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Journal of
Volume 4 Issue 2 November 2018 Creating Value

Aims and Scope
The Journal of Creating Value is a refereed, professional journal focused on creating

value synergistically for a broad set of societal stakeholders, including: customers,
employees, suppliers, communities, governments, media, civil society organizations,
etc. using, for example multi-capital and other perspectives. The audience for the
journal includes academia, researchers, professionals, community and government
agencies, business and industry.
The journal welcomes submissions that cover either or both the science and the
art of Customer Value Creation. The science encompasses issues of logic, and
associated rational factors, data and cases. The art covers emotional and social
factors, including the psychological and human factors necessary to harness and
align the passion of everyone in an enterprise.
The Journal of Creating Value exists to provide a focus for information and debate
about this new dynamic, which includes the imperative to shift from ‘Command
and Control’ to ‘Connect and Inspire’ value-led management practices.
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Journal of
Creating Value
Editorial Board
Gautam Mahajan, Customer Value Foundation, India (Founder Editor)
Moshe Davidow, Carmel Academic Center, Haifa, Israel (Editor)
Andreas Hinterhuber, Hinterhuber and Partners, Austria (Associate Editor)
Sertan Kabadayi, Fordham University, USA (Associate Editor)
Todd Snelgrove, The Experts In Value, Canada (Associate Editor)
Peter Stokes, Leicester Castle Business School, De Montfort University, UK (Associate Editor)
Robin Banerjee, Caprihans India Ltd, India
Scott M. Broetzmann, Customer Care Measurement & Consulting LLC, USA
Raymond Fisk, Texas State University, USA
Christian Grönroos, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland.
Denis Harrington, Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland
Olaf Hermans, SiR-Intel, USA
Jay Kandampully, Ohio State University, USA
Timothy Keiningham, St John’s University, USA
Ray Kordupleski, Customer Value Management, and University of Montana, USA
V. Kumar, J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, USA
Werner Kunz, University of Massachusetts, USA
Lucio Lescano Duncan, CAME, Peru
Michael Lowenstein, Beyond Philosophy, USA
Peter Maas, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
Diane M. Magers, AT&T’s Office of the Customer, USA
Cristina Mele, University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy
Luiz Moutinho, University of Suffolk, UK
Irene Ng, University of Warwick, and HAT Foundation, UK
A Parasuraman, University of Miami, USA
David Pinder, Value Genie, UK
Jaideep Prabhu, Cambridge University, UK
Ajit Rao, Nielsen, Dubai
Jayant Shah, Academy of Indian Marketing, India
James Spohrer, IBM, USA
Bob Thompson, CustomerThink Corporation, USA
Wolfgang Ulaga, Center for Services Leadership, Arizona State University, USA
Stephen Vargo, University of Hawai’i, USA
Advisory Board
Gautam Mahajan, Customer Value Foundation, India (Founder Editor)
Nestor Farias Bouvier, Sapin S.A. Business Consultants – M&A, Argentina
Jim Carras, Customer Value Creation International, USA
Bala Chakravarthy, IMD, Switzerland
Moshe Davidow, Carmel Academic Center, Israel
Tanya Dubash, Godrej Industries, India
David Frigstad, Frost & Sullivan, USA
Winnifred Knight, TheMarketingSite.com and CUBE [ON THE SQUARE], South Africa
Youji Kohda, Graduate School of Knowledge Science, Japan Advanced Institute of Science
and Technology, Japan
A. Mahendran, Mahendran Holdings Pvt. Ltd, India
Anuradha Das Mathur, 9.9 Mediaworx Pvt. Ltd., India
R. Mukundan, Tata Chemicals, India
Yuriko Sawatani, Waseda University, Japan
Jagdish Sheth, Emory University, USA
D. Shivakumar, Aditya Birla Group, India
Bharat Wakhlu, Consultant, India
Hans Udo Wenzel, Aromata Group srl, Italy
Jochen Wirtz, NUS Business School, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Journal of
Volume 4 Issue 2 November 2018 Creating Value
Special Issue: Role of Technology and AI on Value Creation

Guest Editors: Cristina Mele with Tiziana Russo Spena and Silvia Peschiera
Contents
Editorial 181
Introduction to the Special Issue
Value Creation and Cognitive Technologies: Opportunities and Challenges

Cristina Mele with Tiziana Russo Spena and Silvia Peschiera 182
Commentaries
Actors, Actor Engagement and Value Creation 196

Suvi Nenonen and Kaj Storbacka
Commentary on ‘Value Creation and Cognitive Technologies:

Opportunities and Challenges’ 199
Jim Spohrer
Situating Humans, Technology and Materiality in Value Cocreation 202

Stephen L.Vargo
Mimicking Firms: Future of Work and Theory of the Firm in a Digital Age 205
Irene Ng
Articles
A Systematic Review of Artificial Intelligence and Robots in Value

Co-creation: Current Status and Future Research Avenues
Valtteri Kaartemo and Anu Helkkula 211
Value Transformation in the ‘Let’s Play’ Gaming Subculture
Jason Boomer, Tracy Harwood and Tony Garry 229
Creating Value through Social Media: Fresh Evidence from

Cultural Organizations
Cristina Caterina Amitrano, Roberta Gargiulo and Francesco Bifulco 243
Co-creating Value in People’s Interactions with Cognitive Assistants:

A Service-System View
Md Abul Kalam Siddike and Youji Kohda 255
Solving a Social Issue Using Information and Communication Technology

Yoshitoshi Kurose,Yuuko Akiyama and Ifte Hasan 273
News 285
List of Reviewers 286
Visit http://journals.sagepub.com/home/jcv
Free access to tables of contents and abstracts.
Editorial Journal of Creating Value
4(2) 181
© 2018 SAGE
SAGE Publications
sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2394964318804709
http://journals.sagepub.com/home/jcv
Welcome to the special issue on the Role of Technology and AI on Value Creation/
Destruction. This issue (JCV 4-2) has both practitioner and academic articles. We
are grateful to Cristina Mele, the guest editor, for her special effort for this issue.
The next regular issue will be in May 2019 (JCV 5-1).
The First Global Conference on Creating Value was held in May 23–24,
2018, at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK. Our journal was a sponsor of
the conference. This conference was a resounding success, leading to the forma-
tion of the Creating Value Alliance, creatingvalue.co. The Second Global con-
ference on Creating Value will be held at New York’s Fordham University
Gabelli School of Business, on May 14–15, 2019. Prof. Sertan Kabadayi is the
co-chair along with Gautam Mahajan.
A JCV Board meeting was held on May 23, 2018, at Leicester, UK, at De
Montfort University. Present were Moshe Davidow, Israel; Christian Gronroos,
Finland; Youji Kohda, Japan; Lucio Lescano, Peru; Irene Ng, UK; David Pinder,
UK; Jaideep Prabhu, UK; Peter Stokes, UK; Steve Vargo, USA; and Gautam
Mahajan, India. Special invitees were Cristina Mele, Italy; Marek Jablonski,
Poland; and Martijn Rademakers, The Netherlands.
The journal inducted Dr Cristina Mele of University of Naples ‘Federico II’,
Italy; Dr Jaideep Prabhu of Cambridge University, UK; and Dr Denis Harrington
of Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland, into the Editorial Board.
The Board is announcing a special issue for November 2019 (JCV 5-2) on
Organisational Agility & Value Creation. Martijn Rademakers and Peter Stokes
are the guest editors.
The Board thanks all of you for your continued support and asks you to join
the Creating Value Alliance (creatingvalue.co), for both practitioners and
academics.
Gautam Mahajan
Founder Editor
Introduction to the Special Issue
Value Creation and Journal of Creating Value

4(2) 182–195
Cognitive Technologies: © 2018 SAGE
SAGE Publications
Opportunities and sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2394964318809152
Challenges http://journals.sagepub.com/home/jcv
By far the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude

too early that they understand it. … Artificial Intelligence is not settled
science; it belongs to the frontier, not to the textbook. (Yudkowsky, 2008)
Smart technologies are hot topics in newspapers, business magazines and compa-
nies’ reports. The mass media is infatuated with conversations about the future of
technologies and what it could mean for humanity. The spread of smart objects has
led to a huge increase in the number of connectable devices: reaching 20 billion in
2018, with a forecast of 1 trillion by 2020 (Gartner, 2018). The growing number of
connected smart appliances are framed in the phenomenon of the ‘internet of things’
(IoT; Ashton, 2009; Schweer & Sahl, 2017), enabling them to be connected any-
time, anyplace, with anything, ideally using any path/network and any service
(Vermesan & Friess, 2013).
Machine-to-machine (M2M) interactions represent only one example of new
applications and services. The internet of everything has been recently emerg-
ing as a new approach bringing together people, processes, data and things to
make networked connections more relevant and valuable (Cisco, 2014). In addi-
tion, cognitive computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning
promise to revolutionize actors’ practice by overcoming time/space and knowl-
edge constraints.
There are controversies about AI’s future impact on market actors (Young,
1999)—if/when human-level AI will be developed, and whether this is some-
thing we should welcome or fear (Tyler, 2006). According to some techno-
phobes and techno-pessimists, the future of technology will be dystopian,
dominated by machines, by the singularity of Kurzweil (the escape of technol-
ogy); the Matrix movies are a good example of the dangers arising from artifi-
cial reality. For others, technophiles and techno-enthusiasts, the future will be
full of opportunities and new utopias.
A catastrophic scenario with robot-kind overcoming humankind wins out
over taking a more proactive stance. This Orwellian view conflicts with what
has been happening in business contexts. In the last few years, there has been
increasing interest among practitioners in the development of applications and
systems based on cognitive computing and AI, due to the promise to offer
breakthrough innovation (Cook, Augusto, & Jakkula, 2009). Every industry is
advocated to get potential benefits from adopting cognitive computing and
exploiting big data (Abbasi, Sarker, & Chiang, 2016; Rouse & Spohrer, 2018).
AI has progressed quite quickly: from IBM Watson and Google DeepMind to
Introduction to the Special Issue 183
self-driving cars, social robots and others. It seems to be creating unprecedented

opportunities for business and society, due to the value of the increased con-
nectedness and smartness (Bradley, Loucks, Noronha, Macaulay, & Buckalew,
2013; Spohrer, 2016).
Academia has been lagging behind in examining the value creation arising
from new smart technologies. Most of the growing literature on smart digital
technologies addresses technical issues (Vermesan & Fries, 2013); business
scholars have only just begun to participate in the analyses (Ng and Wakenshaw,
2017; Huang & Rust, 2018). A few works have addressed how the confluence of
big data, mobile solutions, cloud computing, cognitive computing and machine-
learning technologies needs to attract more attention because it offers new
opportunities to integrate resources and enable value creation and innovation
(Demirkan et al., 2015; Ng & Wakenshaw, 2017; Rouse & Spohrer, 2018).
However, it is not only the positive aspects that are under investigation as the
limits or dark side of the phenomenon also emerge. Cai, Eidam, Saunders, and
Steffen (2018) have recently addressed the role of new technology-enabled ser-
vice interactions among multiple actors in strengthening or weakening well-
being. What can be an advantage for some beneficiaries could be a threat to
other actors?
In such emerging complexity, there is thus a need to evaluate potential ser-
vice provisions arising from smart technologies and how they affect actors posi-
tively and negatively in their value-creating processes. This special issue is the
first attempt in that direction. The editorial addresses some preliminary thoughts
on how AI and cognitive technologies could affect value co-creation processes
and their key features.
Value Co-creation: Negative and Positive Sides

In the marketing and service literature, most scholars have focused on resource
integration and value co-creation in a positive view (Kleinaltenkamp et al., 2012;
Lusch & Vargo, 2014; Peters, 2016), but a few scholars have also investigated con-
straints that may inhibit resource integration or value co-creation (Echeverri &
Skålén, 2011). Plè and Chumpitaz Cáceres (2010) distinguish value co-creation
from its opposite—that is, value co-destruction; other studies speak about value
diminution (Vafeas, Hughes, & Hilton, 2016) or the concept of value no-creation
(Makkonen & Olkkonen, 2017).
It is expected that new smart technologies should have impacts on value
processes, also shaping the evolution of social arrangements and institutional
structures (Akaka, Vargo, & Wieland, 2017; Breidbach & Maglio, 2016).
However, the way in which cognitive technologies affect value creation, posi-
tively or negatively, is a challenging issue.
Smart technologies promise to create unprecedented opportunities for business
and society due to the value that the higher connectedness creates as ‘everything’
comes online (i.e., people–machine interactions; Cisco, 2014; Spohrer, 2016).
184 Journal of Creating Value 4(2)
Techno-optimists see them as a strong enabler of changing value-creation prac-

tices that emerge through the connections of the new variety of actors and increas-
ing resource integration (Van Doorn et al., 2017; Huang & Rust, 2018). Cognitive
computing and robotics technology allow the creation of new human–machine
interactions based on in-depth knowledge of human needs, preferences, habits
and emotions. Companies develop new value propositions concerning a new gen-
eration of virtual assistants, social robots and devices aiming at fostering data
interpretation, engaging in social interactions and enabling value co-creation.
On the other side, techno-pessimists address the problems and threats to
actors’ well-being and their quality of life. Problems of privacy, safety and
failures need to be faced. The main difficulty for researchers and practitioners
is that there is no common view on what is ethical, as technology is moving
faster than our ability to understand how it will affect value processes and
actors’ well-being. By acknowledging value as a phenomenologically
contextual and emerging phenomenon (Vargo & Lusch, 2016), the overall
value-creation process should be framed in a holistic trade-off between positive
and negative value in a service ecosystem perspective in which users and other
actors are embedded (Cai et al., 2018).
To figure out how cognitive technologies could contribute positively or
negatively to value processes, we should focus on how technologies could affect
key value factors, namely actors, resources and practices.
Are robots and cognitive devices new actors (Pakkala & Spohrer, forthcoming
2019)? Are they enablers of human actors’ new role? Are cognitive technologies
operand or operant resources? Do they shape summative or emergent resource-
integration processes? How can we figure out the new entanglement of cyber,
social and physical practices? What about the viability of service ecosystems
and society? How can we frame the emerging complexity?
New Actors and/or New Actors’ Roles

Understanding actors’ roles is crucial to clarifying value co-creation dynamics
(Kleinaltenkamp et al., 2012) and figuring out possible multiple roles ‘such as
facilitators, modifiers, or disruptors in the service ecosystem as part of their value
co-creation efforts’ (Tronvoll, 2017, p. 10). In such a context, it becomes crucial to
understand the role of cognitive technologies as agents.
Service robotics promise broader applications for augmented interactions
(Huang & Rust, 2017; van Dorn et al., 2017; Wirtz et al., 2018). They can perform
an increasing number of tasks; they are speed savvy and precise and can carry
out delicate tasks like threading needles or assembling highly sophisticated
electronic devices. However, it is not merely a matter of automation and
standardization of processes and offerings; robots offer an increasing opportunity
for service personalization. For example, the Henna Hotel in Nagasaki, Japan, is
the first hotel in the world to be fully equipped with humanoid robots and animals
(Singh et al., 2017). Other examples are the Bionic Bar of the new Royal
Caribbean cruise ship Quantum of the Seas, with robot bartenders.
Further developments include social robots that can express emotions, hold a
complex conversation with human beings, understand the moods of the person
with whom they are interacting and establish social relations. They perform
more socially engaging tasks (e.g., health promotion, consoling) and take the
roles of companions, collaborators, partners, pets or friends as well as assistants,
helpers, servants and butlers (Cai et al., 2018; Wirtz et al., 2018). By showing
empathy and emotion and enacting social bonds, they foster value co-creation
and actors’ well-being. An example of a social robot is Romeo, developed by
Softbank. Designed to assist older adults and those who are losing their
autonomy, this robot can learn about all its patient’s habits and also assist them
in emergency tasks.
In each of these examples, automated interactions can reliably support
customers’ activities and prompt their engagement. These interactions will not
wholly replace human relationships, but offer the advantage of combining both
different modes, human and non-human, in order to push forward the opportunities
for amazing experiences and value co-creation. In addition, smart technologies
will create more opportunities for human actors to move into more fulfilling and
productive roles.
However, there are not only positive benefits. Cai et al. (2018) have
highlighted that there are also undesirable consequences, ‘such as a loss of
privacy, stigma of disability, fear of even greater dependence, or reduced human
contact’ (p. 7). The destructive potential of new cognitive technologies lies in
preventing value co-creation practices or in worsening the well-being of some
actors. An example is Fabio, a humanoid robot employed in a supermarket in
Edinburgh to welcome customers and respond to their requests. Its performance
was not what was expected and, little by little, customers began to avoid it.
Customers and store owners said they felt uncomfortable and also a bit annoyed
by the robot. However, consistent with the human tendency to anthropomorphize—
to expect humanlike properties of that which is not human—some employees
felt sorry about the firing.
Another challenge relates to human–robot relationships (Huang & Rust, 2017;
Van Dorn et al., 2017; Wirtz et al., 2018). If robots are to enter human environments
as actors, they will need to learn to deal with humans. Social robots will have to
perceive minute social clues like facial expression or intonation, understand the
cultural and social context in which they are operating, and recognize the mental
states of people with whom they are interacting to fit their contacts to them, both
in the short term and as they develop long-standing relationships. However, this
will be difficult, as we have very few concrete models of human behaviour and
we underestimate its complexity.
There are several opportunities and challenges from analysing the role of AI as
it affects actors’ roles. How does AI affect the human agent? In which terms does
AI perform agency? Alternatively, does it have agential disposal? What is the
relationship between the human agent and the artificial agent? How will a robot
understand the cultural and social context in which it is operating? How can a
robot be taught to understand the complexities of human social dynamics?
New Resources and Enhanced/Worsening Resource

Integration
Resources become valuable when they are integrated and matched within value
co-creating processes by actor-to-actor relationships (Vargo & Lusch, 2011,
2015). Integrating and matching are consonance processes among a constellation
of resources and processes that converge (Gummesson & Mele, 2010; Nenonen &
Storbacka, 2010). Recently, Peters (2016) has addressed the dual nature of
resource integration, based on either emergent (i.e., heteropathic) or summative
(i.e., homoeopathic) relations. In the former, emergent properties are new, novel
(i.e., they have not occurred before) and unpredictable. In the latter, the summative
effects are predictable and reducible to their components.
Actors not only integrate and match resources and co-create value according
to their perceptions and interactions with other actors operating at the crossroads
of various societal and individual ambits that affect the actor but also are
affected by that actor through a recursive, reciprocal structuration process
(Giddens, 1984; Vargo & Lusch, 2016). In such a context, it becomes crucial to
understand the role of cognitive technologies as resources and how they
contribute to the integration process. Cognitive technology can be seen as an
operand resource or an operant resource. The first refers to something requiring
action to be performed on it (AI as a tool); the second concerns skills and
knowledge (AI as able to act and learn from specific abilities). Considering
some of the promising futures, AI has the potential to radically transform the
degree to which data and information are utilized and processed in ways that
people previously could not. Besides, simple everyday actions, such as
interacting with the IoT, that have become overly complex can be radically
simplified through natural language. An example is Aira, which has developed
a platform that uses extreme automation to enhance the everyday experiences of
blind and visually impaired people through the use of miniaturized sensors,
augmented-reality glasses, auditory perception and a smartphone connection.
Cognitive technology is indeed an enabler of resourceness. Thanks to its
liquification properties, an intelligent device can assume different possibilities
to become a ‘resource’. At the same time, AI enables greater access to knowledge
and skills. Its ability to learn and adapt continuously due to mistakes and input
from actors (with whom it interacts) and contexts (in which it is embedded)
amplifies the resourceness of cognitive technology.
Summative and emergent resource-integration processes are also prompted
by new devices and robots. The summative effects can be seen in the interac-
tions between the knowledge of the cognitive device and the knowledge and
actions of human actors. Instead, an emergent process could arise through the
capability of robots to learn aside from their codified initial knowledge. AI is
not a mathematically complex programme expressly designed towards a pre-

determined outcome, but rather an emergent behaviour of a very simple ruleset.
Deep learning—the AI capacity to learn in any problem domain—fosters emer-
gent processes.
When the focus is on the dark side of value co-creation, new questions arise,
including the different characterization of resource-integration processes and
the mechanisms of agency (Mele et al., 2018; Vargo & Lusch, 2017). What can
contribute positively to value co-creation for some actors could affect others
negatively. Take the example of the application of Watson’s platforms to an
intelligent stick (counting the steps needed to be done in a day) and a fork
(controlling healthy food) for elderly people. For a daughter, these devices
allow her father to make better choices, improving his health and wealth, thus
helping her take care of him. Instead for the father, the devices are frustrating
and an obstacle in his daily consolidated routine.
In addition, as robots become increasingly integrated into human lives, new
ethical conundrums will emerge. Human actors may become over-reliant on
robots, thus losing certain skills and capabilities, making them unable to take
the reins in the case of failure.
In brief, when considering the positive and negative issues related to resource
integration, many questions arise: How will cognitive technologies further
affect the liquification of resources? Should scholars and practitioners be able
to figure out the consequences for actors, institutions and social structures? In
negative value processes caused by AI, could we speak merely of a misuse of
resources by human actors? Or could it be a mismatching of applied resources
and actors’ values?
New Practices and the Constitutive Entanglement of

