New ways of innovation: an application of the cyclic innovation model to the mobile telecom industry

New developments in the mobile telecom industry, such as growing transmission bandwidth and sector-crossing business alliances, change the way in which mobile telco’s are innovating. Traditional innovation models, such as the single-company linear model (‘pipeline model’), do no longer describe how innovation occurs today. An interesting alternative is the boundary-crossing Cyclic Innovation Model (CIM). It considers innovation processes as coupled ‘cycles of change’, connecting science with business, and technology with markets, in a cyclic manner. For illustration purposes, CIM has been applied to ‘Lucio’. Lucio is a mobile data product-service combination introduced into the Dutch market by KPN Mobile. The analysis shows that Lucio is a multi-sector, class-2 innovation. It also shows that CIM provides insight into the complex network of companies involved, making clear how each company – technically and non-technically – contributes functionality that together constitutes the innovation. CIM may be considered a promising addition to the growing family of fourth-generation innovation models.