cter projects and devoted themselves fully to the
project at hand.
Coord • Completely flexible: no prescribed structure of
inatio the project or formally scheduled meetings;
n participants were free to choose e.g. how to
(tight coordinate their activities, how often to use the
vs. VCS, and which technology to use.
loose) • Most of the work was undertaken in the two
geographically dispersed subgroups. They
worked separately but got together frequently on
the VCS in order to share ideas, discuss, and
make important decisions. This type of
coordination helped to reduce uncertainty
characterizing the FFE.
Case-2
• Participants did not work on the project full-time; they
juggled numerous commitments outside the project.
• Temporal 'luxury' of five months allowed for a flexible
use of technologies, but did not soften any of the known
VT discontinuities (e.g. temporal, organizational, and
cultural).
• In two forms (formally and informally): First, there were
the sponsor-prescribed phases which the teams used to
coordinate their activities, including mandatory, formally
scheduled VCS meetings. Second, participants were
encouraged to arrange separate, informal initiatives (e.g.
on Skype or asynchronously between two or more
members) as they saw fit.
• Improved collaboration overall, supplementing formal
meetings and enabling a better distribution of the FFE
activities and allowing dispersed members to work
collaboratively together on complementary aspects of the
FFE tasks at hand.
 Conclusion
Our findings relates to the notions of temporal symmetry and temporal
complementary within the VT context.
In Case 1, we saw VT members engage in the same FEE activity
simultaneously when two subgroups conducted their brainstorming sessions at
same time and then converged to share their ideas. The tight coordination
practices lead to a coordinated team effort.
In Case 2, however, wherein looser temporal coordination was evident, we
witnessed both approaches: temporal symmetry and temporal
complimentary. Losse coordination practices allow practitioners to work
collaboratively together by concentrating on complementary aspects of the
different FFE tasks at hand.
 References
Our main reference is the article:
“The role of temporal coordination for fuzzy front-end of innovation in virtual
teams” by Petros Chamakiotis, Achilles Boukis, Niki Panteli, Thanos
Papadopoulos. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2019.04.015
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