Cyber, Social and Physical
Service scholars describe how technologies function as a new layer of connected
intelligence that augments the actions of individuals and organizations, transforms
data and incorporates digitally empowered systems into human lives (Demirkan et
al., 2015). New devices or intelligent systems do not simply impose themselves on
users, they seem to improve actors’ self-efficacy in the decision-making process
(Joiner & Lusch, 2016) and lead to new co-creation practices (McColl-Kennedy,
Hogan, Witell, & Snyder, 2017) and actors’ well-being (Ostrom, 2015).
According to practice scholars, the social world is fundamentally composed
of practices (Gherardi, 2006; Schatzki, Knorr Cetina, & von Savigny, 2001).
Orlikowski (2007) and Orlikowski and Scott (2008) suggest the concept of
sociomaterial practices to signify the constitutive entanglement of the social and
the material in everyday organizational life. The position of constitutive
entanglement does not privilege either humans or technology in one-way
interactions; it links them through a form of mutual reciprocation and constitution,
as in two-way interactions with an equal play of material and social aspects.
Besides, the concept of a texture of practices reveals the ongoing interactions and
connections in actions within interwoven practices (Gherardi, 2012; Mele &
Russo Spena, 2017): networks of heterogeneous elements, kept together by
active processes of relationships, actions and performativity (Gherardi, 2006,
2009, 2015; Nicolini, Gherardi, & Yanow, 2003). New practices convey the
social waves of new technologies in terms of the new value co-creation
opportunities that they enable. In the case of driving practices, a smart car would
not only integrate into the IoT, but also learn about its owner and its environment.
It might adjust the internal settings—temperature, audio, seat position and so
on—automatically based on the driver, report and might even fix problems itself,
drive itself, and offer real-time advice about traffic and road conditions. In the
practice of personalized medications and care, the AI will find the best treatment
plans according to patient data and provide custom-tailored solutions for patients.
By using a patient’s medical history and genetic profile, a doctor can create a
custom medication or care plan thanks to intelligent systems.
While technologies are recognized as radically altering how work gets done
and who does it, the larger impact of AI will be more in integrating,
complementing and augmenting human capabilities, not replacing them. From
the perspective of social–material entanglement, humans and AI are seen as
actively enhancing each other’s complementary strengths: the leadership,
teamwork, creativity and social skills of the former, and the speed, scalability
and quantitative dynamic capabilities of the latter. To take full advantage of this
entanglement, social, economic and technological actors have to be analysed in
terms of their deeply interwoven and emergent practices for the purpose of
better understanding value co-creation. The separation between actors (i.e.,
providers, customers, machines, etc.) needs to be overcome, and a strict logic of
closeness has to be assumed, linking together a broader constellation of other
value co-creating actors (both human and non-human). As a result, new
co-creation practices will arise through the understanding of how humans can
most effectively augment machines, how machines can enhance what humans
do best, and how business processes can be redesigned to support partnerships
and interconnections. Most activities at the human–machine interface require
people to do new and different things (such as train a chatbot), to do things
differently (use that chatbot to provide better customer service) and to develop
new skills and capabilities (read and analyse a huge amount of data).
Scholars and practitioners should address how different actors become
embedded and engaged in actions, as well as how they use and integrate tools,
symbols and other resources in a way that lets new social, physical and cyber
practices emerge and change.
How can we figure out the connections in actions involving both human and
non-human elements, which are interwoven in a texture of interconnected
practices? What is the role of the context in which social and technological
connections occur among a group of actors? How will AI enable or hinder the
texture of practices? How can we address the multiple dimensions of practices:
social, cultural, cyber, physical and so on?
Framing Value Co-creation Complexity within a Post-

humanist Epistemology and Post-phenomenology
The framing of value co-creation processes requires a fresh conceptualization of
socially constructed reality as emerging—simultaneously with material elements,
practices and context—in webs of interconnections and entanglements between
heterogeneous entities, that is, humans and non-humans. Such a framing accounts
for a different mapping of concepts such as actor, practice, agency, performativity
and materiality, by providing a basis for a language and notions more suitable to
grasp the understanding of the new complexity of the digital era.
Speaking of complexity regarding the theme of co-creation implies, in fact,
the awareness of acting in changing contexts, in always different conditions and
in situations that often cannot be interpreted in a univocal way. This view
necessarily leads to a renewed reflection on the capacity for analysis and decision
as well as action and reaction by all the actors who, in different ways, participate
in value co-creation processes in different roles. The interpretive lens of complex
social systems leads to the conclusion that the study of the processes and
behaviours of economic actors, and in general of any actor involved in value
creation, cannot be separated from a change of perspective that moves from
subjects to relationships, from outcomes to processes, from the ‘singular’
dimension to the ‘plural’ dimension.
Cognitive technologies foster such complexity being more deeply interwoven
into the fabric of society. Issues that previously could be assigned to either
human or non-human dimensions and handled separately turn out to be closely
interrelated and connected in unexpected ways. Technologies alter the nature of
practices, by reconfiguring the contribution of human participation and how
practices are reproduced or changed. This view implies an unprecedented degree
of complexity for business and economic development.
The sociologist of science Andrew Pickering (1992) has argued that to deal
with the technological nature of society today, social sciences need to forsake
their traditional definition of the social as the domain of human interaction. He
has argued in favour of a post-humanist social theory in which the human subject
no longer plays an exclusive central role, and in which the social is conceived in
terms of a dialectical relation between human and material agencies.
Similarly, Gherardi (2017) uses the term post-humanist to qualify a new
approach to practice theory, in which relational ontology is assumed to give
evidence for the constitutive entanglement of the social and the material in
practice. She claims a post-humanist epistemology that interrogates how all the
elements within a practice hold together and acquire agency in being entangled.
In her view, sociomateriality is seen as an attribute of any practice, and
sociomaterial as an adjective that stresses how a practice is constituted by matter
and culture. This new epistemological stance contributes to opening up the
debate by scholars and practitioners. Instead of decentring the human subject as
the main agent, a post-humanist framework takes a new view of how we have to
think about a research problem in the imbrication of an agentic assemblage of
diverse elements that are constantly intra-acting, never stable and never the same.
Assuming a post-humanist approach means acknowledging economic and

business phenomena in a way that is receptive to non-humans and open to
unknown possibilities. Such inclusiveness reflects a post-humanist epistemology
that is dynamic and pluralistic.
In such a perspective, the challenge that AI poses is that of multiplying
experiential opportunities and promoting value co-creation that has no limits of
time, space and content (Kumar & Reinartz, 2016; Van Doorn et al., 2017). The
complexity of value co-creation enabled by cognitive technologies requires a
post-phenomenological approach (Verbeek, 2012). Such an approach goes
beyond the material as symbols or icons for owners’ lives or as causing
alienation. It recognizes that the relationship humans have with cognitive
technologies is multifaceted and context dependent. As Verbeek notes, ‘when
dealing with technologies much more happens than object manipulation’ (p. 8),
a post-phenomenological approach adopts a philosophy of technological
artefacts focusing on what role technologies play in our culture and daily life,
instead of ‘reducing them to the conditions of their possibility’ (pp. 8–9). It
describes technologies in terms of their concrete presence in human experience
and practice, as engaging devices (p. 188). Not being neutral to value creation,
neither a determining and controlling influence, technologies mediate the
contacts and relations between actors and their (constructed) realities, shaping
the value co-creation process: ‘any particular mediation can only arise within
the specific context of use and interpretation’. The interactions with virtual
assistants or social robots will not be neutral or a threat to human actors, but
they will affect value co-creation according to the context of adoption and
resource integration (Edvardsson et al., 2018). More than a functional instrument
or a cognitive tool, they mediate between the user and their worlds, thus
co-shaping experience and value.
The post-phenomenology approach emphasizes that subject and object are
not merely intertwined but they ‘constitute each other’ (Verbeek, 2005, p. 112).
It is not only a question of the interpretation of the human–artefact relation, but
of engagement with the artefacts, with the context of artefacts and with what the
artefacts make available.
Many questions arise which scholars and practitioners can debate when
trying to figure out the role of smart digital technologies, being well aware that
the positive view struggles with fears and critiques: What effect do cognitive
technologies have on human actors? How can we understand their mediation
role in value co-creation processes? How can we figure out the engagement
with artefacts? How can we frame the context of interaction? How do cognitive
technologies mediate the perception and context of interpretation?
Envisioning Opportunities for Value Co-creation
Moving beyond easy optimism and fictional fear, scholars and practitioners need to
reflect on how profoundly technology is transforming markets and actors (Huang &
Rust, 2017; Russo Spena & Mele, 2018). The technology itself is neither positive
nor negative; it is simply a possibility. Of course, technology is never neutral, in the
sense that the medium is the message—or that the form is the substance. According
to McLuhan, every new medium generates in its users a form of enthusiastic amaze-
ment, but also stupidity concerning how this medium works and what its character-
istics are; this explains the passivity of users/consumers. It was like that for the
telephone, the radio, the cinema and the television, and then for the computer and
the web.
We ask for new concepts, which, as Deleuze would say, have to be
‘constructed’ also by recycling old ones, but with the awareness that they must
serve to dismantle reality—which is never a given, it is never ‘natural’, but, as
Berger and Luckmann (1967) address, is a social and, by now, technological
construction.
There is a need to stimulate a more systematic discussion in a more profound
way than what happens today, trying to foresee how the AI landscape is evolving
around us, to design scenarios never explored before and to open new possibilities.
In the first place, it is necessary to say that what we call AI is a vast world of
different technologies and algorithms, some of which evolve continuously,
through training models and machine learning. And it is precisely in this
direction that AI technology is growing more and more thanks to machine-
learning technologies. The potentials and the possible applications of structured
algorithms, able to understand, interact and learn ‘autonomously’, are truly
endless, and they are becoming more and more numerous. In the business
context, the positive trend of this sector is very fertile and promises to continue
in the coming years, supporting the growth of many start-ups. The world is
moving towards hyper-technological and increasingly connected scenarios, but
the real value is still in human experience and in the ability of people to imagine
the future.
Technology evolves and allows us to do things faster and more efficiently, to
access opportunities all over the world, to have information in real time, when
we need it and where we need it. However, if we look carefully, what is
happening has little to do with technology? What is happening has, instead, a lot
to do with the imagination, that is, ‘the ability to create images that configure a
possible reality in mind’ (Oxford Dictionary). Imagination, therefore, implies
the sense of giving shape to a hypothetical future, and technology, however,
futuristic it may be, is an enabling factor and nothing more, an instrument in the
hands of human beings. We are then free to use it well or badly, to improve our
life or to make it worse.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (based on cyber-physical systems) enables
imagination and potential: the first in our head, the second in our hands.
Multiple challenges arise from such revolutions, especially with reference to
the cognitive and emotional load that change of this magnitude creates for the
individuals involved, and a plethora of legal, ethical and technical questions
coming from the use of intelligent robotics. Technology is moving faster than
our ability to understand it, and there is no consensus on what is ethical. It is not
just the lawmakers who are not well-informed, the originators of the technolo-
gies themselves do not understand the full ramifications of what they are
creating.
As Thomas Jefferson said in 1816,
Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As
that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new
truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances,
institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times.
In taking note of this inadequacy, and of the irreversibility of these processes and
dynamics, we note the concrete risk of focusing attention exclusively on the
technological dimension and, more generally, on the application, underestimating
once again the dimension concerning people, the system of relationships, the social
and cultural context. It is necessary to overcome the divide between the human and
the technological and to rethink the complex relationship between natural and
artificial, by recognizing the entanglements and connections in action. We need to
facilitate the transition from Industry 4.0 to Society 4.0.
The articles in this special issue are a contribution in the effort to address
how AI and cognitive technologies can affect value co-creation processes.
Kaartemo and Helkkula conduct a systematic literature review on the topic to
advance theoretical analysis of AI and robots in value co-creation. Harwood,
Boomer and Garry explore the processes let’s play players engage in to transform
and extract value from content generation, and the roles of firms in its
development. Amitrano, Gargiulo and Bifulco analyse the role of digital
technologies in cultural organizations to foster customer engagement. Siddike
and Kohda develop a service-system framework in which people interact with
cognitive assistants (CAs) for co-creation of value. Hasan, Kurose and Yuuko
introduce an ICT solution which enables the supporters of dementia patients to
provide useful information or hints to the concern parties (family member, etc.).
Cristina Mele
Guest Editor
University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
with
Tiziana Russo Spena
University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
Silvia Peschiera
IBM, Italy
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Commentary
Actors, Actor Engagement Journal of Creating Value

4(2) 196–198
and Value Creation © 2018 SAGE
SAGE Publications
sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2394964318809172
As Mele, Russo-Spena and Peschiera (in press) argue, academia has been lagging
behind when it comes to understanding how smart technologies influence value
creation. In our research, we have encountered this in two ways: (a) previously
static actor roles are increasingly pointless, indicating a need to reconsider what
an actor is and (b) limited understanding exists about how actors engage in
resource contributions, through resource integration, that creates value.
First, as digitalization drives universal connectivity (Storbacka, 2018), actors
can be present in other actors’ processes continuously, which blurs the previously
strict actor roles. Based on the idea of generic actors that have ownership of, or
access to resources and participate in resource integration with other actors in a
market system (Vargo & Lusch, 2011), Storbacka, Brodie, Böhmann, Maglio, and
Nenonen (2016) argued that the previously strict roles of producer versus con-
sumer or seller versus buyer are ﬂeeting as actors can have different roles. An
actor-to-actor perspective effectively renders useless clearly speciﬁed and static
actor roles (Kjellberg, Nenonen, & Thomé, 2018).
Furthermore, a focus on human actors alone ignores the impact of technolo-
gies. Building on a sociomateriality discourse, which views the human and social
dimension interwoven with materiality and technologies (Cecez-Kecmanovic,
Galliers, Henfridsson, Newell, & Vidgen, 2014; Orlikowski & Scott, 2008),
Storbacka et al. (2016) argue that advances in autonomous technologies provide
increasing opportunity for reshaping actor-to-actor interaction. Hence, they argue
that ‘actors need to be viewed not only as humans, but also as machines/technolo-
gies, or collections of humans and machines/technologies, including organiza-
tions’ (Storbacka et al., 2016, p. 3010). Machine learning enables smart machines
to act without being explicitly programmed (Cearley, Burke, & Walker, 2016).
These machines offer opportunities to deliver autonomous (or semi-autonomous)
‘actants’ (autonomous actors act as agents for human beings) including robots,
autonomous vehicles, smart vision systems, virtual customer assistants and smart
agents.
Second, more efforts are needed in understanding both how actors contribute
resources and what resource integration means. Importantly and as noted by
Bingham and Eisenhardt (2008), it is not the attributes of resources that make
them valuable, but the linkages between them. Hence, the value of resources is
determined only when they are integrated with other resources, key to this is the
idea of actor engagement: to improve value creation, focal actors need to focus on
Nenonen and Storbacka 197
inter-actor resource linkages and encourage actors (humans and/or machines) to

contribute resources. Intelligent algorithms influence connectedness between
people, things, processes, and building foundations for seamless multi-channel
actor engagement.
Normann (2001) argues that greater density of resources corresponds to more
value. Digitalization liquefies resources (Lusch, Vargo, & Tanniru, 2010) allow-
ing them to be easily moved about in time and space, and creating an abundance
of opportunities for linking resources between actors in new ways. As Amit and
Han (2017, p. 232) argue: ‘Digitization enables firms to expand […] the scope of
resources they could access and utilize’. Density relates not only to ‘physical’
resources but also to the density of various forms of sociocultural resources such
as meanings, designs and/or symbols (Storbacka, Frow, Nenonen, & Payne,
2012). Consequently, resource density can be improved both by exchange-based
and non-exchange-based resource contributions, which underscores the impor-
tance of actor engagement as a driver of resource density and, thus, value
creation.
Interestingly, actor engagement may lead to both homeopathic (summative)
and heteropathic (emergent) resource integration patterns (Peters, 2016).
Heteropathic resource integration generates new properties in the market systems,
for example, entities, structures, concepts, qualities and capacities. Thus, hetero-
pathic resource integration can be viewed as a mechanism for emergence, imply-
ing that the actor engagement is a microfoundation for emergence (Storbacka et
al., 2016) and, thus, innovation.
Suvi Nenonen
Professor
University of Auckland Business School
Graduate School of Management, Auckland, New Zealand
Kaj Storbacka
Professor, Markets and Strategy
University of Auckland Business School
Graduate School of Management, Auckland, New Zealand
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Commentary
Commentary on Journal of Creating Value

4(2) 199–201
‘Value Creation and © 2018 SAGE
SAGE Publications
Cognitive Technologies: sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2394964318809174
Opportunities and http://journals.sagepub.com/home/jcv
Challenges’
The invitation to provide a short commentary for the editorial article of this spe-
cial issue required rethinking the familiar as well as delving into novel areas.
Mele, Russo Spena and Peschiera’s ‘Value creation and cognitive technologies:
Opportunities and challenges’ unfolds in seven acts. The first act is where we
confront the fact that new technologies (such as artificial intelligence [AI]) with
human-level and superhuman-level capabilities can be used in positive and nega-
tive ways. The second act is, where we as service researchers, in light of the
negative possibilities, are asked to re-examine our central phenomena, the posi-
tive study of ‘service as value co-creation’. The following three acts examine
‘actors, resources and practices,’ three conceptual components of value proposi-
tions that are essential to the study of service as value co-creation. In light of these
re-examinations of the familiar, the sixth act offers an unfamiliar (to most service
researchers) path forward ‘a post-humanist epistemology and post-phenomenol-
ogy’. In the seventh and final act, we are served no resolution, but instead reminded
that ‘laws and institutions must go hand in hand with progress of the human mind’
including advanced technologies. Overall, I found the article stimulating and
thought-provoking.
As an overlay on this editorial, augmenting these seven acts, consider the
following. First, organizations, such as nations, have had super-human capabilities
for centuries and have used those capabilities in both win-win (positive) and win-
lose (negative, at least from one party’s perspective) ways throughout history.
Both organizations and technologies are things that make us smart (amplify our
capabilities), and both can be used for positive and negative purposes relative to
some actor’s perspective (Norman, 1994). Second, the logic of win-win (non-
zero-sum mechanisms, or service as value co-creation interactions between
entities [actors]) can have both short-term (value in context) and long-term
(capability increases) outcomes (Wright, 2001). Third, fourth and fifth, smart
technologies, such as AI, enable resources (like cars and smartphones) to become
more actor-like, with practices of their own—in the so-called machine-to-machine
economy (Arthur, 2011). Overlaying and augmenting the sixth act, sociomateriality
can be seen as a reframing of earlier epistemological inquiries into the entanglement
between the natural and artificial worlds (Simon, 1996). Seventh, while the future
is unpredictable, advances in science, management, engineering, design, art and
public policy, as entangled systems of systems, along with improved
multidisciplinary model simulation tools offer a framework for benefitting from
accelerating change (Kline, 1995). This overlay highlights that while much is
new, at the same time the positive and negative aspects of capability change of
entities (actors) has been a recurring theme throughout human history.
As service researchers tackle the wide range of important questions that are
explicitly listed in each of the seven acts of the editorial article, one additional
concept that needs to be highlighted is responsibility (Pakkala & Spohrer, forth-
coming). Animals and small children have agency and cognitive abilities, but do
not have sufficient cognitive capabilities or standing in the law to be held respon-
sible for their actions by institutions of law. Similarly, it will be quite some time
before AI systems have the cognitive capabilities to be held responsible for their
actions. This point about cognitive capabilities required for agency in intentional
value co-creation came up in a commentary I wrote seven years ago (Spohrer,
2011; Vargo & Lusch 2011). The concept of responsibility is an important one in
service science, related to the concepts of ‘reputation and identity,’ but responsi-
bility is under studied.
When asked to define service science recently, I responded that service science is:
[T]he study of the evolving ecology of service system entities, their capabilities, con-
straints, rights, and responsibilities, including their value co-creation and capability
co-elevation mechanisms. Service systems are defined as dynamic configurations of
resources (people, technology, organizations, and information) interconnected by value
propositions. All service system entities have a focal resource, which is a person with
rights and responsibilities.
The service science and service-dominant logic literatures have shown a clear
trend towards increased focus on responsibilities and institutions in value co-
creation processes (Spohrer 2018, slides 7–13). This same presentation also
includes a roadmap (slide 22 and 23) that suggests the solution to AI cognitive
capabilities for responsibilities is well over a decade away, with many important
pre-cursor capabilities such as AI with episodic memory and common sense rea-
soning. These are hard, unsolved AI problems remaining. In the meantime, we
can expect more and more capable social robots on the front line of service inter-
actions, and industrial robots working in the backstage of service systems.
Developing trust, transparency and explainability of AI models that increasing
run aspects of the world is an important priority for industry and government
today (Cohen & Granade 2018).
Thanks again to the authors of the editorial for a stimulating and thought-pro-
voking article, and the invitation to share a few reflections on value co-creation
processes in an AI era. The questions they raise in their editorial provide the basis
for years of exciting transdisciplinary service research.
Jim Spohrer
Guest Editor
IBM, USA
Spohrer 201
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Pakkala, D., & Spohrer. J. (forthcoming). Digital service: Technological agency in service
systems. Paper presented at the Hawaii International Conference on System Science,
Maui, HI.
Simon, H. A. (1996, September). The sciences of the artificial (3rd ed). Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Spohrer, J. C. (2011). On looking into Vargo and Lusch’s concept of generic actors in
markets, or ‘It’s all B2B … and beyond!’. Industrial Marketing Management, 40(2),
199–201.
Spohrer, J. (2018, September 8). A service science perspective on opentech artificial
intelligence (slides 7–13). Plenary at Frontiers in Service Conference. Austin, TX:
Frontiers in Service. Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/spohrer/frontiers-
open-techai-20180910-v5
Wright, R, (2001). Nonzero: The logic of human destiny. New York, NY: Vintage.
Commentary
Situating Humans, Journal of Creating Value

