In the last few years the Internet of things has gained increased attention from authors as well as companies due to its innovation potential. The rising interest in the Internet of Things has also affected the logistics, which currently suffers from the effects of the globalization and the ever-increasing competitive pressure. Thus, there are efforts to discover how the logistics can profit from the use of IoT concepts, ideas and technologies to help it overcome its challenges. This research study focuses on the identification of these efforts and the corresponding research for logistics processes. For that purpose the researcher explored current literature referring to this topic. The final outcome of this paper is a structured overview of the identified IoT use-cases, their corresponding technologies and devices and finally their affected stakeholders. Whether the expectations regarding the IoT implementation in logistics processes are met, how companies can profit from these use-cases and which problems potentially arise by using IoT devices and technologies in logistics are answered at the end of this paper.
The erosion of the closed innovation paradigm in conjunction with increasing competitive pressure has boosted the interest of both researchers and organizations in open innovation. Despite such rising interest, several companies remain reluctant to open their organizational boundaries to practice open innovation. Among the many reasons for such reservation are the pertinent complexity of transitioning toward open innovation and a lack of understanding of the procedures required for such endeavors. Hence, this thesis sets out to investigate how organizations can open their boundaries to successfully transition from closed to open innovation by analyzing the current literature on open innovation. In doing so, the transitional procedures are structured and classified into a model comprising three phases, namely unfreezing, moving, and institutionalizing of changes. Procedures of the unfreezing phase lay the foundation for a successful transition to open innovation, while procedures of the moving phase depict how the change occurs. Finally, procedures of the institutionalizing phase contribute to the sustainability of the transition by employing governance mechanisms and performance measures. Additionally, the individual procedures are characterized along with their corresponding barriers and critical success factors. As a result of this structured depiction of the transition process, a guideline is derived. This guideline includes the commonly employed actions of successful practitioners of open innovation, which may serve as a baseline for interested parties of the paradigm. With the derivation of the guideline and concise depiction of the individual transitional phases, this thesis consequently reduces the overall complexity and increases the comprehensibility of the transition and its implications for organizations.