4(2) 202–204
Technology and © 2018 SAGE
SAGE Publications
Materiality in Value sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2394964318809191
Cocreation http://journals.sagepub.com/home/jcv
Mele et al. (2018) raise a number of important points in their editorial. Of particu-
lar interest is how technology and humans are linked and what role each plays in
value cocreation. The issue can actually be considered as part of a bigger issue:
the tendency for humans to alienate all things that are not human, that is, the idea
that there are dynamic, rational humans and related social systems and then there
is all else, such as inanimate objects (usually including technological artefacts)
and the natural world.
The roots of this conceptual alienation can most likely be traced back to The
Enlightenment (Porter, 2001) and, in that context, this separation probably served
a very useful purpose of providing a perspective on the control of human destiny,
both singly and collectively. However, like all perspectives, it came with a price:
a restricted vision. In this case, it privileges humans and, thus, overstates their
role. A particular and somewhat paradoxical case of this alienation is the human–
technology divide. Though created by humans, once created, technology is often
seen as something ‘out there’, apart from humans, part of the natural environment
and, thus, also alienated.
But it no more makes sense to divide the world ontologically into humans and
nature—what is more ‘natural’ than people—than it does to conceptualize tech-
nology as something extra-human, the idea that we can act on technology but it
cannot have agency or act on us. As Mokyr (2002) tells us, technology is applied
useful information (see also Arthur, 2009). It is, thus, integral to all human inter-
actions for value cocreation. As Mele et al. (2018) point out, humans and technol-
ogy are entangled and, thus, inseparable, except perhaps for analytical purposes,
and even then caution should be exercised.
Technology is also at the root of service provision-dominant (S-D) logic (e.g.,
Vargo & Lusch, 2016, 2017), indirectly introduced by Mele et al. (2018), in the
discussion of value cocreative processes. In S-D logic, ‘service’—using one’s
resources for another’s benefit—captures the essential interaction among actors
for value creation. Technology, as noted, is defined in terms of applied resources
(i.e., useful knowledge). Hence, service equals technology used beneficially.
As Akaka and Vargo (2013) have argued, based on S-D logic, technology is an
‘operant resource’—it is capable of acting on other resources to provide benefit
(i.e., creating value). S-D logic is most often thought of in terms of its applicabil-
ity to human-centred activities through service ecosystems, its unit of analysis for
value cocreation. However, service provision in service ecosystems is intertwined
with the service of ‘natural’ systems—ecosystem services (Schumacher, 1999)—
thus should be seen as more generally applicable (Vargo & Lusch, 2017).
Vargo 203
Even more generally, the issue raised by Mele et al. is, as stated, tied to the
nature versus agency divide—the idea that only humans have agency. It is becom-
ing progressively recognized, that the position that agency can be singly privileged
to humans is untenable (Latour, 2005; Orlikowski & Scott, 2008; Scott, 2008;
Vargo, 2019). Perhaps this is especially apparent in an increasingly connected
world, but it is no less the case before the Internet of things (IoT) and does not
apply just to higher technology. It is just indefensible to claim that naturally occur-
ring systems, such as fire and weather, do not have agency, except perhaps in a very
restricted sense of making conscious intent as a condition of agency.
Arguably, it is also indefensible to assert that humans are as consciously inten-
sional as is often asserted. At least as a general rule, don’t humans mostly perform
in accordance with institutional structures, such as social norms and attitudes,
rather than through situationally specific, intensional decision making, as it is
often depicted (Simon, 1969)? Are we really as rational as we would like to think?
Either way, what is accomplished by reserving the concept of agency for humans?
Often, this conceptualization of extra-human agency is discussed in relation to
‘materiality’ or, especially as it relates to technology, ‘sociomateriality’ (e.g.,
Orlikowski & Scott, 2008) but it is actually a broader issue. More generally, it is
‘institutional structure’ that must be considered as the prime mover in the issue of
agency, at least as it relates to value cocreation. That structure can take many
forms; it can be virtual as well as material. In the social world, we see these struc-
tures in term of norms, rules and laws. In the natural world, we see them as the
ʻlawsʼ and other forces of nature. In both cases, they have enabling and restricting
characteristics and, most importantly, they are both, similarly, systemically gener-
ated and entangled with each other.
The bottom line of this discussion is that value cocreation takes place in self-
regulating service ecosystems, usually conceptualized in terms of human actors
and their institutions. However, these systems are elements of larger ecosystems,
often categorized as natural, which provide ecosystem service and are also self-
regulating. Thus, understanding value cocreation as well as related issues, such as
sustainability, requires the diminution, if not dismissal of the human/social-natu-
ral divide and a fuller understanding of the role of self-regulation in systems.
Of particular importance is the role of institutions, including both those classified
as natural and ‘artificial’ (Simon, 1969), and especially their interaction.
Progress in technology and the related concerns they raise force us to zoom out
to this more encompassing perspective. Mele et al. as well as the authors of the
special issue on technology and value cocreation should be commended for con-
tributing to this conversation.
Stephen L. Vargo
Guest Editor
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
Honolulu, USA
References
Akaka, M. A., & Vargo, S. L. (2013). Technology as an operant resource in service (eco)
systems. Information Systems and e-Business Management, 12(3), 367–384. doi:
10.1007/s10257-013-0220-5
Arthur, W. B. (2009). The nature of technology: What it is and how it evolves. New York,
NY: Free Press.
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Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mokyr, J. (2002). The gifts of Athena: Historical origins of the knowledge economy.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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technology, work and organization. Academy of Management Annals, 2, 433–474. doi:
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service-dominant logic. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. doi:10.1007/
s11747-015-0456-3
Marketing, 34(1), 46–67.
Commentary
Mimicking Firms: Future Journal of Creating Value

4(2) 205-210
of Work and Theory of the © 2018 SAGE
SAGE Publications
Firm in a Digital Age sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2394964318809169
It is well acknowledged that technology has created much disruption and continues
to do so. The Internet has globalized digital services and connectivity has brought
about low coordination costs resulting in the rise of firms that coordinate informa-
tion rather than selling goods and services such as Uber (car sharing), Airbnb
(accommodation sharing) and Facebook (content sharing). The Internet is evolving
from merely a tool or a medium of communication into a pan-geographical space of
its own with its own citizenry and with information and data exchange as its primary
good. Digital technology has led to the accelerated development of ‘superstar firms’.
These pan-geographical tech giants, operating with the ability to arbitrage on every
regulation, can shift revenues as easily as shifting virtual servers as well as move
information and data around to leverage on every kind of technology located any-
where in the world. Even as Amazon buys up physical stores like Whole Foods, the
Internet is now coming out of the box, creating social-cyber-physical objects out of
many things from white goods to doors, from clothing to trains.
As the world moves to adopt more technology such as AI, edge and machine
learning algorithms, questions are being asked about the traditional factors of pro-
duction that were constructed in the pre-Internet days. Inputs such as capital,
labour, technology, the role of the firm and the economic ecosystem that they oper-
ate within are showing weaknesses in their ability to adapt to some of the changes.
Future of work: Scholars and policymakers are espousing greater fears about
technology that is automating work and eliminating jobs, despite the absence of
a clear estimated impact of technological progress on job losses. Job automation
estimates vary widely; according to the World Bank, 7–47 per cent of jobs in the
United States are at risk of being automated (WDR, 2010). Using a task-based
approach, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) estimates the job automatibility for 21 OECD countries is at 9 per cent
(Arntz, Gregory, & Zierahn, 2016). Some scholars have proposed that work will
move to more judgement and empathy-based work. Autor, Levy, and Murnane
(2003) studied the change of work content by analysing changes in labour input
towards various tasks. They found that the labour input into work requiring
more routine tasks declined between 1970 and 2010. On the other hand, Deming
(2015) showed the growing importance of social skills in the US labour market
between 1980 and 2012. Indeed, since 2001, the share of occupations intensive
in nonroutine cognitive and socio-behavioural skills has increased from 33 to 41
per cent in advanced economies (World Bank, 2018). Others have proposed that
AI and tech are complementary and technology would be more productive as a
result of extended intelligence. For example, vast improvements in the
efficiency of machines used for metal cutting and processing in the 1970s led to
increased productivity of machinists, operators and other workers in the indus-
try (Acemoglu & Restrepo, 2018). Acemoglu and Restrepo (2018) refer to this
facet of automation advances as the ‘deepening of automation’, since it is inten-
sifying the productive capacity of existing machines.
The changing nature of work due to the advent of technology and AI is cur-
rently framed as the substitution of jobs (labour) with technology. Such neoclas-
sical economic approach does not fare well in much of today’s industries of
hybrid digital and physical assets nor industries that are fully digital (Keen,
2001), where production functions may not exist and products exhibit increas-
ing returns to scale. Instead, we argue that as technology and connectivity
become more pervasive, another phenomenon is at play that creates a more
nuanced role of the relationship between technology, that is, the firm and labour.
Less workers, more gigs: Forbes reports that in the United States, more than
one-third of the workforce (55 million people) have given up being the tradi-
tional worker and opted for ‘freelancing’, that is, contributing to the ‘gig’ econ-
omy.1 Such ‘gigs’ are flexible arrangements between the worker and the firm
and they are often contracted as independent contractors or consultants, tasked
to complete a project or work for a certain period of time (Friedman, 2014).
Worldwide, the total freelancer population is estimated at around 84 million or
less than 3 per cent of the global labour force of 3.5 billion. The relationship
between the worker and the firm is changing and there are concerns about lower
wages and higher economic risks for the workers, particularly income stability
and traditional forms of employment protections including pension plans, health
insurance and paid leaves (World Bank, 2018). However, increasing opportuni-
ties for these flexible types of work enable more women to participate in the
labour force and may provide additional income to smooth earning fluctuations
for secondary earners (World Bank, 2018).
More gigs, more entrepreneurs: Gigs and entrepreneurial activities are corre-
lated (Burtch, Carnahan, & Greenwood, 2018). Studies have argued that entrepre-
neurial activity has increased in the gig economy because of the availability of
slack resources that can be directly reused for entrepreneurial activities (Agrawal,
Catalini, & Goldfarb, 2015; Richtnér, Åhlström, & Goffin, 2014). Additionally, it
has also been suggested that the potential entrepreneur, unburdened by constraints
in resources, may exploit new opportunities serendipitously (George, 2005; Shah
& Tripsas, 2007; Voss, Sirdeshmukh, & Voss, 2008). In other words, gig-economy
employment may encourage entrepreneurship because there are sufficient
resources to do so, as they have some financial security, and yet have greater flex-
ibility with their time (Swarns, 2014), and could potentially reuse the resources
they employ to fulfil their gigs (Greve, 2007; Kerr, Nanda, & Rhodes-Kropf,
2014; Shah & Tripsas, 2007).
We propose that the rise of technology is strongly correlated with more gig
workers and the rise of entrepreneurialism is not a coincidence, but a subtle
trend where the global labour force attempts to ‘corporatize’ itself, that is,
worker-becoming-a-firm that is owner managed, either through independent
contracting or entrepreneurship, in the efforts to increase opportunities for
Ng 207
acquiring more resources whether financial, human or social capital. As a logi-

cal extension of this argument, the individual’s attempt to corporatize could,
therefore, be construed as an institutional hack to acquire resources from tech-
nology and AI. If so, it would be necessary to revisit the notion of the firm and
its relationship with labour.
The Firm as a Market for Labour

Business and economics literature often refer to the theory of the firm as the theory
of why a firm should exist; where the boundaries are between the firm and the mar-
ket for all manner of resources; what transactions are internal and what are market
based; the structure and organizations of the firm; its formal and informal relation-
ships; and actions and performance of firms (Coase, 1937; Garicano & Hubbard,
2008; Kantarelis, 2007).
The firm itself is often seen as a ‘black box’ with no existing theory to explain
how the aggregation of workers’ objectives within a firm are squared with the
profit maximizing view of the firm (Jensen & Meckling, 1976). Indeed, scholars
have claimed that much of the material on the theory of the firm are centred
around the theory of markets in which firms are an ‘actor’. This is problemsome
as it takes the ownership structure of the firm as exogenous and ex ante to the
market when in fact, there are two markets—that which the firm interacts with
and that which is within the firm.
As Jensen and Meckling (1976, p. 311) put it,
The firm is not an individual. It is a legal fiction which serves as a focus for a complex
process in which the conflicting objectives of individuals (some of whom may ‘repre-
sent’ other organizations) are brought into equilibrium within a framework of contrac-
tual relations. In this sense the ‘behavior’ of the firm is like the behavior of a market;
i.e., the outcome of a complex equilibrium process. We seldom falI into the trap of
characterizing the wheat or stock market as an individual, but we often make this error
by thinking about organizations as if they were persons with motivations and intentions.
Since the firm is a multitude of contracts with the owners of labour, material and
capital inputs and the consumers of outputs, why is it assumed that technology is a
resource of only firms? In acquiring technologies and AI bots of the future, why
might the firm be the only actor owning such a resource? Within the firm’s internal
market, technology could be owned by workers (much like a smartphone or a laptop
could be, if not provided by the firm). A natural argument would be that the current
structure of markets and the economy privileges the firm as the owner of capital,
technology and labour. However, with the rise of digital platforms and lowered coor-
dination costs, we argue that the boundaries between the firm and labour are increas-
ingly becoming blurred with workers ‘mimicking firms’. Today, firms with a variety
of corporate ownership structure from an owner-operated contractor to a start-up and
an independent consulting firm is commonplace. Mimicking a firm gives a worker
certain privileges—the ability to solicit capital, acquire technology and contract fur-
ther labour as assistance—all resources that are set within a legal framework and an
institutional structure that accord a multitude of benefits, but also encompass risks.
Consequently, we argue that creating a dichotomy between business contracts with
independent contractors (as firms) and wage contracts (as labour) would be unhelp-
ful. Workers can be entrepreneurs and contractors (with business contracts as well as
contract on wages) and they should be able to choose the contract to suit their circum-
stances. In such cases, what is needed is better approaches towards understanding
firms and the diversity of ownership structures so that the equivalent of social insur-
ances can be set in place for owner managers of such firms as well as the way such
owner operators can acquire capital, debt and technology as they improve their
‘human’ capital. Hybrid forms of an actor in the marketplace (whether as a firm or as
a worker) suggest a new approach to the understanding of work through business and
wage contracts (Jensen & Meckling, 1976). Indeed, there is an urgent need to re-
evaluate the role of the firm and labour markets within the firm as well as outside the
firm. From the technology perspective, a hybrid actor that can be both firm-like and
labour-like may be socially optimal particularly from the perspective of resource
acquisition. In particular, it enables the resources generated by technology and AI to
be appropriated by both the firm as well as by the hybrid worker/firm, much like the
way workers already own their own smartphones, laptops and various technologies.
Early papers have proposed multiple ownership and production function models
where individual ownership of resources are not only possible but have also been
encouraged in some community models (Shapley & Shubik, 1967). Technology and
AI under the ownership of a hybrid worker/firm actor could drive innovation in more
optimal ways including a market for AI consumer or tech consumer that could sup-
port better work and productivity of firms. In short, externalizing technology to
labour markets within the firm might be an alternative model to primary technology
input into firms from outside markets.
Figure 1. Generic Actors in the Market Where Actors Can Choose to Contract as
Labour or as a Firm
Source: The author.
Ng 209
Future of Work, Future of the Firm, Future of Tech

Ownership
Our paper argues that technology and AI have been framed narrowly based on exist-
ing concept of the firm as the only means of appropriating resources from technol-
ogy. We posit that the rise of the gig economy and entrepreneurialism is the move of
workers mimicking firms to acquire resources necessary to create more effective
contracts for work, and, therefore, position themselves to appropriate the same tech-
nological resources. We suggest that it is necessary to investigate the future of work
as part of firms’ future and ownership structure, and consider both business and
wage contracts as ‘work’. More research is needed to identify and investigate the
institutional structures that bind the nested relationships of internal and external
labour markets for firms.
Irene Ng
Professor of Marketing and Service Systems and Director of HATLAB,
WMG, University of Warwick.
Note
1 https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianscudamore/2018/05/09/how-the-gig-economy-
is-fueling-a-new-type-of-entrepreneur/#8d995806e117
References
Acemoglu, D., & Restrepo, P. (2018). Artificial intelligence, automation and work
(Working Paper No. 24196). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Agrawal, A., Catalini, C., & Goldfarb, A. (2015). Slack time and innovation (Working
Paper 21134). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Arntz, M., Gregory, T., & Zierahn, U. (2016). The risk of automation for jobs in OECD
countries: A comparative analysis (OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working
Papers No. 189). Paris: OECD Publishing. doi: org/10.1787/5jlz9h56dvq7-en
Autor, D. H., Levy, F., & Murnane, R. J. (2003). The skill content of recent technological
change: An Empirical Exploration. Quarterly Journal of Economic, 118(4), 1279–
1333.
Burtch, G., Carnahan, S., & Greenwood, B. N. (2018). Can you gig it? An empirical
examination of the gig economy and entrepreneurial activity. Management Science.
Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2916
Coase, R. H. (1937). The nature of the firm. Economica, 4(16), 386–405.
Deming, D. (2015). The growing importance of social skills in the labour market (Harvard
University and NBER Working Paper no. 21473). Massachusetts, MA: Harvard
University and NBER.
Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS). (2018). The characteristics
of those in the gig economy (Final Report). London: BEIS.
Friedman, G. (2014). Workers without employers: Shadow corporations and the rise of the
gig economy. Review of Keynesian Economics, 2(2), 171–188.
Garicano, L., & Hubbard, T. N. (2008). Specialization, firms, and markets: The division of
labour within and between law firms. The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization,
25(2), 339–371.
George, G. (2005). Slack resources and the performance of privately held firms. Academy
of Management Journal, 48(4), 661–676.
Greve, H. R. (2007). Exploration and exploitation in product innovation. Industrial and
Corporate Change, 16(5), 945–975.
Jensen, M. C., & Meckling, W. H. (1976). Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency
costs and ownership structure. Journal of Financial Economics, 3(4), 305–360.
Kantarelis, D. (2007). Theories of the firm. Geneve: Inderscience. ISBN 0-907776-34-5.
Katz, L. F., & Krueger, A. B. (2016). The rise and nature of alternative work arrangements
in the United States, 1995–2015 (NBER Working Paper No. 22667). Cambridge, MA:
NBER.
Keen, S. (2001). Debunking economics: The naked emperor of the social sciences. London:
Zed Books.
Kerr, W. R., Nanda, R., & Rhodes-Kropf, M. (2014). Entrepreneurship as experimentation.
Journal of Economic Perspectives, 28(3), 25–48.
Richtnér, A., Åhlström, P., & Goffin, K. (2014). ‘Squeezing R&D’: A study of organizational
slack and knowledge creation in NPD, using the SECI Model. Journal of Product
Innovation Management, 31(6), 1268–1290.
Shah, S. K., & Tripsas, M. (2007). The accidental entrepreneur: The emergent and
collective process of user entrepreneurship. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 1(1–
2), 123–140.
Shapley, L. S., & Shubik, M. (1967). Ownership and the production function. The Quarterly
Journal of Economics, 81(1), 88–111.
Swarns, R. L. (2014). Freelancers in the ‘gig economy’ find a mix of freedom and
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environmental threat on product exploration and exploitation. Academy of Management
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handle/10986/30435
Article
A Systematic Review of Journal of Creating Value

4(2) 211–228
Artificial Intelligence and © 2018 SAGE
SAGE Publications
Robots in Value Co-creation: DOI: 10.1177/2394964318805625
sagepub.in/home.nav
Current Status and Future http://journals.sagepub.com/home/jcv

Research Avenues
Valtteri Kaartemo1
Anu Helkkula2
Abstract
As artificial intelligence (AI) and robots are increasingly taking place in practical
service solutions, it is necessary to understand technology in value co-creation.
We conducted a systematic literature review on the topic to advance theoretical
analysis of AI and robots in value co-creation. By systematically reviewing 61 AI
and robotics articles, which have been published in top marketing and service
research journals, we identified four themes in literature, namely, generic field
advancement, supporting service providers, enabling resource integration between
service providers and beneficiaries, and supporting beneficiaries’ well-being. With
the identification of the first set of literature on AI and robots in value co-creation,
we push forward an important sub-field of value co-creation literature. In addition,
to advance the field, we suggest building on actor–network theory and science and
technology studies to understand the agency of technology in value co-creation.
Considering that technology has agency, it opens new interesting research avenues
around shopping bots and human-to-non-human frontline interaction that are likely
to influence resource integration, customer engagement and value co-creation in
the future. We also encourage our colleagues to conduct postphenomenological
research to be better geared for analysing how technology (including AI and robots)
mediates the individual experience of value.
Keywords
Value co-creation, artificial intelligence, robot, technology, service, marketing
1
Turku School of Economics, University of Turku, Turun Yliopisto, Finland.
2
Hanken School of Economics, Department of Marketing, CERS—Centre for Relationship Marketing
and Service Management, Helsinki, Finland.
Corresponding author:
Valtteri Kaartemo, Turku School of Economics, University of Turku, Turun Yliopisto 20014, Finland.
E-mail: valtteri.kaartemo@utu.fi
Introduction
Technology has become an integral part of our lives. Smartphones wake us up and
automatic toasters prepare our breakfast. Increasingly, the machines that we
employ mimic cognitive functions of humans and can be programmed to carry out
a complex set of actions automatically (robots). By accessing one’s calendar,
analysis of sleep and learning from prior morning routines, technology knows
when it is a good time for technology to start preparing breakfast. As service func-
tions based on AI and robots become more common in markets and everyday
lives, they are likely to change the way value is co-created and experienced.
Mainstream marketing has been criticized of being incapable to study fast,
technology-induced changes in markets, as it is ‘underlying assumptions behind
the conceptualizations of markets are rather static and mechanistic’ (Vargo et al.,
2017, p. 260). Therefore, Vargo et al. (2017) argue that a systems perspective on
markets, building on service-dominant (S-D) logic, would create a more realistic
understanding of how technology shapes behaviour, experiences and markets, as
well as the dynamics of value co-creation—the joint activities of multiple actors
through which value emerges.
S-D logic’s conceptualization of value refers to a change in the viability of a
system (Vargo, Akaka, & Vaughan, 2017; Vargo & Lusch, 2017). This systems-
oriented conceptualization captures the nature of value through four propositions:
(1) value is phenomenological: it is experienced differently by various actors in
various contexts; (2) value is always co-created: it is created through the integration
and exchange of resources among multiple actors; (3) value is multidimensional: it
is made up of individual, social, technological and cultural components and (4)
value is emergent: it comes into existence through relationships between an actor
and the system.
While more systems-oriented thinking to value co-creation has been suggested
for a decade (Vargo, Maglio, & Akaka, 2008), the actual interaction between a
customer and a firm is still perceived the central locus in services marketing
(Echeverri & Salomonson, 2017). In other words, there is more interest in value
co-production—direct contact between a service provider and a beneficiary—
rather than value co-creation that also takes into account market practices and
other institutional arrangements that guide actors in service processes (Pohlmann
& Kaartemo, 2017). And while scholars agree that technology has changed human
behaviour, there has been more interest in understanding human-to-human inter-
action (Fairfield, 2015) than human-to-non-human resource integration (Gidhagen
et al., 2017) in value co-creation.
As AI and robots are increasingly taking place in practical service solutions, it
is necessary to understand technology in value co-creation. Moreover, we expect
more research on human-to-non-human resource integration and non-human
agency among AI-enabled autonomous robots in the future. Therefore, we decided
to conduct a systematic literature review on the topic to advance theoretical analy-
sis of AI and robots in value co-creation. In order to contribute to future research,
Kaartemo and Helkkula213
our research question is: What is the current state of the art of AI and robots in
value co-creation in marketing and service research?
To answer the question, we systematically reviewed 61 articles in top marketing
and service research journals that refer to AI and robots. We classify the current
conceptual and empirical evidence and suggest a future research agenda to advance
the field. With the identification of the first set of literature on AI and robots in value
co-creation, we push forward an important sub-field of value co-creation literature.
Methodology
This study employs a systematic literature review as its methodology. The review
method is essentially based on the guidelines offered by Booth, Papaioannou, and
Sutton (2012). We also follow the method by Mustak, Jaakkola, Halinen, and
Kaartemo (2016) with three consecutive stages: literature search, assessing the
evidence base, and analysing and synthesizing the findings.
We selected the publications for the review in two stages (Table A1). In Stage 1,
we scanned the Web of Science database. First (Stage 1.1), we looked for five key-
words in the title, abstract or keywords (TS = Topic), namely, artificial intelligence,
machine learning, deep learning, neural network and robot (580,671 articles), In
Stage 1.2, we focused on the journals that were most likely to discuss AI and robots
in value co-creation, that is, articles published in top marketing and service journals
(SO = Publication name): Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research,
Journal of Consumer Research, Marketing Science, Journal of the Academy of
Marketing Science, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Business Research, Marketing
Letters, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Product
Innovation Management, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Services Marketing,
Service Industries Journal, Journal of Service Management (formerly International
Journal of Service Industry Management), Journal of Service Theory and Practice
(formerly Managing Service Quality), and Service Science (altogether 31,019 arti-
cles). In Stage 1.3, we combined a search of these five keywords in the title, abstract
or keywords, namely, artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, neural
network and robot with the above mentioned journals. The search resulted in 61
articles published in the top marketing and service journals that featured the five
keywords in the title, abstract or keywords. The search extended across the whole
period of time covered by the Web of Science until the end of May 2018.
In Stage 2, the suitability of the articles for the review was assessed. In case the
title and abstract did not reveal the content of the paper, the full paper was read to
determine whether the article was appropriate for this study. We used two exclu-
sion criteria. In Stage 2.1, we excluded studies in which our search words were
mentioned in the abstract or keywords but the authors did not discuss them in the
full text (Exclusion criterion 1). In Stage 2.2, we excluded the studies that had
employed AI in collecting or analysing data but did not discuss the usefulness of
the AI-based method to co-create value (Exclusion criterion 2). Ultimately, we
selected 32 articles for our final analysis.
Then we analysed the selected 32 articles. The analysis included four steps: doc-
umenting, attaining basic understanding, coding and categorization. First, the details
of the articles were documented using Microsoft Excel including the year of publi-
cation and the journal name. Second, the selected articles were read to familiarize
with the research field and understand how the studies have developed over time.
Third, whenever content related to AI or robots in value co-creation was found, it
was annotated and coded for its message or content. We used inductive content
analysis, which is suitable for systematically interpreting the symbolic content of
written communication (Helkkula, 2011; Kolbe & Burnett, 1991). Initially, there
were eight codes: forecasting, prediction, other cognitive support, understanding
customers, customer interaction, division of tasks, conceptual field advancement
and supporting well-being. Fourth, we employed inductive and interpretive the-
matic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), which is suitable for a systematic review
that aims at understanding a diverse research field (Jones, Coviello, & Tang, 2011).
We categorized the codes based on the object of technological support. In other
words, we reviewed whether AI and robots were facilitating value co-creation of the
service provider or the beneficiary. In some occasions, the codes did not refer to
either of the two original categories. For instance, ‘conceptual field advancement’
referred to studies discussing the potential of AI and robots to advance theoretical
development of marketing and service research. Also, ‘customer interaction’ did not
refer to the benefit of a service provider or a beneficiary solely but was focused on
the role of AI and robots in enabling resource integration in the value co-creation
process. As a result, we constructed four categories, namely, generic field advance-
ment, supporting service providers, enabling resource integration between service
providers and beneficiaries, and supporting beneficiaries’ well-being. The flow
chart of our systematic review is presented in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Flowchart of Publications Included and Excluded by Researchers during the

Selection Procedure and Consecutive Methodologic Steps of the Systematic Review
Overview of the Publications Selected

The first article on AI and robots in value co-creation was published in 1996 in
Journal of Retailing (Agrawal & Schorling, 1996). Despite the initial interest in
AI and robotics in marketing journals in the 1990s, there was not much research
done on the topic in the early 2000s. Since 2010, there has been more research
(Figure 2) and the topics have widened from forecasting market shares and pre-
dicting bankruptcies to several other themes, such as customer interaction and
frontline service technologies. In fact, of the 32 articles reviewed for this study, 20
were published between January 2010 and May 2018. The most recent era has
been characterized by the emergence of service research journals. The first article
in a service journal (Service Industries Journal) was published in 2011. However,
most of the articles were published in marketing journals with Journal of Business
Research leading the rank with 10 articles (Table 1).
In the following, we discuss the findings of our systematic review.
Table 1. Dispersion of Reviewed Literature by Research Outlet
Number of
Knowledge Area Publications Total Percentage
Marketing 25 78
Journal of Business Research 10
Marketing Science 8
International Journal of Research in Marketing 2
Journal of Marketing Research 2
Journal of Retailing 2
Journal of Product Innovation Management 1
Service 7 22
Journal of Service Research 3
Service Industries Journal 2
Journal of Service Management 1
Journal of Services Marketing 1
Total 32 100
Findings
The thematic analysis of the papers shows four themes that describe the content
of the studies, namely, generic field advancement, supporting service providers,
enabling resource integration between service providers and beneficiaries, and
supporting beneficiaries’ well-being (Table 2). These themes were not predeter-
mined as they emerged from the reviewed articles inductively.
Figure 2. Publication Trend by Year for Studies on AI and Robots in Value Co-creation
Note: *Signifies 2018 until the end of May.
Generic Field Advancement

Two studies aim at the generic advancement of respective fields. First, Chintagunta,
Hanssens, and Hauser (2016) discuss the potential of machine learning to develop
marketing science. They argue that marketing can learn from machine learning to
provide new structures and theories that help firms understand and use big data.
Second, Grewal, Roggeveen, and Nordfält (2017) envision AI’s influence on the
future of retailing. They refer to apps that employ AI to give beneficiaries infor-
mation and make suggestions, robots that help in logistics, and initiate the debate
on the wider influence of AI on consumer behaviour both online and offline.
Despite these two pioneering articles, the generic field advancement has remained
undeveloped. There is no discussion in the reviewed articles on how AI or robots
influence value co-creation in general.
Supporting Service Providers

Most of the reviewed articles (81%) focus on how AI and robots support service
providers. Particularly, many of them discuss the superiority of AI in predicting
changes in the market. For instance, neural network analysis and machine learning
are shown to have a better predictive power than more conventional methods
(Agrawal & Schorling, 1996; Barrow, 2016; Bejou, Wray, & Ingram, 1996; Fish,
Johnson, Dorsey, & Blodgett, 2004; Hamid & Iqbal, 2004; Hu, Shanker, & Hung,
1999; Jalal, Hosseini, & Karlsson, 2016; Kim, 2011; Liu, Singh, & Srinivasan,
2016; Morrison, Johnson, Barnes, Summers, & Szeinbach, 1997; Parry, Cao, &
Song, 2011; West, Brockett, & Golden, 1997; Yang, Platt, & Platt, 1999). Also,
research shows how machine learning can be employed to understand the customers
regarding their consideration heuristics (Dzyabura & Hauser, 2011; Hauser, 2014),
and preferences in complex products (Huang & Luo, 2016). Other cognitive sup-
port for service providers include assessing the helpfulness of customer reviews
(Singh et al., 2017), supporting complex new product development decisions
(Thieme, Song, & Calantone, 2000), providing homogeneous segmentation solu-
tions (Boone & Roehm, 2002), selecting models (Schwartz, Bradlow, & Fader,
2014), and deciding the timing of an initial public offering (Yu & Huarng, 2013).
Edwards, Pärn, Love, and El-Gohary (2017) discuss how robots can in addition to
hard labour replace many jobs in classic engineering that require cognitive skills
and ability. Also, AI may change the division of tasks between human beings and
machinery within an organization. Huang and Rust (2018) lay out a map for the
way firms should decide between humans and machines for accomplishing
mechanical, analytical, intuitive and empathetic tasks.
Enabling Resource Integration between Service Providers and

Beneficiaries
In addition to providing support to service providers, AI and robots can learn cus-
tomer needs and preferences and thus enable the resource integration between ser-
vice providers and beneficiaries (Glushko & Nomorosa, 2013). By identifying
customer needs and preferences, AI and robots can add human-like features to front-
line service technology (Fan, Wu, & Mattila, 2016; van Doorn et al., 2017). Glushko
and Nomorosa (2013) described five different situations that involve encounters
between a service provider and a beneficiary, and compared human-to-human
encounters to encounters, where the service provider was a machine, they discuss
the potential of information that machines can utilize to provide more personalized
service. van Doorn et al. (2017, p. 44) developed a concept of ‘automated social
presence’ that refers to ’the extent to which machines (e.g., robots) make consumers
feel that they are in the company of another social entity’. They proposed that peo-
ple have different expectations for automated social presence, depending on a con-
sumer’s relationship orientation, the level of anthropomorphization (human-like
characteristics, motivations, intentions or emotions imbued to non-human agents)
and the degree of technology readiness. Fan et al. (2016), in turn, studied empiri-
cally whether customers were willing to continue resource integration with an
anthropomorphic machine in a service failure context. The authors found out that
reactions to self-service technology failures vary depending on the degree of anthro-
pomorphism associated with a machine (robotic vs human-like voice), an individu-
al’s sense of power (perceived ability to influence other people in social interactions),
and the presence of other customers. Their main finding was that a human-like voice
of a machine changes customers’ behaviour in a service encounter.
Supporting Beneficiaries’Well-Being
Finally, there was one study that discusses how AI and robots can support a ben-
eficiary’s value co-creation. Čaić, Odekerken-Schröder, & Mahr (2018) identified
six roles of socially assistive robots in an elderly person’s value network (enabler,
intruder, ally, replacement, extended self and deactivator) and links them to three
health-supporting functions by robots: safeguarding, social contact and cognitive
support. Uniquely, Čaić and colleagues offer insights for the design of robots and
technology that takes into account the beneficiary’s existing value network. Some
people may experience value co-creation in such a situation and context, where other
people experience value co-destruction. Therefore, the authors call for more holistic
studies that include a wide variety of network actors.
Table 2. Thematization of Reviewed Articles
Number of Articles
Theme References (Percentage)
Generic field Chintagunta et al., 2016; Grewal 2 (6)
advancement et al., 2017
Supporting service 26 (81)
providers
—more accurate Agrawal & Schorling, 1996; 16 (50)
forecasting Barrow, 2016; Bejou et al., 1996;
Cui & Curry, 2005; Evgeniou,
Pontil, & Toubia, 2007; Fish et
al., 2004; Hamid & Iqbal, 2004;
Hauser, Toubia, Evgeniou, Befurt,
& Dzyabura, 2010; Hu et al., 1999;
Jalal et al., 2016; Kim, 2011; Liu
et al., 2016; Morrison et al., 1997;
Parry et al., 2011; West et al.,
1997; Yang et al., 1999
—other cognitive Boone & Roehm, 2002; Schwartz 5 (16)
support et al., 2014; Singh et al., 2017;
Thieme et al., 2000; Yu & Huarng,
2013
—understanding Dzyabura & Hauser, 2011; 3 (9)
customers Hauser, 2014; Huang & Luo, 2016
—improving division Edwards et al., 2017; Huang & 2 (6)
of tasks Rust, 2018
Enabling resource Fan et al., 2016; Glushko & 3 (9)
integration between Nomorosa, 2013; van Doorn et
service providers and al., 2017
beneficiaries
Supporting Čaić et al., 2018 1 (3)
beneficiaries’ well-being
Total 32 (100)
In terms of the number of publications in each theme (Table 2), there were
surprisingly only four articles discussing the role of AI and robots in enabling
resource integration between service providers and beneficiaries, or supporting
beneficiaries’ well-being. These discussions have emerged only recently in ser-
vice journals. Marketing journals have mostly focused on the theme ‘supporting
service providers’. We expected more research on how AI influences customer
engagement or on how robots influence the perceived value of service experience.
Early research seems to approach AI and robots from an organizational view with
an aim to make companies more efficient. Only more recently, scholars have paid
attention to the potential of AI and robots in co-creating value with beneficiaries.
We encourage marketing and service scholars to shift the focus towards under-
standing the roles of AI and robots in a wider context of value co-creation. In the
following, we provide a research agenda to contribute to the future research.
Future Research Agenda

Compared to the vast amount of practical solutions that already exist in service
practice, the small number of identified articles indicates that we need more research
on AI and robots in value co-creation. Consequently, we developed a research
agenda based on the results of our systematic literature review. We identified the
paths for future research based on our broad reading of both technology and value
co-creation literature.
Particularly, there is a need for shifting the focus to resource integration and
value co-creation by beneficiaries and their service network. There are possibilities
to widen the themes even further to illuminate the roles of technology in a systemic
value co-creation, to understand the role of autonomous devices and to employ
postphenomenological research. Along these lines, we list seven priorities for
research on AI and robots in value co-creation that set up the future research agenda.
Generic Field Advancement of Technology in Value Co-creation

Although technology has become one of the keywords in S-D logic (Pohlmann &
Kaartemo, 2017), generic field advancement in technology-mediated value
co-creation remains very limited. We see this as one of the key trends in the field
of value co-creation. Recent S-D logic articles acknowledge that actors are more
than humans; they also include machines and technologies (Lusch, Vargo, &
Gustafsson, 2016). In fact, Wieland, Hartmann, and Vargo (2017) and Vargo,
Wieland, and Akaka (2015) have started building a link between technology and
market reformation by suggesting that technology and market innovation should
be studied in parallel. Moreover, S-D logic scholars presented their ideas on
human-to-non-human value co-creation and resource integration in the Naples
Forum on Service 2017 (Gidhagen et al., 2017). Yet the roles of technology and
non-human actors in value co-creation and reformation of markets are far from
being fully developed in S-D logic (see Wieland, Koskela-Huotari, & Vargo,
2016, p. 223). Therefore, we need a better understanding of AI and robots in ser-
vice ecosystems. In the reviewed articles, only Čaić et al. (2018) discussed the
role of AI and robots as actors in networks or ecosystems. This suggests building
on actor–network theory (ANT) and Science and Technology Studies (STS) lit-
erature on non-human agency. Future research could focus on the following
research questions:
1. How can we better understand AI and robots as actors in service ecosystems?
2. How does human-to-human differ from human-to-non-human interaction?
3. What are the main conceptual differences between Actor-Network and a
service ecosystem?
AI and Robots in a Service Provider’s Value Co-creation

The literature on supporting service providers remains focused on predicting
changes in the market and other cognitive support in organizational decision mak-
ing. This is shocking given how AI and robots enable service provision today at
the level that is not possible with humans only. There are already a lot of industrial
robots and the market for service robots is on the rise. For instance, van Doorn et
al. (2017) discuss how AI-based applications exist and are under development
from robot waiters to surgeon robots in hospitals. As AI and robots take up more
tasks in organizations, it becomes interesting to study how employees perceive
the robots in various contexts of service provision. Hence, we suggest the follow-
ing questions:
1. Why do service providers adopt AI and robots in their processes?
2. What is the typology of AI-based benefits for service providers?
3. How do employees perceive different kinds of robots as co-workers in
various tasks and situations?
AI and Robots in a Beneficiary’s Value Co-creation

The roles of AI and robots in a beneficiary’s value co-creation processes and well-
being remain a nearly untouched territory in marketing and service research. This is
shocking given that we already have technologies such as Siri, Alexa, Google
Assistant and Cortana that can be employed to serve us in everyday routines from
turning on lights to ordering food. The use of AI changes our service experience by
making it easier to order but there is much more in it that requires further research.
AI can be employed to change behaviours beyond transactions which, in turn, influ-
ence co-creation of value in a service ecosystem (Jaakkola & Alexander, 2014). As AI
is actually using pre-programmed algorithms, ethical considerations with software
specifications are recommended in various AI-based solutions. In the following, we
provide some sample questions that tackle these identified issues:
1. How can robots enable better frontline customer service?

2. What are the ways to improve customer engagement through AI?
3. What are the ethical considerations when using AI-based decision-making?
AI and Robots in a Systemic Value Co-creation

The systems-oriented conceptualization of value captures that value is
phenomenological (Vargo, Akaka, & Vaughan, 2017): it is perceived experientially
and differently by actors in varying contexts in a service ecosystem. Therefore,
we encourage scholars to study AI and robots in various contexts referring to a
broad set of societal stakeholders (such as communities, governments and media)
that partake in co-creation of value. Particularly, we highlight the need to study
the potential of AI and robots in transformative service research.
1. How can AI and robots facilitate transformative service research, like
improve citizens’ experience of safety?
2. What are the AI-enabled ways to improve the trustworthiness of media?
3. Does robot surgery cut healthcare costs in peripheral areas?
Shopping Bots in Value Co-creation

Till date, robots have mostly been utilized by retailers in online shopping.
However, there are also shopping bots (alternatively, artificial software agents or
shopbots) that ‘conduct a range of shopping-related tasks via the Internet, with
minimal interaction by the individual on whose behalf the agents are shopping’
(Redmond, 2002, p. 57). Shopping bots have been recognized to shop based on
either what they are asked to do (e.g., ‘book me a haircut every six weeks’) or
learn from their owner’s behaviour (e.g., ‘I always reserve a table in my wife’s
favourite restaurant on our anniversary’). While the potential of shopping bots has
been recognized in the consumer market (Redmond, 2002) and the supply chain
procurement (Nissen & Sengupta, 2006), there has been no discussion in the
reviewed marketing and service articles on how shopping bots affect value
co-creation.
1. How do shopping bots influence the buyer’s and seller’s perception of value?
2. What are the most important elements for a shopping bot to learn to facili-
tate value co-creation?
3. What influences the sense of trust when employing a shopping bot?
Autonomous Shopping Devices (Shopping bot 3.0) in Value Co-creation

As a next logical step in the development of AI and robots, we consider that a benefi-
ciary’s decision-making will shift towards smarter AI-enabled machines. We envision
a future in which AI-packed autonomous devices make purchasing decisions and act
more autonomously than the shopping bots suggested by Redmond (2002). For
instance, an autonomous vehicle can choose to go to an automobile repair shop on its
own based on its self-diagnostics and online reviews (by humans and non-humans) of
car maintenance services. It can alternatively decide to stop in a drive-in restaurant
based on its analysis of the passengers’ nutritional needs, estimated delivery times and
online reviews. We call this kind of a machine as Shopping bot 3.0. Autonomous
shopping devices are linked to each other over the Internet, and can hence learn from
the behaviour of other humans and other devices, and act autonomously. Consequently,
service providers must focus on algorithms and optimize their goods and service pro-
cesses also for shopping bots rather than just for humans. In the future, people may
start questioning how much of their daily purchase decisions are given out for
machines and how to ensure that these devices take into account the well-being of a
beneficiary as well as the viability of a wider community.
1. How to improve technology engagement (a new form of customer engage-
ment for autonomous shopping devices)?
2. How to conceptualize value co-creation for an individual and for a wider
system for machines to make better decisions in the market?
3. In what ways do AI and robots shape ecosystems, and what are the conse-
quences for service providers?
Postphenomenological Research on AI and Robots in Value Co-creation

What is not currently discussed in the reviewed articles, is how technology mediates
our perception of value. This calls for postphenomenological research (Ihde, 2008;
Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015; Verbeek, 2005) in marketing and service research.
Postphenomenology can be used to describe the relations of humans with
technological devices and to explain the behaviour of humans. While ANT aims at
describing actors and their interplay around a specific technology, postphenomenology
aims at describing the construction of individual meaning, action and perception
through technological devices (Verbeek, 2005). Postphenomenology moves beyond
the idea of ‘technology as an actor’ to ‘technology as a mediator of experience’. As
AI and robots become more integrated into our daily lives, it becomes important to
study the potential of postphenomenology in understanding service experience and
perception of value. New questions arise which will look deeper into our collaboration
with machines, as well as with other human beings in the presence of robots.
1. How will AI-backed augmented reality mediate service experiences?
2. Do people prefer watching sports events with a loud robot audience or with
silent humans?
3. How does the presence of frontline service robots mediate human to human
interactions?
Limitations of the Study

The systematic literature review allowed us to focus on a manageable yet large
number of studies to consolidate an unbiased (compared to simple judgmental
reviews) and transparent view of the current research on AI and robots in value
co-creation. We acknowledge that following the methodology can leave some key
research out of scope. Particularly, this is a challenge when the search criteria are
limited to title, abstract and keywords and cannot be extended to full texts.
Consequently, some articles that studied the same theme but used slightly differ-
ent concepts may have been excluded from our review. To avoid this, we got
familiar with the research prior to conducting the systematic search and added
search words (machine learning, deep learning and neural networks) that could
refer to literature on AI and robots. Other scholars can review the literature by
adding new search terms or alternatively by finding these terms in the full text. To
ensure that we did not miss any key articles, we also glanced through the search
results using full-text search in EBSCO Business Source Complete. For instance,
while our systematic search did not return any articles published in Journal of
Marketing, the full-text search function reveals that there are 102 articles pub-
lished in Journal of Marketing (until the end of May 2018) with at least one of the
search terms mentioned in the text. While there are studies that provide interesting
questions for future research, like ‘What role can cognitive systems, general arti-
ficial intelligence, and automated attention analysis systems play in delivering
personalized customer experiences?’ (Wedel & Kannan, 2016, p. 114), and even
theme-related conceptual framework on smart technology-empowered learning
from frontline interactions (Marinova, de Ruyter, Huang, Meuter, & Challagalla,
2017), in general, our choice of search terms were effective in revealing studies
that focus on AI and robots.
As another limitation, this study focuses on top journals in marketing and ser-
vice research. While this choice can be justified based on earlier literature reviews,
we understand the threat of missing key literature in other journals. For instance,
Strategy & Leadership and Decision Support Systems have featured several arti-
cles on AI and robots. A quick glance of other journals revealed interesting debate
on the human–machine relationship and the required changes in company strate-
gies. Still, references to value co-creation seem to be rare and more indirect in
other outlets than in the reviewed publications.
Conclusion
We contribute to marketing and service research by initiating an important sub-
field of value co-creation literature. We identify the first set of literature on AI and
robots in value co-creation, namely, generic field advancement, supporting ser-
vice providers, enabling resource integration between service providers and ben-
eficiaries, and supporting beneficiaries’ well-being. While this categorization
does not reveal much about the role of AI and robots in value co-creation, it is
useful to illuminate the gaps in the state-of-the-art literature and give suggestions
for steps forward: towards a more comprehensive understanding of technology in
value co-creation. This means shifting the research focus towards beneficiaries
and their technology-mediated value co-creation. Combining research in value
co-creation with theories that focus on non-human agency opens new ways of
approaching interaction and resource integration. Our future research agenda sug-
gests building on ANT and STS research to understand the agency of technology
in value co-creation. Considering that technology has agency, it opens new inter-
esting research avenues around shopping bots that are likely to influence value
co-creation in the future. As a part of this discussion, we envision autonomous
shopping devices (Shopping bot 3.0) that are linked to each other over the Internet,
and can hence learn from the behaviour of other humans and other devices, and
act autonomously. We also encourage our colleagues to conduct postphenomeno-
logical research to be better geared for analysing how technology (including AI
and robots) mediates the individual experience of value. While envisioning a
futuristic world, we provide a set of research questions that become crucial in the
near future. It is important for scholars to be prepared for the future by developing
concepts and philosophies that are aligned with service ecosystems featured by
AI, robots and autonomous devices.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/
or publication of this article: This research was supported by the Academy of Finland (315604).
Appendix
Table A1. Search Criteria Employed in Web of Science and the Exclusion
Criteria for the Final Selection of Articles
Number of
Function Articles
Stage 1 Scan the web of science database with search words
1.1. Scan the database with relevant search words to identify 580,671
the articles published on the topic: TS = (‘artificial
intelligence’ or ‘machine learning’ or ‘deep learning’ or
‘neural network*’ or robot*)
Table - A1 Continued
Table - A1 Continued
Number of
Function Articles
1.2. Scan the database to identify the total amount of articles
published in the chosen publications:
SO = (Journal of Service Research or Journal of Services
Marketing or Service Industries Journal or Journal of Service
Management or International Journal of Service Industry
Management or Journal of Service Theory and Practice or
Managing Service Quality or Service Science) or SO = (Journal
of Marketing or Journal of Marketing Research or Journal of 31,019
Consumer Research or Marketing Science or Journal of the Academy
of Marketing Science or Journal of Retailing or Journal of Business
Research or Marketing Letters or International Journal of Research
in Marketing or Journal of Product Innovation Management)
1.3. Combine the search terms to identify the articles published 61
on the topic in the chosen publications
Stage 2 Analyse papers in relation to the topic and create exclusion
criteria to select relevant articles for review
2.1. Exclusion criterion 1: Exclusion of the articles that have Exclusion of
mentioned AI or robotics-related words in the abstract or 13 articles
keywords but do not discuss them in the full text
2.2. Exclusion criterion 2: Exclusion of the articles that have Exclusion of
employed AI in collecting or analysing data but do not discuss 16 articles
the usefulness of the AI-based method to co-create value in
the article
Final selection 32
Note: The asterisk (*) represents any group of characters, including no character.
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Article
Value Transformation in Journal of Creating Value

4(2) 229–242
the ‘Let’s Play’ Gaming © 2018 SAGE
SAGE Publications
Subculture sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2394964318804705
Jason Boomer1
Tracy Harwood2
Tony Garry3
Abstract
Let’s play is a globally significant phenomenon in creative online content genera-
tion that has evolved from gaming culture. Little is understood about the behav-
iour and motivations of community participants to generate creative content or
the values they associate with their creative work. This research explores the
processes let’s play players engage in to transform and extract value from content
generation, and the roles of firms in its development. Drawing on Bourdieu’s
(1989, Sociological Theory, 7(1), 14–25) frames of capital, this research identifies
four types of values (social, cultural, economic and symbolic) and examines the
processes for content creation and sharing. Findings identify a complex interplay
between the forms of values together with the paramount aim of creating a
symbolic value for delayed economic gain. This has implications for how firms
involved in developing partnership propositions (such as platforms, game asset
producers and games publishers) develop and extract a future economic value.
Keywords
Let’s play, value transformation, cultural capital, netnography
Introduction
Let’s play comprises non-narrative ‘animated filmmaking within a real-time virtual
3D environment’ (Marino, 2004, p. 1; Menotti, 2014). It is a contemporary social,
1
Sidefest, Leicester, UK.
2
Professor of Digital Culture, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.
3
Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Department of Marketing, Otago Business School, University of Otago,
New Zealand.
Tracy Harwood, De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester LE1 9BH, UK.
E-mail: tharwood@dmu.ac.uk
productive and creative form within video gaming culture, where hacking and mod-
ifying content (modding) is often observed in the prosumptive practices of its com-
munity (Cova, Dalli, & Zwick, 2011; Toffler, 1980). The popularity of the let’s play
phenomenon has grown significantly since its emergence in 2005 (Klepek, 2015),
with a global forecast of 500 million views (Statista.com, 2016). The practice has
become a mass cultural endeavour, largely described as the user-generated content
(UGC) by game developers and publishers. It encompasses video game walk-
throughs, reviews and other gameplay videos that are live-streamed over the Internet
to fan followers and archived in curated playlists. It has an increasingly central role
in the digital economy (Lessig, 2008; Terranova, 2000) and has directly attributed
billions of dollars in sales for firms such as Twitch.tv.
Its popularity is particularly evident in the high-profile successes of a relatively
small number of creators, who have generated millions of followers and signifi-
cant incomes through revenue shares of embedded advertising and sponsorships
(Dredge, 2014). Its key impact is in its ability to engender work-like digital skills
among its community of practice (e.g., Menotti, 2014; Payne, 2011) through UGC
encompassing what is ostensible immaterial labour (Cote & Pybus, 2007;
Lazzarato, 1997; Terranova, 2000). Lazzarato (1997) proposes, ‘productive coop-
eration and the social relationship with the consumer [which] is materialized
within and by the process of communication … [and means] it is increasingly
difficult to distinguish leisure time from work time. In a sense, life becomes
inseparable from work’. This is central to the concept of the social factory where
the ‘work process [has] shifted from the factory to society’ (Cote & Pybus, 2007;
Terranova, 2000, p. 33), particularly in relation to the digital economy. Hence,
labour is transformed to Kuchlich’s (2005) concept of playbour and Newman’s
(2008) assertion that live-performed let’s play (Menotti, 2014) is inherently pro-
duction. Despite this, little is understood about how creators or firms derive value
from this. This research aims to provide empirically generated insights into the
processes of value creation and transformation between community members and
firms through the production and consumption of let’s play.
Literature Review
Video games are interactive, immersive virtual experiences defined as ‘… a
specific kind of digital entertainment in which the gamer interacts with a digital
interface and is faced with challenges of various kinds, depending on the plot of
the game’ (Zackariasson & Wilson, 2012, p. 5). Huizinga (1949) identifies rules
and performance of an act as particularly pertinent to game play. Rules become
norms, and performance, being an intellectual or imaginative work, emanates
from behaviours, strategies and player-performance required in order to adapt to
changing environments. Newman (2008) suggests that there is an ‘inherently
social, productive and creative nature [to] these cultures that surround and support
videogaming’ (p. vii). This intimates an almost instinctual integration of culture
into self whereby language, behaviour and patterns of thinking are shared and
internalized over time, shaping the ways in which community members emerge
Boomer et al.231
and interact through practice, and value is manifested (Henri & Pudelko, 2003;
Wenger, 2000).
Conceptually, values are attributes ascribed to something either explicitly or
implicitly by an individual or group and may be consciously or unconsciously
held (e.g., Alder & Gudersen, 2008). Adopting a service marketing perspective,
value is idiosyncratically determined by customers through their consumption
and use of a firm’s proposition (e.g., Grönroos & Ravald, 2011; Prahalad &
Ramaswamy, 2004; Vargo & Akaka, 2009; Vargo & Lusch, 2008). Value is there-
fore integrated (or ‘co-created’) by the customers through their interaction with
the product without which, as Grönroos and Ravald (2011) argue, there is no
value. The role of the firm is to provide opportunities for customers to become
actively involved in experiences through which they derive value (e.g., Grönroos,
2008). Thus, within the let’s play phenomenon, practices of the community are
not so much about value-in-exchange between a game developer and a game
player, say where a game is purchased by a player (Toffler, 1980), but is typical of
the emerging shift to recognizing value-in-use (e.g., Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010;
Vargo & Lusch, 2008), where the game becomes an operant resource for the
player. Furthermore, value is highly subjective in nature (Bolin, 2012), being con-
tinually shaped and transformed by its context, and influenced by historical, soci-
ological and geographical factors where something of value in one time–space
setting will have a different value in other settings (e.g., Cova & Paranque, 2016;
Grönroos, 2011; Jafari, 2017).
Drawing on Bourdieu’s (1989) economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital
and Baudrillard’s (1969) similar conceptualization of value frames, value within
the let’s play community potentially exists as social value through networking and
collaboration in co-creating content; cultural value through learning and develop-
ment of advanced production techniques and developing work-like skills; eco-
nomic value through revenue generated by advertising and sales of merchandise;
and symbolic value in the ability to develop an audience and inspire them to
action such as to buy the game, create their own content and so on. Baudrillard’s
work emphasizes consumption over production and has become a popular theo-
retical lens through which to view contemporary media practice such as the let’s
play phenomenon (refer, e.g., Manovich, 2001). His critique of ‘homo economi-
cus’ as a counterpoint to conspicuous consumption (e.g., Baudrillard, 1969) is
also used within the consumer culture theory field of marketing (e.g., Arnould &
Thompson, 2005). Bourdieu, however, draws on ‘habitus’ in relation to ‘a system
of schemes of production of practices and a system of perception and appreciation
of practices’ (1989, p. 19). In particular, his cultural theory reflects a dual ‘high-
brow/lowbrow’ examination of conspicuous consumption, reflecting a commodi-
fication of an artistic production (‘Hollywoodization’). Bourdieu’s work is
therefore highly relevant here, particularly, in light of his discussion on the ways
in which economic capital is transformed into symbolic capital through the use of
cultural capital by means of artistic endeavour and education (Bourdieu, 1977).
That said, a key challenge from a firm’s perspective remains in capturing and
transforming value generated by let’s play players into something of value for the
firm, for example, economic value through reintegration of cultural capital.
Furthermore, it is the application of skills developed through associated creative

and production processes that appear to be exploited by firms as platforms for
advertising (Hayes, 2008). Prosumption activities (Fiske, 2010; Toffler, 1980) not
only enable community members to attain an elevated status, where symbolic
value is derived from numbers of followers (converted through views of content),
but also has a value as audience reach for the firm (Cova, Dalli, & Zwick, 2011).
Yet the development of an audience may be only one objective for a community
member (Crane & Sornette, 2008). By engaging in collaborative works, let’s play
players potentially transfer value through the process of building extended reputa-
tion, providing collaborators with significant influence over a community of fol-
lowers through opinion leadership (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955; Robinson, 1976) in
a word-of-mouth marketing context (e.g., Trusov, Bucklin, & Pauwels, 2009).
Furthermore, there is a continuous flow of information from game developers to
the consumer through ongoing game development processes. This highlights the
dual importance of mass media and interpersonal influence (Baksy, Hofman,
Mason, & Watts, 2011) as resources are absorbed by each party, reused and fur-
ther value generated through an iterative process of production and consumption
between firm and customer. Yet such inter-relational processes remain theoretical,
and value derived by creating let’s play content is to date unexplored. This article
examines how the value frame concepts relate to the let’s play phenomenon by
generating insights into the nature of value derived by creators and evaluating
how these are transformed by firms and community members.
Methodology
This research adopted a mixed methods interpretivist design (Husserl, 1980;
Schwandt, 1999) that enabled the subjective nature of value-in-use inherent
within the let’s play community to be explored (Bechmann & Lomborg, 2012;
Geertz, 1973). Netnography was used with the filmic content and to evaluate the
online, social nature of let’s plays (Kozinets, 2015) in conjunction with semi-
structured interviews (McCracken, 1988; Newton, 2010). Research drew on the
prior experience and established access of one of the authors within the commu-
nity as a participant observer of the focal phenomenon (Arneson, 2009; Schwandt,
1999). Access with this community is notoriously difficult, and hence the experi-
ence of one of the researchers was critical in generating data for this study. Key
informants within the let’s play community were identified and approached to
participate in the study (Henri & Pudelko, 2003). A purposive sample of opinion
leaders was selected together with a random selection of the 10 most recent exam-
ples of their creative work (see Table 1).
Interviews were conducted via Skype (Denscombe, 2014; McCracken, 1988)
and focused on circumstances surrounding the establishment of the participants’
social media streaming channels (e.g., YouTube, Vimeo). Participants reflected on
value they had derived and how this had been transformed through the creative
development processes they employed. Content analysis of the creative work
Boomer et al.233
produced by participants (streamed videos) was used to evaluate references they

made to other texts, the common language and symbols they used in their creative
expression (Krippendorff, 1980), as well as the cultural references related to the
specific game(s) they used. The approach to community and brand engagement
undertaken by participants was evaluated with reference to supporting social media
used by participants (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, game brand and culture-related fora)
identified during interviews. Value themes were allowed to emerge through the
analysis of the datasets following a process of reading/viewing and rereading/
viewing interview transcripts/videos/field notes (e.g., Miles & Huberman, 1994).
Themes related to the value concepts identified in the literature review, further
discussed in the next section. The process was led by one of the authors and
categories finalized in discussion with a co-author to enhance the objectivity in the
development of themes. The final themes are presented in Table A1.
Table 1. Sample Description
Sample Method Data Analysis

Participant observation Observation Field notes (approximately 17
pages), thematic analysis
7 community members Interviews, each lasting Transcribed (approximately 44
(opinion leaders) approximately 1 hour A4 pages), thematic analysis of
interviews
70 let’s play videos Netnography Video content was accessed
(portfolios of opinion online, thematic and content
leaders) analysis of let’s play content
Research Channel Duration of Connectivity

Participant Subscriber Participation in (Number of Social
ID Base Community Networks Used)
P1 69 3 years 4 months 4
P2 1,293,746 5 years 8 months 7
P3 18 3 months 4
P6 386,123 6 years 1 month 7
Source: The authors.
Findings
Reflective of Bourdieu’s (1989) value forms, four key themes encompassing eco-
nomic, symbolic, social and cultural values emerged comprising eight categories
related to advertisements, merchandise, subscriptions, calls to action, comments,
collaborations and friends, face cam and technical advances (see Table A1). This
article outlines the key findings in relation to each of the four value themes.
Economic Value
While some participants appeared to have little experience of how to transform
the social, cultural and symbolic values they derived from creative and collabora-
tive processes, others demonstrated a clear focus on economic utilization. This
was evidenced through the inclusion of advertisements and promotion of mer-
chandise in their content videos. For these participants, findings highlighted how
monetary income was derived from a focus on the view count, enabling partici-
pants to determine how and where they should monetize their content and monitor
their successes. What is interesting is that participants sought to confound estab-
lished game business models by transforming their social, cultural and symbolic
values into economic value, indirectly. It is primarily through the development
and use of their technical skills with which participants created content, and, in
turn, participants identified that these skills could potentially be used to support
the generation of future economic value through employment. For example, some
used ‘show reels’ of their work to assist in finding jobs. In such ways, participants
perceived themselves to be beneficiaries from the relatively complex tri-partite
interactions involving the game, the platform and advertisers. Findings suggest
that a strategic approach was adopted by some participants who were aware of the
preliminary steps that were needed to be taken to prepare for future monetization
by focusing on viewing figures and profiling their work, thereby elevating their
social status, collaborations and skills and, consequently, transforming economic
value to symbolic, social and cultural values.
Symbolic Value
Symbolic value is evidenced by the inclusion of calls to action and subscriber
sign-up mechanisms embedded in participant videos. Unique ‘idents’ were used,
enabling let’s play players to brand their content across multiple-media platforms.
Participants highlighted a focus on subscriber counts, which contributed to or
indicated elevated status and influence over target audience. This was also evi-
denced through the membership of the YouTube Creator Academy, which strongly
encourages collaboration and opinion sharing among community members. While
the status established through numbers of followers was clearly a focus, partici-
pants did not consider their status within their target audience to be central to the
success of their channels. Instead, it is the altruistic nature of content creation that
determined their status. Status was also achieved through a superior product
knowledge, brand access and longevity in the community. Participants identified
a tension with current business models of the content platforms (e.g., YouTube)
that aim to support transformation of symbolic to economic value. Participants
Boomer et al.235
predominantly seek to generate social and cultural values and transform it to sym-
bolic value.
Social Value
Let’s play is inherently about social activities, regularly featuring groups of friends
playing computer games together. They are shared for an audience to engage with
and also actively promote communication between let’s play players and their
viewers. Collaboration and friendship are therefore dominant themes, emphasiz-
ing that content creators are highly motivated by sociality of the environment.
This is perhaps surprising, given that these content creators are often perceived to
be bedroom-based ‘nerds’ with few friends. Indeed, the content itself is highly
illuminating—it is evident that social value was the most universally sought after
form of value in this study. All participants stated that they enjoyed producing the
content with or for friends and themselves, but they also actively sought to create
new networks through their efforts. Evidence from the video content suggests that
more frequent collaboration occurs on the larger channels or those that form a part
of a larger group of let’s play players. Conversely, however, there seems to be little
relationship between collaboration and comments on content by community
members, despite the various social networks connected to the primary content
channels. Thus, while Facebook and Twitter were cited by participants as impor-
tant social networking tools, they also commented that engagement with their
community was mainly an ‘in-the-moment activity’ (e.g., live streamed), under-
taken while using a specific platform to create content. The generation of social
value has thereby become embedded within the content creation process and is
indelibly tied to the generation of cultural value.
Cultural Value
The production of let’s play content promotes the development of work-like skills,
ranging from presentation skills, cinematography, audio–visual capture and edit-
ing, storyboarding and compositing, and therefore the generation of cultural value
was considered a main motivating factor. This is evidenced through the use,
development and statements of intent to advance participants’ creative and techni-
cal skillsets. Some cited specific examples of original inspiration, demonstrating
their creeping involvement in creative activities that transformed them from con-
sumers to producers and moved them beyond imitation to genuine personal
growth as creators of content. The development process described by participants
intimates that it is social value from the ‘in-the-moment activity’ that transforms
to cultural value. Thus, participants demonstrate that the transformation process is
well understood, identifying the applicability of their learned skills to more tradi-
tional work environments such as broadcast TV, radio or graphic design.
Discussion and Conclusion

Social networks serve as points of contact with a community, where members can
assemble around a topic of common interest (Henri & Pudelko, 2003). Payne
(2011) suggests that engagement with and consumption of content can result in
the development of skills. The transition to prosumer (Toffler, 1980) is achieved
by becoming an active participant in a community of practice (Wenger, 2000).
The social aspects observed through collaborations in the let’s play community,
however, intimate that content is the result of a form of playbour, inherently play-
like yet requiring work-like skills (Kuchlich, 2005; Newman, 2008). Findings
highlight that social, cultural and symbolic values are a corollary to economic
value (Bourdieu, 1989). Within the community, the actual and potential value
transformations identified (see Figure 1) demonstrate a level of simultaneous
naivety and sophistication among community members, as well as an emergence
of the focal phenomenon. Research highlights that while building reputation is
tied to generating income, it may not be possible to generate income without
developing reputation in the process. Yet, economic value is not a primary goal for
participants. Although there is a potential for economic value to be derived from
content, there is little evidence that this is pursued by participants. Even those
expressing an interest in translating the production of let’s plays into future
employment (Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010) claimed not to be incentivized by mon-
etizing content. Thus, it appears that community members use the economic value
they have generated and transform it into symbolic value (Bourdieu, 1989) that is
to an elevated status (Dennis, 2008; Potter, 2007; Weaver, 2008). The embedding
of advertising within UGC, while technically easy for skilled individuals to
achieve via the monetization strategies facilitated by firms (e.g., platforms and
sponsors), was found to be of little significance from an economic value perspec-
tive. However, the presence of adverts was felt to enhance credibility and conse-
quently social, cultural and symbolic value within the community.
Figure 1. Value Transformation in Let’s Plays

Boomer et al.237
Let’s play monetization relies on the audience consuming the content, and so
economic value for the creators is not guaranteed. Ritzer and Jurgenson (2010)
states this as a conscious move by social networking platforms to extract value
from their users, relying on unpaid UGC to add value to their platform. While the
direct economic impact of let’s play is a frequent topic of discussion (Brightman,
2016; Dring, 2014; Hodson, 2015; O’Rourke, 2015), this is not reflected in the
actions of participants in this research. Even though such processes may be inter-
preted as exploitative, it is through the production of content that community
members highlight a demonstrable skillset to potential future employers, which
derives for them an indirect form of economic value. Participants highlight how
their passion for gaming and fun over income is of paramount importance, sug-
gesting that let’s play is a form of playbour (Kuchlich, 2005) that makes use of
work-like skills (Newman, 2008).
Bourdieu (1989) suggests that symbolic value is the acknowledgement of other
forms of values as legitimate, and, as such, it cannot be pursued in and of itself. In
the research, the process of developing an audience and building status is evi-
dently time-consuming and challenging, but what is surprising is that the pursuit
of symbolic value was claimed by participants to actively destroy social value of
the community. For optimum symbolic value, a two-step flow of communication
(Lazarsfeld et al., 1944) was identified, whereby community members transfer
credibility onto a product by featuring it in their content, effectively engaging in
word-of-mouth promotion for the game (Trusov et al., 2009). The symbolic value
these community members then generated, by association, preserved their ele-
vated position. Economic and social values are developed through this elevated
position in the form of collaboration and shared audiences (YouTube Creator
Academy, 2015). Combining this with the social requirement for generating eco-
nomic value, as explored above, then highlights the need to pursue social value
before symbolic value becomes accessible. For example, the social nature of a
platform means that a video with great skill (cultural value) will be shared, and
collaborative videos (social value) will transcend communities. These findings
provide empirical insight into value transformation processes reflected in
Bourdieu’s (1977, 1989) comments on the central role of culture.
Managerial Implications
Although the economic value derived from let’s plays and players contributes to
firm results, for example, from extended-brand reach generated through the pro-
cess of community building (e.g., Lazzarato, 1997; Terranova, 2000), ultimately
participants do not view firms as being exploitative per se. This intimates that a
future managerial challenge for firms is likely to emanate from the introduction of
new methods for social engagement that enable community members to develop
their technical skills. In turn, developments will disrupt value flows among firms,
players and intermediaries who provide operant resources that facilitate the crea-
tive practices of community members (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Summary of Value Flows in Let’s Play

What is interesting in this study is that there appears to be a balance of power

among the community members, platforms and firms in their respective recogni-
tion and use of the breadth of values generated. While all seek to exploit the phe-
nomenon, they do so for very different reasons, and therefore this appears to be a
complementary process. Intermediaries, the platforms (e.g., YouTube) facilitate
let’s play players in developing their audience (and thus the community) but pri-
marily act to benefit firms (as intellectual property [IP] owners) and the platform
by mediating programming, funding, cross-promotion, partner management and
digital rights management (Mediakix.com, 2016). In acting as agents between the
firm and the community, they underpin the value transformation process
(Newman, 2008) into economic value for all stakeholders. Community members
seek to generate symbolic value to support, in one way or another, their career
development, while firms seek to use the skills of content creators, which in turn
generate status, to extract revenue through associated advertising (platforms) and
building audience (games developers).
Overall, it appears that platform owners may be misinterpreting how and why
content creators engage in their partnership propositions and use advertising. The
economic model devised by platform owners, at least from the perspective of
community members, is of relatively little significance to them. From the busi-
ness perspective, as new methods of social engagement are developed, or techni-
cal skills are improved, and with little evidence of loyalty to the platform beyond
its tri-partite role with games publishers and developers, it will be interesting to
observe how they in particular retain their customer base (firms and communities)
to achieve a sustainable return on investment.

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship and/or publication of this article.
Boomer et al.239
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication
of this article.
Appendix
Table A1. Value Themes
Value Theme Category Description

Social Comments and Comments and replies to specific comments
replies indicate social engagement with the let’s play
community and reinforces the connection between
the let’s play player and their viewers.
Collaborations Collaborations evidenced by multiple let’s play
and friends participants in a single video, each of whom have
their own let’s play channel. Friends may also be
included in let’s play but are not otherwise required
to be active in producing let’s play content. Both
are an evidence of social interaction.
Cultural Face cam A ‘face cam’, or forward-facing camera, is used
by let’s play players to overlay their face on a
video. This is a skill that is popular among more
technically proficient let’s play players as a way of
adding quality, or indicating professionalism.
Technical Technical advances observed in let’s play videos.
advances These may include chroma key (green screen),
face cam, proficiency with audio and video editing
and multi-cam setups, where the video can switch
among several players’ video streams.
Symbolic Subscription The subscription box overlay on videos indicates
box the let’s play player’s desire to boost their
subscriber base. This highlights their aim to
develop an audience and thus their symbolic value.
Calls to action Calls to action are where the let’s play player
encourages the viewer to ‘share’, ‘subscribe’,
‘comment’ or ‘visit the store’ to buy merchandise.
This shows an attempt to exert influence over the
viewer and is an evidence of symbolic value.
Economic Advertisements Advertisements included as part of YouTube’s
partner programme, videos are overlaid with the
advert. Economic value is derived from the cost-
per-mille set by the platform (e.g., US$2/1,000
views, Green, 2015)
Merchandise Products such as t-shirts, hats and event tickets
are sold by the let’s play player to followers and
subscribers.
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Article
Creating Value through Journal of Creating Value

4(2) 243–254
Social Media: Fresh © 2018 SAGE
SAGE Publications
Evidence from Cultural sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2394964318805616
Organizations http://journals.sagepub.com/home/jcv
Cristina Caterina Amitrano1

Roberta Gargiulo1
Francesco Bifulco1
Abstract
The impacts of digital technologies are gaining increasing attention in the service
literature, and a growing number of cultural organizations are using online websites
and social media to interact with their actual and potential customers. However,
the contributions developed by service marketing scholars show little interest in
examining the role of underlying technologies in a particular service experience
context, namely, the cultural heritage context and the corresponding visiting expe-
rience. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to analyse how digital technolo-
gies, especially social media, can help cultural organizations stimulate customer
engagement. To reach this aim, we conducted a single exploratory case study of
a communication project developed by the National Archaeological Museum of
Naples (MANN) to attract their actual and potential Italian and foreign visitors.
The achieved results allow for us to show how digital communication tools can
stimulate customer engagement in a cultural heritage context.
Keywords
Digital technologies, social media, value creation, engagement, cultural organizations
Introduction
Business and service scholars’ attention is increasingly focused on digital technolo-
gies, above all, social media (Gummerus, Liljander, Weman, & Pihlström, 2012;
Hollebeek, Glynn, & Brodie, 2014; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010; Nisar & Whitehead,
1
Department of Economics, Management, Institutions, University of Naples Federico II, Campus
Monte S. Angelo, Naples, Italy.
Cristina Caterina Amitrano, PhD, Department of Economics, Management, Institutions, University of
Naples Federico II, Campus Monte S. Angelo, Naples 80126, Italy.
E-mail: cristinacaterina.amitrano@unina.it
2016), especially on their role in facilitating interactions among actors (e.g., B2C)
and intensifying customer engagement (Demangeot & Broderick, 2016; Nisar &
Whitehead, 2016; Polo Peña, Frías Jamilena, & Rodríguez Molina, 2014; Yang, Lin,
Carlson, & Ross, 2016).
The growing number of personal devices—above all, smartphones—connected to
the internet and interacting with sensor networks led to the enhancement of features
such as personalization and interactivity. This digital-based scenario has translated to
higher levels of immersion, flow, and cognitive and emotional fit (Parise, Guinan, &
Kafka, 2016) throughout the entire customer journey (Følstad & Kvale, 2018; Verhoef
et al., 2009), which ‘encompasses the total experience, including the search, purchase,
consumption, and after-sale phases of the experience’ (Verhoef et al., 2009, p. 32).
The impacts of digital technologies are analysed by scholars from different
fields of study, and one of these is service literature, with particular attention paid
to service retail (Demangeot & Broderick, 2016). Further, in the last decade, cul-
tural organizations, such as museums and archaeological parks, are also propos-
ing enhanced visiting experiences through a wider use of websites, mobile apps,
virtual and augmented realities, and social media to extend the boundaries of the
visit (Kuflik, Wecker, Lanir, & Stock, 2015; Russo Spena, Amitrano, Tregua, &
Bifulco, 2017). This perspective is evident both in funding programmes, such as
the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 with initiatives on 3D technologies,
digital cultural assets, virtual museums and social platforms, and in studies that
analyse how cultural organizations confer a growing importance to digital tech-
nologies, as revealed in the last Digital Culture report (Nesta, Arts Council of
England, 2017).
Despite these developments, the contributions by service marketing scholars,
especially those using the service-dominant (S-D) logic lens, show less interest in
examining the role of digital technologies in stimulating engagement and ena-
bling visiting experiences in cultural heritage contexts, as demonstrated by recent
calls for research (Mosca, Bertoldi, Giachino, & Stupino, 2018).
Therefore, the purpose of this research is to analyse how a particular kind of
service organization—which cultural organizations are—can stimulate customer
engagement through the use of digital technologies, in particular social media. To
reach this aim, this article starts with a review of the service literature that links
value creation through engagement with digital technologies and social media in
order to identify how these emerging technologies enhance the service experi-
ence. Then, the context of analysis and the methodology are presented, followed
by the results of the single exploratory case study. Finally, implications for schol-
ars and practitioners are described with some conclusions.
Literature Review
Digital Technologies and Value Creation

Today, service marketing scholars agree that firms only develop value propositions
that acquire value when customers begin to interact with firms (Vargo & Lusch,
Amitrano et al. 245
2004). To create a valuable value proposition, firms should pay attention and enhance
the ways they interact with their actual and potential customers. Digital technologies
are great enablers of this process, providing the necessary information and resources
for value creation (Mahajan, 2016; Polese, Mele, & Gummesson, 2017).
The importance of technologies has been underlined in the literature starting
from the analysis of how information and communication technology (ICT) can be
used by firms to achieve a better interaction and collaboration with their customers.
The role of ICT was highlighted in the empirical study conducted by Polo Peña et
al. (2014) who used the S-D logic lens to demonstrate that firms’ capability to
exploit ICT has a direct effect on ‘value co-creation that affects both perceived
value for the customers and their loyalty towards the service firm’ (p. 1054).
The link between value creation and technologies has been further developed
through the analysis of online technologies in retail. In particular, Demangeot and
Broderick (2016) delineated a framework for the understanding of customer
engagement through websites; they identified and analysed four dimensions of
‘interaction engagement and activity engagement (...) that prompt customers’
desirable behaviours, namely, behavioural engagement and communication
engagement’ (p. 829). Among these dimensions, communication engagement has
been considered as an antecedent of customers’ intention to recommend the firm
and continue their interactions with it through repeated purchases.
Recently, Vargo and Lusch (2017) updated the state-of-the-art and underlined
the future perspective of S-D logic; they stated that S-D logic has been used—and
can further be used—to extend the concept of customer engagement beyond the
purchase phase, as it should be related to the entire customer journey (Følstad &
Kvale, 2018).
This enlarged perspective confirms the identifiable literature thread traced
above, wherein customer engagement appears to be related to the co-creation of
value, not only during the main service encounter—that is, the purchase—but also
when customers approach any firm’s communication about value propositions
and after-service experience.
Looking at the specific service experience in the cultural heritage context, it is
difficult to find contributions by service marketing scholars, especially those using
the lens of S-D logic, as the main authors are scholars from different fields of
study—for example, information management, tourism, and marketing—and the
existing contributions are mainly theoretical or focused on retail and healthcare.
In particular, some authors of information management and business studies
have analysed how cultural organizations use technologies, especially websites,
underlining the results of the development from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and its
implications on the interactivity of museums’ institutional websites (Capriotti,
Carretón, & Castillo, 2016). Further, Gombault, Allal-Chérif, and Décamps
(2016) have identified three main reasons why cultural organizations use ICT,
namely, to digitalize or promote heritage and develop the audience; moreover,
they stressed how many cultural organizations have a conservative approach in
line with the stream of research in information management that has delineated
the three strategy types of defender, analyser and prospector (Padilla-Meléndez
& del Águila-Obra, 2013).
To the best of our knowledge, there are currently only two contributions in
service marketing studies that analyse the visiting experience through the S-D
logic lens. Minkiewicz, Evans, and Bridson (2014) analysed the co-creation of
arts/heritage from the consumer perspective during the service experience, distin-
guishing between the co-creation of value and the co-creation of the experience as
‘the experience that is co-created, with value as a derived outcome’ (p. 49). The
authors explained that co-creation of the experience through a focus on three main
elements, namely, co-production with participation and interaction, engagement
with emotional and cognitive immersion, and personalization based on the pos-
sibility to tailor the experience and interact with employees thanks to technolo-
gies. The other contribution is by Antón, Camarero, and Garrido (2018) who tried
to enlarge the previous study through the analysis of the co-creation before and
after the visit; the authors considered engagement from a wider perspective, not
only as immersion during the visit, but as something that museums have to create
after the visiting experience even more with the help of technology.
To summarize, contributions to the culture-based service experience are mainly
based on two perspectives: the customer experience during the visit (Antón et al.,
2018; Minkiewicz et al., 2014; Russo Spena et al., 2017) and cultural organiza-
tions’ attitude towards the use of technologies (Capriotti, Carretón, & Castillo,
2016; Gombault et al., 2016; Padilla-Meléndez & del Águila-Obra, 2013).
Social Media and Value Creation

When cultural organizations started using digital technologies to enhance value
creation, they started using social media too, which are considered to be a driver of
new idea generation and competitive advantages because they allow for firms to
gain an in-depth understanding of their customers’ needs (Piller, Vossen, & Ihl,
2012). Among all the different definitions of social media, we rely on Kaplan and
Haenlein (2010), who said that social media are ‘a group of internet-based applica-
tions that builds on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and it
allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content’. Social media (e.g.,
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google + , YouTube, Flickr) are interactive platforms
where consumers can communicate with each other and with organizations. They
are not passive; on the contrary, as Bruns (2008) suggested, they act as ‘producers’
because they are directly involved in the value co-creation process.
Some authors have studied the relation between the use of social media and
firm performance (Piller et al., 2012; Rapp, Beitelspacher, Grewal, & Hughes,
2013; Trainor, Andzulis, Rapp, & Agnihotri, 2014), so value is given by the real-
time interaction between firms and consumers, by the co-creation of products and
services and by the opportunity to customize them thanks to the direct dialogue
offered by social media, which facilitates marketing activities, increases sales and
delivers customer service.
Other authors focused their attention on customers and, in particular, on the
relation between social media and social gratification (Simon & Tossan, 2018)
and customers’ psychological empowerment (Hsieh, Tseng, & Lee, 2018), which
Amitrano et al. 247
have an important role in value co-creation because social media facilitates the
dialogue between customers and firms, as well as among consumers, who share
their opinions and ideas about products and services and trust each other’s feel-
ings as members of a big online community.
Finally, other authors have followed another route to connect social media and
value creation. They focus their attention on the ability of social media to facili-
tate interaction among users; this interaction facilitates engagement (Barreda,
Bilgihan, Nusair, & Okumus, 2015; Gummerus et al., 2012; Hollebeek et al.,
2014; Nisar & Whitehead, 2016; Yang et al., 2016), which turns customers into
fans (Barreda et al., 2015) and generates positive electronic word of mouth
(eWOM) because, in a social media context, fans can share their experience with
other fans or non-consumers, and this contributes to value co-creation.
Social media offers a particular kind of service organization, namely, the
museum, the possibility to exceed its bounds and reach people every time and
everywhere. About the use of social media by museums, Kidd (2011) proposed
three frames: (a) the marketing frame, which can be used to inform people about
upcoming events and other activities, (b) the inclusivity frame, which is related to
the ability of social media to create online communities and can in fact be used by
a museum to build and sustain communities of interest around it, (c) and the third
frame is the collaborative one, which is directly linked to user-generated content
and the possibility offered by social media for consumers to co-produce the nar-
ratives of the museum in ways, the author says, that are ‘potentially more radical
and profound’.
Moreover, Padilla-Meléndez and del Águila-Obra (2013) underline the rela-
tion between social media and value creation in museums.
Aim and Methodology

As stated above, today’s museums operate in a context in which everything has
become more accessible thanks to digital technologies, so the audience’s expecta-
tions of the cultural service experience are increasing (Mosca et al., 2018; Russo
Spena et al., 2017), and this may influence value creation. Service marketing litera-
ture suggests that digital technologies can facilitate interactions among users and
between companies and users (Parise et al., 2016), and this may improve marketing
activities and engagement, leading to value creation (Hollebeek et al., 2014).
The aim of this research is to analyse these observations in a cultural heritage
context, in an attempt to determine how digital technologies and social media
could influence cultural organizations’ value creation through the reach and
engagement of actual and potential visitors. In particular, we want to understand:
RQ1 – What is the effect of digital communication channel use by museums?
RQ2 – How does social media stimulate customer engagement?
To answer our research questions and follow the methodological suggestions of
Eisenhardt (1989), we have conducted a single exploratory case study with the com-
bination of quantitative and qualitative data (Gummesson, 2017; Yin, 2014). We
have chosen the ‘OBVIA—Out of Boundaries Viral Art Dissemination’ project as
our case study, an initiative promoted in 2016 by the National Archaeological

Museum of Naples (MANN), realized in collaboration with the University of
Naples Federico II. This original communication project aims at ‘disseminating’ art
outside the physical barriers of the museum to capture potential and actual visitors
in their daily lives, trying to involve them.
To reach this goal, the museum uses many different communication channels
that we have summarized into five categories: (a) digital, (b) display and moni-
tors, (c) publishing, (d) word of mouth, and (e) festivals and events. The digital
category includes internet websites, newsletters, online newspapers and some
Facebook pages; the display and monitor group encompasses those technological
devices used in train stations, airports and subways; publishing comprises comics,
books and magazines published and delivered by the museum; the fourth category
considers the respondents who intercepted content about the museum thanks to
word of mouth; finally, festivals and events cover all those events (e.g., Giffoni
Film Festival, Comicon—International Comics Salon) in which the museum and
the project have participated.
We conducted our single exploratory case study through a two-step analysis:
first, we used customer surveys, which are an important support for marketing and
decision making in cultural organizations (Hulland, Baumgartner, & Smith,
2018), and as a second step, we conducted narrative interviews (Helkkula &
Pihlström, 2010) aiming to understand customers’ perceptions and experiences
about the digital communication tools proposed by the museum.
We built our sample by asking actual and potential Italian and foreign MANN
visitors—directly inside the Neapolitan Museum, in the train stations, the airport
and all those locations used by the project to disseminate the content of the
museum—how much time they spend on the web and if they had at least one
account on all the most popular social media, and in the event of a positive answer,
we submitted a multiple-choice questionnaire to them. All the questionnaires
were conducted personally, therefore, there is not a percentage not answered; fur-
ther, in order to elaborate our findings, we selected and analysed only those who
said they had intercepted communication channels of interest.
As a second step, we conducted narrative interviews with those that were will-
ing to answer to further questions. First, we analysed which kind of communica-
tion channels are the most intercepted by the sample, and thus the one that can
contribute the most to engagement and value creation.
To answer our first research question, we asked actual and potential visitors to
compile a matrix marking the communication channels with which they have
intercepted information about the museum, if they were at the museum for the
first time or not, and if they would be interested in receiving information and
participating in museum activities in order to analyse the engagement from two
different time perspectives, the ones actually engaged who are not at the museum
for the first time, and those potentially engaged in the future because they are
interested in the activities of the museum.
Furthermore, we split our sample into two different groups: we separately ana-
lysed digital users and social media ones, starting from the largest group, the digital
one, and then going more in depth into the social media one, which can be considered
Amitrano et al. 249
a small part within the digital group, in order to answer our questions and investi-
gate any differences between the two groups. The digital category includes all the
respondents who mark, among all the communication channels listed in the ques-
tionnaire, the digital ones (e.g., websites, newsletters and Facebook pages), while
the social media sample includes only the respondents who mark the social media
communication channels (e.g., Facebook pages, YouTube and Instagram).
To determine how social media tools stimulate customer engagement (RQ2), we
tried to understand—through narrative interviews—the perceptions and expecta-
tions about the museum’s social media, and what kind of tools (post, photo, video,
etc.) they prefer and which make them feel more engaged.
Findings
Survey Results
Our research started from 3,620 answered surveys, of which we analysed 1,735
that include, as stated above, respondents who intercepted communication chan-
nels of interest. We set off the analysis from the matrix with all the communica-
tion channels proposed by the museum through OBVIA; the digital ones were
actually the most intercepted by users (62.1 per cent), while respondents’ receipt
of display and monitors was 21.8 per cent; only 8.6 per cent of the consumers had
been reached by publishing, another 6.2 per cent knew about the museum thanks
to other communication channels (they spoke mainly of word of mouth commu-
nication by friends, tour guides, hotel staff, etc.) and finally 1.3 per cent of the
respondents knew of the project thanks to participation in festivals and events.
More in detail, among the digital communication channels, some are directly
managed by the museum, while others are managed in collaboration with
‘Trenitalia’, the main Italian train company. The primary digital communication
channel is the MANN official website, which had the highest response rate (43.1
per cent), followed by four Facebook pages used by the museum to engage and
interact with visitors: the first one is called ‘Museo Archeologico di Napoli’,
which has been intercepted by 27.9 per cent of the respondents; the second one is
‘OBVIA per il MANN’, visited by 12.7 per cent of users; the third Facebook page
is called ‘MANN App&Tv’, with a response rate of 10.7 per cent; and, finally, the
last one is the Facebook page/profile managed by the director of the museum (8.5
per cent). Among the communication channels managed in collaboration with the
train company, we included into the digital category the official website of the
train company, which reached 10 per cent of users, and a newsletter used by the
train company to interact with consumers with a response rate of 6.1 per cent.
Finally, we have included into this group online newspapers and press reviews of
OBVIA on the web, which had a response rate of 3.6 per cent.
The analysis of these results allowed for us to create the following two samples:
the first one, which we called ‘Digital’, includes the 77.4 per cent Italian respond-
ents and 22.6 per cent foreigners, and is mainly composed of young respondents
(20.3 per cent are 19–25 years old and 20.7 per cent are 26–35); the second sample,
called ‘Social media’, includes 83.9 per cent Italian and 16.1 per cent foreigners,
and 50.6 per cent of this sample are 19–35 years old (23.5 per cent are 19–25 and
27.1 per cent are 26–35).
Going more in depth in our research, in order to identify engagement (ongoing
interactions), we pointed out that within the digital group, 60.6 per cent of
respondents are actually not at the museum for the first time and visit it multiple
times in a year, and this result is surpassed by the respondents in the social media
sample, as 68.1 per cent of them visit the museum more than once a year.
Looking at the other engagement perspectives (communication engagement),
50.1 per cent of respondents within the digital group and 49.6 per cent of respond-
ents in the social media group are interested in receiving advertising and informa-
tion about guided tours and other activities offered by the museum. The results are
very similar between the two samples, and about half of the respondents in both
the groups emerged as interested in being potentially engaged in the future.
Narrative Interviews’ Results

As a second step of our research, we conducted interviews with respondents who
were willing to answer further questions, selecting only those that have been inter-
cepted by social media communication channels.
The interviews allowed for us to identify the enthusiasm of engaged customers
in seeing new communication tools developed by the museum, and the rising of
expectations among customers who intercepted museum communications for the
first time:
ʻI like to define me a MANN’s friend as I visit the museum at least one time every six
months and I felt so excited when I saw the MANN stories on the Facebook official
page. I think these tools are so useful for those customers that don’t know yet the
Museum’s collections’. (Interview no. 3, 28-year-old female)
ʻI learned about the MANN for the first time through YouTube as I saw the cartoon
spots created by the museum and these innovative ways of interaction by a cultural
organization that I usually think about as boring acted as a stimulus for me to visit the
museum’. (Interview no. 12, 20-year-old male)
The respondents also affirmed liking posts and photos on social media more than
other kinds of digital communication tools on social media channels, whether
they were actual visitors or potential ones:
ʻThe availability of information on working hours and ongoing events on the MANN
Facebook page helps me to better plan the visit and the possibility to quickly receive
answers to my questions on Messenger makes me feel important in the relationship with
the museum’. (Interview no. 5, 38-year-old-male)
Amitrano et al. 251
ʻI use Instagram a lot and I saw the first photos of MANN collections while I was
searching for #naples during the planning of my trip to Italy. I felt very impressed about
the long queues to enter the museum that I decide to add it to my checklist of places to
visit’. (Interview no. 9, 25-year-old female)
Discussion and Conclusion

The survey results presented above allow us to answer RQ1 on the effect of using
digital communication channels: the official website and the Facebook pages used
by the Museum are more attractive (62.1 per cent) than the other traditional com-
munication channels—that is, displays and monitors, newspapers and maga-
zines—for both actual and potential visitors.
Further, the results confirm that customers reached by social media (more than
those reached by digital channels, e.g., the web) are more engaged in cultural
organizations; as they follow the activities of the Museum, they visit it more times
in a year and they also recommend that others visit it.
The narrative interview results of our research are useful to answer RQ2 on
how social media stimulates customer engagement: the respondents that have
intercepted social media communication channels have highlighted the enthusi-
asm of customers in seeing new communication tools developed by the Museum,
and rising expectations, especially among those who intercepted its value propo-
sition for the first time. Moreover, the interviews allow us to underline how cus-
tomer engagement can be related to particular kinds of tools used by the Museum
on social media, namely, posts and photos, as respondents state that these digital
tools make them feel more engaged.
The data collected and analysed in this research confirm the perspective
identified in the service marketing literature, especially through the lens of S-D
logic, in relation to firms’ use of technologies (Polo Peña et al., 2014). Today,
museums and other cultural organizations are increasingly interested in exploit-
ing digital technologies to create value for their actual and potential visitors,
particularly through the use of official websites and social media pages, news-
letters and online newspapers.
Specifically, the results show how digital communication is the most attractive
among the different kinds of channels a cultural organization can use to start and
carry out ongoing interactions with their actual and potential visitors. In fact,
starting from the ongoing interactions, the results confirm that customers reached
by digital communication channels and social media are those already engaged
with the museum, as they have visited it many times and have followed the devel-
opment of its activities.
Moreover, looking at the willingness to be engaged, the results confirm the role
of communication engagement (Demangeot & Broderick, 2016), which refers to
customers’ commitment to future dialogue and interaction with the museums,
especially through online initiatives (Antón et al., 2018; Mosca et al., 2018).
These results of communication engagement, similar for both digital and social
technologies, and those of ongoing interactions, which are higher for social tech-
nologies, confirm that visitors who interact with the museums through social
media have a higher propensity to return in order to continue the relationship than
those equally engaged with only digital technologies (e.g., the official website).
Finally, the results gained through the analysis of the Museum—with its ongo-
ing project OBVIA—allow us to affirm that new attitudes towards digital and
social technologies are emerging among cultural organizations that differ from the
conservative one, especially in Southern Europe, as revealed in the literature
(Gombault et al., 2016); further, communication projects like the one analysed
could help cultural organizations move from a defender strategy to a prospector
one (Padilla-Meléndez & del Águila-Obra, 2013).
However, the research is not free from limitations, and these are mainly related
to the methodological choices. First, the results achieved from the survey could
have been influenced by two variables, namely, the geographical variable, as for-
eigners may find it difficult to come to Naples often, and the age variable, as digi-
tal and social media users are mostly young and are able to use technological
devices without any problems to search for and find what they are looking for, so
they don’t need to be reached because they look for the activities of the museum
independently. Further, a consideration can be made about the two samples: the
digital one includes communication channels managed in collaboration with the
train company, while in the social media one, there are just the communication
channels directly managed by the Museum: the little margin between those who
can be potentially engaged in the two samples (digital 50.2 per cent, social media
49.6 per cent) could be explained by the presence, in the digital one, of the com-
munication channels used by partner companies.
Finally, as we have focused our attention on a single case study, in order to go
into more depth analysis, it would be interesting to get back in touch with the visi-
tors and understand the dynamic and evolution of their engagement through time.
It would also be appealing to analyse how smaller cultural organizations are using
digital and social technologies to enhance the creation of value, as the selected
case study is a national museum.

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication
of this article.
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Article
Co-creating Value in Journal of Creating Value

4(2) 255–272
People’s Interactions with © 2018 SAGE
SAGE Publications
Cognitive Assistants: A sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2394964318804689
Service-System View http://journals.sagepub.com/home/jcv
Md Abul Kalam Siddike1

Youji Kohda1
Abstract
Purpose—The main purpose of this study was to develop a service-system
framework in which people interact with cognitive assistants (CAs) for co-cre-
ation of value, such as enhanced communication and better task management.
Methodology—Qualitative research was undertaken to deeply investigate and
explore the value co-created through people’s interactions with CAs. A total of
32 interviews were conducted in three phases. The interview data were analysed
using MAXQDA 12.
Results—The results of this study indicate that most of the users use Apple’s Siri,
Amazon Eco or Google Home as their CAs and that people’s interactions with CAs
are influenced by their trust in and relative advantages of using CAs. The results also
indicate that a diversity of value, such as enhanced communication, better task man-
agement, enhanced information retrieval, enhanced learning and better data-driven
decisions, is co-created through interactions between people and CAs.
Implications—We developed a service-system framework in which CAs are
considered as actors and introduced the concept of ‘autonomous agency’ for
controlling and coordinating people’s interactions with CAs.
Originality—This is the first study on the value co-creation from people’s
interactions with CAs (artificial-intelligence-based systems) by proposing a ser-
vice-system framework in which CAs are considered as actors.
Keywords
Autonomous agency, cognitive assistants (CAs), co-creation of value, trustworthi-
ness, relative advantages of innovation, service systems
1
Graduate School of Knowledge Science, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan.
Md Abul Kalam Siddike, Graduate School of Knowledge Science, Japan Advanced Institute of Science
and Technology, 1-1 Asahidai, Nomi City, Ishikawa 923-1292, Japan.
E-mail: kalam.siddike@gmail.com
Introduction: Motivations and Objectives

Cognitive assistants (CAs) (e.g., Alexa, Siri, Google Now and Cortana) are
increasingly important in users’ daily lives (Kiseleva et al., 2016). A recent report
showed that 84.9 per cent of users use Amazon Echo for setting timers followed
by playing songs (82.4%), reading the news (66.0%), setting alarms (64.2%),
checking the time (61.6%), telling jokes (60.4%), controlling smart lights (45.9%),
adding items to a shopping list (45.3%), connecting to paid-music services
(40.9%), providing traffic information (36.5%), managing to-do lists (32.7%) and
buying items on Amazon Prime (32.1%) (Dunn, 2017). An increasing number of
companies are working on CAs, and each month a new company starts working
on their version of CA (Siddike, Spohrer, Demirkan, & Kohda, 2018).
A service system is the configuration of people, technologies, organizations
and shared information that interact over time for the co-creation of value
(Spohrer, Vargo, Casewell, & Maglio, 2008). Service-system entities interact via
value proposition to co-create value for both interacting entities (Maglio &
Spohrer, 2013; Spohrer & Maglio, 2009; Spohrer, Kwan, & Fisk, 2014). In ser-
vice science, technologies are considered as resources with no rights and respon-
sibilities (Spohrer & Maglio, 2008, 2009). On the contrary, service-dominant
(S-D) logic takes into account technologies as operant resources that is resources
capable of acting on other resources to create value (Akaka & Vargo, 2014; Vargo
& Lusch, 2016).
Researchers in service science (Maglio, 2017; Spohrer, 2016) and S-D logic
(Akaka & Vargo, 2014; Vargo & Akaka, 2012; Vargo & Lusch, 2016) described
the roles of technology in service systems and service ecosystems. In S-D logic,
Akaka and Vargo (2014) viewed and conceptualized technology as an operant
resource, which has become critical for the value co-creation, service innovation
and system (re)formation. In service science, Spohrer (2016) indicated that tech-
nologies (CAs) could be used to augment human intellect and interact with people
to co-create knowledge, technology and organizations. However, studies have not
been conducted on how CAs interact with people in a service system, participate
in the value co-creation process and what are the factors that influence people to
interact with CAs in the service system. Therefore, we filled this gap by develop-
ing a service-system framework for the value co-creation from people’s interac-
tions with CAs.
The main objective of this research was to develop a service-system frame-
work for the value co-creation from people’s interactions with CAs. To achieve
this objective, we posed one major research question (MRQ) and three subsidiary
research questions (SRQs):
MRQ: How have value been co-created through interactions between people
and CAs?
SRQ1: What is the current state-of-art of using CAs?
SRQ2: What are the factors influencing people to interact with CAs?
SRQ3: What are the values co-created through interactions between people
and CAs?
Siddike and Kohda 257
Literature Review
Service Systems
A service system is a fundamental abstraction of service science. It is a useful
abstraction of value and the value co-creation (Spohrer & Maglio, 2008, 2009). A
service system is the configuration of people, technologies, organizations and
shared information that interact over time for the value co-creation (Spohrer et al.,
2008). Service-system entities interact via a value proposition to co-create value
for both interacting entities (Maglio & Spohrer, 2013; Spohrer & Maglio, 2009;
Spohrer et al., 2014). The function of a service system is to use its resources and
the resources of others to improve its circumstances and that of others. The man-
ner of acquiring resources is through the exchange of one service system’s applied
resources with those of other service systems (Spohrer et al., 2008). On the con-
trary, a service ecosystem is a core concept of S-D logic. A service ecosystem is
defined as ‘a relatively self-contained, self-adjusting system of resource integrat-
ing actors that are connected by shared institutional logics and mutual value crea-
tion through service exchange’ (Lusch & Vargo, 2014, p. 161).
Role of Technologies in Service Systems

Both service science and S-D logic have emphasized the role of technologies in
service systems (Akaka & Vargo, 2014; Spohrer & Maglio, 2008; Vargo & Akaka,
2012). Service science considers technology as one of four resources that is people,
organization, technology and shared information. In a service system, technology
is the resource that has no rights and responsibilities (Spohrer & Maglio, 2008,
2009). From this view, technology contributes to the value co-creation by enabling
the sharing of information within and across service systems (Spohrer & Maglio,
2008). In the structurational model of technology, Orlikowski (1992) viewed tech-
nology as a medium and outcome of the human action. Similarly, Arthur (2009)
considered technology as a process as well as a product of the human action. The
S-D logic conceptualizes technology as an operant resource that is one that is capa-
ble of acting on other resources to create value; thus, it has become critical for the
value co-creation (Akaka & Vargo, 2014; Vargo & Akaka, 2012).
Conceptualization of Cognitive Assistants

The CAs represent both the evolution of technological capability and the
evolution of social trust (Spohrer, 2016). The CAs are new decision tools
(Demirkan et al., 2015; Siddike, Iwano, Hidaka, Kohda, & Spohrer, 2017;
Spohrer & Banavar, 2015) and capable of providing high-quality recommendations
(Siddike et al., 2018; Spohrer, 2016; Spohrer, Siddike, & Kohda, 2018). They
help people make better data-driven decisions by enabling them to understand
the environment around them (Demirkan et al., 2015; Spohrer, Siddike, & Kohda,
2017). We use our previous definition for CAs: new decision tools provide people
with high-quality recommendations and help them make better data-driven
decisions to understand their environment (Siddike et al., 2018; Siddike &
Kohda, 2018). Some CAs can provide general recommendations, which are
considered low-level CAs in this article. For example, Apple’s Siri, Amazon
Echo and Microsoft’s Cortana are considered to be low-level or general CAs.
Some CAs are considered as being high-level in this article, for example,
autonomous driving cars or CAs used for cancer treatment, such as IBM Watson
Oncology for cancer treatment, Google’s driverless car and Uber’s driverless
taxi. The CAs can learn from different sources over the Internet.
Conceptualizing Role of CAs in Service Systems

As stated earlier, CAs are new decision tools to provide people with high-quality
recommendations and help them make better data-driven decisions for them to
understand their environment (Siddike et al., 2018; Spohrer & Banavar, 2015;
Spohrer et al., 2017). On the other hand, S-D logic considers technology as pri-
marily knowledge and skills for creation of new resources (Akaka & Vargo, 2014;
Vargo & Lusch, 2016). In this research, CAs are considered operant resources in
a service system since they interact with human actors to provide high-quality
information that help create new resources for human actors.
Factors Influencing People’s Interactions with CAs

Currently, the capabilities of CAs are limited and are very new to the market.
Therefore, at this initial level, users trust in using CAs, and relative advantages of
using CAs are considered the most important factors for influencing people in
using CAs (Siddike & Kohda, 2018). The progression from a cognitive tool to
assistant to collaborator to coach to mediator is in fact a progression of trust
(Siddike & Kohda, 2018). As trusted social entities, CAs can augment human
intellect and interact with people to co-create knowledge, technology and organi-
zations (Siddike et al., 2018).
Research Methodology
A qualitative research was undertaken that can be seen as an appropriate approach
given the need to develop in-depth understanding of a relatively new area (Yin,
2014). This research was conducted in three phases. In the first phase, a total of 10
online interviews were conducted with the fellows of first Hawaii International
Conference on System Sciences Doctoral Consortium. In the second phase, a total
of 12 (10 face-to-face and 2 online) interviews were conducted with the participants
from the fifth International Conference on The Human Side of Service Engineering,
17–21 July 2017, The Westin Bonaventure Hotel, Los Angeles, California, USA. For
the final phase, a total of 10 (9 face-to-face and 1 online) interviews were conducted
from IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA, USA.
The interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed. All the interview data
were used throughout the analysis. The collected data were analysed using the
techniques of ‘grounded theory’ (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). A seven-step procedure
was followed to analyse the data. At the first phase, the data of online and face-to-
face interviews was converted into word format. In case of recorded data, we lis-
tened to it again and again. We verified the contents of the recorded interview
several times. It was ensured that any important information was not missing.
Second, word files were then converted into MAXQDA 12. The purpose of con-
version was to code the textual data. In this phase, all the data (32 interviews)
were converted into MAXQDA software. Third, open coding was done by reading
line by line and sentence by sentence. In this case, an author reads every interview
several times to generate an initial open coding. Each interview was read sentence
by sentence, word by word, as well as paragraph by paragraph. In some cases, a
sentence or paragraph was read several times to generate the initial code. Fourth,
an axial coding was done for generating concepts. In this phase, every open coded
item was scanned and read several times to generate concepts. Fifth, a selective
coding was conducted for generating categories. In this phase, we combined all
similar concepts into the same group to form ‘categories’. Sixth, core categories
were developed for developing the theory. Here, we group together all the similar
categories to form the core categories. Finally, the theory was developed based on
the core categories.
Results of Data Analysis
Background of Interviewees
Users were categorized as general and expert. General users (GUs) included sev-
eral students and professors, one researcher and one chief executive officer
(CEO). Developers and engineers were considered as expert users (EUs). Table 1
lists the background information of these users.
Current Use of Cognitive Assistants

The results indicate that most of the users use Apple’s Siri followed by Amazon
Echo and Google Home. In addition, one GU uses Google Now and a home security
device for controlling lights, temperature, air conditioning and alarms. Furthermore,
an EU uses almost all current CAs. Table 2 lists the current uses of CAs.
Table 1. Categorization of Interviewees
User Type Categorization of Interviewees Number

Student 15
Assistant professor 3
General users Professor 2
Researcher 1
CEO 1
Director 2
Executive director 1
Anthropologist 1
Designer 1
Expert users
Research staff member 2
Research group lead 1
CEO 1
Pseudonym 1
Total 32
Table 2. Current Uses of CAs (Multiple Responses)
Name of CA GUs (n = 22) EUs (n = 10) Total

Yes Yes
Apple’s Siri 15 7 22
Amazon Echo 3 1 4
Google Home 2 1 3
IBM Watson 0 1 1
Facebook M 0 1 1
Samsung’s Viv 0 1 1
Salesforce Einstein 0 1 1
Tesla driverless car 0 1 1
Google Now 1 1 1
Home security device 1 0 1
Factors Influencing Value Co-creation

The results also indicate that there are mainly two factors that is trustworthiness
and relative advantages that influence people’s intention to interact with their
CAs. Figure 1 shows the factors influencing the value co-creation with CAs.
Trust in information
Trusting
recommendation
Trust in vendors
Security & privacy Reliability
Dependability
Self-reliant
Functionalities
Attractiveness
Voice attractiveness
Fashionable Attractiveness Trustworthiness
Brand attractiveness
iveness
Tools
Emotional bonding
Friendship
Sense of happiness Emotional

attachments
Propensity to use
Integrated part of life CAs
Controlled over
tasks
Providing Enhanced cognition
information
Commonsense
Enhanced intelligence
Context
understanding
Awareness of Relative
options advantages
Finding information Enhanced capabilities
Decision support
Better quality of
work
Better quality of life Enhanced

performance
Better performance
Figure 1. Factors Influencing People’s Interactions with Their CAs for Value Co-creation
Trustworthiness
Reliability, attractiveness and emotional attachments are the influential factors for
generating people’s trust in interacting with CAs. Reliability denotes the abilities,
capabilities, competencies or functionalities of CAs for providing high-quality rec-
ommendations or information. Attractiveness plays the most important role for
promoting people’s trust in interacting with CAs. Attractiveness is considered to be
in the physicality as well as in the voice. It is also how fashionable and attractive it
is to use CAs that is using CAs is a point of pride, personal style or statement of
identity. Emotional attachments also play a significant role in promoting trust in
interacting with CAs. The results indicate that emotional attachment encompasses
feelings that users have when they interact with their CAs similarly to how they
interact with their family members, friends and people in their community.
Relative Advantages of Using Cognitive Assistants

We considered CAs as innovations. Therefore, interacting with CAs users receive
different advantages.
Even if users interact with the same CAs, advantages differ from user to user.
As a result, relative advantages play an important role for people’s interactions
with CAs. Enhanced cognition, intelligence, capabilities and performances are the
relative advantages received by people interacting with CAs. Enhanced cognition
is considered as the thinking and understanding capabilities generated through
interactions (conversation) between people and CAs. The CAs enhance people’s
intelligence in terms of understanding the context and environments of people
with deep clarity. Enhanced capabilities are considered as the ability of people to
take smart/wise/right decisions in a complex and conflicting situation by leverag-
ing the latest information through interactions with CAs. The CAs enhance peo-
ple’s performance in terms of enhancing the quality of work and life, as well as
effectively and efficiently making better data-driven decisions.
Value Co-creation with CAs

The interview results indicate that an enhanced communication, better task man-
agement, enhanced information-seeking behaviour, enhanced learning and better
data-driven decisions are the value co-created through the interaction between
people and CAs. Figure 2 shows the co-created value.
Enhanced Communication
Enhancing communication is a fundamental value co-created through interactions
between people and CAs. For example, a better communication is ensured through
placing calls while driving. A GU indicated that ‘I use Siri periodically to make
phone calls as I drive’ (GU 4). The results also show that people interact with CAs
to show the best routes for going to a desired destination. An EU indicated that ‘I
use CAs for GPS because I do have good navigating skills. So CAs help me read
maps’ (EU3).
Enhanced Task Management

Enhanced task management is another important value created through people’s
interactions with CAs. The interview results indicate that most of the users interact
with CAs to manage their tasks, including managing calendar and to do lists, dic-
tating memos and setting alarms. Some GUs expressed that ‘I can easily dictate
memos using my CAs’ (GU3, GU5, GU8 and GU9). Some indicated that ‘I can
easily manage my “to-do-lists” using my CAs’ (GU3, GU5, GU8 and GU9).
Finally, an EU expressed that ‘CAs help me at work to find and manage my calen-
dar. It would help me get into my brain a context a little bit faster’ (EU3).
Enhanced Searching of Information

Enhanced searching of information is another important value co-created through
interactions between people and CAs. Most of the users interact with CAs for
obtaining answers to general questions, searching for information and for a quick
search. Some GUs indicated that ‘I can easily get information about people by
using my CAs’ (GU3, GU8 and GU9). Users also interact with CAs for finding
music and videos. Some GUs expressed that ‘I can easily find music and videos
to listen and watch using my CAs’ (GU3, GU5 and GU9). Users interact with their
CAs to find places to eat. A GU indicated that ‘I use Siri for finding places for
dinner. I tell Siri, “hi Siri. I am hungry”’ (GU19). Finally, some users also interact
with CAs to find recipes for cooking. An EU expressed that ‘Now I use my CAs
for recipes. It is very convenient to search for recipes’ (EU4).
Enhanced Learning
Enhancing learning is another important value created through interactions with
CAs. Users currently interact with CAs for learning purposes. The results indicate
that users interact with CAs for looking up word meanings. Some GUs indicated
that ‘I can easily look up the meaning of words using my CAs’ (GU3, GU5, GU8
and GU9), and they interact with CAs for solving numerical calculations. Some
GUs expressed that ‘I can easily solve numeric calculation problems using my
CAs’ (GU5, GU8 and GU10).
Placing calls
Enhanced
Showing routes communications
Providing
directions
Setting alarms
Managing calendar
Enhanced management
Dictate memos of tasks
To do lists
To do notes
Searching
information
Quick search
Co-created values
Finding places
Enhanced searching
information
Finding recipes
Finding music
Finding videos
Looking meanings
Enhanced learning
Numerical
calculations
Recommendations
Providing options Enhanced decisions
Providing choices
Figure 2. Co-created Value through Interactions between People and CAs

Enhanced Decision-making
People interact with CAs for making better data-driven decisions. Enhancing
decision-making is another important value generated through interactions
between people and CAs. Most of the users interact with CAs to receive high-
quality recommendations through better options. In addition, CAs help people by
providing several choices or options for people to make better data-driven deci-
sions. An EU indicated that ‘Yes, absolutely. CAs are already making decision for
me. I think as algorithms get more sophisticated, there will be even more CAs,
and they will help us to make better decisions’ (EU7).
Service-System Framework for Creating Value from

People’s Interactions with CAs
We developed a service-system framework for the value co-creation from peo-
ple’s interactions with CAs based on the results of data analysis and our under-
standing of CAs, S-D logic (Akaka & Vargo, 2014; Vargo & Akaka, 2012) and the
duality of technology (Orlikowski, 1992). The roles of technology are changing
from traditional assistive (tools) to augmenting to automating to autonomic (Rao
& Verweij, 2017). The assistive type of technology fits well within the traditional
service science view of using technology as a tool for improving performance
(Spohrer et al., 2008). However, augmenting, automating and autonomic tech-
nologies imply agency and direct interactions with people and the environment
(Rao & Verweij, 2017). This is why we developed our service-system framework.
Figure 3 illustrates our framework.
In this service-system framework, a user’s interaction with CAs (arrows a and
b in Figure 3) is influenced by the trust in and relative advantages of interacting
with CAs (arrow c). Users interacting with CAs for certain types of requests and
CAs providing precise recommendations or options are considered as a value
proposition. At the same time, users receive support from CAs, which is consid-
ered as a value determination by users. Through interactions with users, CAs can
Trustworthiness;
Relative advantages
CAs
c
a
b
Users
(generals
& experts)
Figure 3. Service-System Framework for Co-creating Value with CAs

learn emotions, feelings and the context of users. They can also learn over the
Internet. Therefore, the current capabilities or functionalities of CAs improve
over time. These improved capabilities of CAs will ultimately influence the trust-
worthiness and relative advantages (arrow d), and new types of influencers will
emerge in the service system. Table 3 lists the meanings of the arrows of this
service-system framework.
Table 3. Meaning of Arrows in Service-System Framework
Arrows Meaning
Value proposition: the CAs can provide precise options or
a recommendations, and users interact with CAs for certain types of
requests.
Value determination: users interact with CAs for obtaining certain
b types of recommendations. If the recommendation is helpful for
users, it is determined as a value by users.
Influences: trustworthiness and relative advantages influence users
c
to interact with CAs.
Emergence: through interactions with users, CAs learn the
d emotions and feelings of users. This updates the existing influential
factors and evolves new influential factors over time.
Value Proposition
Value proposition is defined as the service offerings proposed by actors using their
knowledge, skills, experiences and capabilities for the benefit of other actors
(Siddike & Hidaka, 2017). CAs as actors can provide precise recommendations,
options or information to users. As in S-D logic, actors interact with other actors
through the value proposition (Lusch & Vargo, 2014; Vargo & Lusch, 2017). In
service science, entities interact with other entities through the value proposition
(Spohrer & Maglio, 2008). In our service-system framework, users interact with
CAs for certain types of requests, and CAs can provide precise recommendations or
options to the users (arrows a and b), which are considered value propositions.
Value Determination
Value determination is defined as the actual benefit received by actors in service
interactions (Siddike & Hidaka, 2017). We consider the co-created value as those
determined by users as beneficiaries (actors). The CAs influence the way in which
value is determined (Akaka & Vargo, 2014). According to S-D logic, a value is
always uniquely and phenomenologically determined by the beneficiary (Vargo &
Lusch, 2017). In our service-system framework, users interact with CAs for
obtaining recommendations or options. If the recommendation is helpful, it is
considered a value determined by the users as beneficiary. The CAs also benefit
in terms of learning the emotions, feelings and the context of users.
Influential Factors
In S-D logic, the value co-creation is coordinated through actor-generated institu-
tions and institutional arrangements (Vargo & Lusch, 2017). In our proposed
service-system framework, trustworthiness and relative advantages play the most
influential roles for motivating users to interact with CAs for the value co-creation.
Emergence
The capabilities of technologies improve over time (Arthur, 2009). In our pro-
posed service-system framework, CAs can learn the emotions, feelings and the
context of users through interactions with them. The CAs can also learn over the
Internet. Therefore, the current capabilities or functionalities of CAs improve
over time. These improved capabilities ultimately affect the trustworthiness and
relative advantages of using CAs (arrow d in Figure 3). As a result of interactions,
new types of influential factors emerge over time. In general, institutions (formal
rules and regulations) influence users’ interactions in service systems (Vargo &
Lusch, 2017). However, informal institutions that is belief (trust) and norms
(motivations) also influence users’ interactions and actions in service systems
(Giddens, 1984; North, 1990). Therefore, trustworthiness (as belief) and relative
advantages (motivators) as informal institutions play the most important roles in
influencing users’ interactions with CAs in our proposed service-system frame-
work because CAs are evolving, and their capabilities are also evolving in current
service systems (Siddike et al., 2018).
Discussion
Theoretical Implications
This study represents the first attempt to shed light on how value is co-created as
a result of interactions between people and CAs in service systems. Therefore, our
service-system framework takes into account CAs as actors.
Figure 4 illustrates an evolution from the current service system to a future
one. In the current service system, EUs use low-level CAs under current insti-
tutions. Along with the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) (the middle
double-line arrow), users will change from expert to general (the bottom dou-
ble-line arrow) then the masses will start to use CAs. The capabilities of CAs
will then evolve. Kelly (2016) indicated that the evolution of technological
capabilities is inevitable by cognifying everything around people. As a result,
CAs will evolve as actors in future service systems. Finally, the masses will
Figure 4. Evolving Service System in Which CAs will Evolve as Actors

evolve and consider CAs as actors in service systems. The reasons for using
CAs will differ. At that time, CAs will be indispensable to the society. Almost
everyone will start to use CAs because there will be no alternatives or choices
for users. Diffusion theory of innovation (Rogers, 2003) suggests that the
masses will start to use CAs (technologies) when they become very ubiquitous,
and there are no choices or alternatives.
In the future, the ‘autonomous agency’ will emerge as a new institution, and
CAs will become actors in service systems. To some extent, CAs will be capable
of doing things by themselves. In this case, Bostrom (2014) stated that intelligent
systems consist of intelligent parts that are themselves capable of doing things.
For some purposes, autonomous agents have their own rights. Currently, CAs can
provide precise recommendations by learning the emotions, feelings, context and
environments of the people with which they interact. Therefore, they learn from
those interactions and improve their existing models. At the same time, CAs can
learn from structured and unstructured data over the Internet. As a result, CAs are
evolving and gaining more autonomous rights and responsibilities. Over time, the
autonomous agency will emerge as an institution in service systems.
Practical Implications
Theoretically, this is the first service-system framework in which CAs are consid-
ered as actors. There are several practical implications of this research. First and
foremost, this research broadens the areas of service science and S-D logic. The
proposed service-system framework provides a new way of rethinking the role of
emerging technologies (AI) in service systems. Second, this research identified
that attractiveness and emotional attachments are two important influential factors
for generating trust in using CAs. Therefore, the designers and developers of CAs
will benefit from this research and develop more attractive and emotional CAs.
Conclusion and Future Research Directions

The main objective of this research was to develop a service-system framework
in which people interact with CAs for the value co-creation. The results from
interviews indicate that people’s trust in and relative advantages of using CAs
are the factors that influence the value co-creation in service systems. Reliability,
attractiveness and emotional attachments influence users to promote trust in
interacting with CAs. Such trust has similarities with the literature on trust in
automation (Muir & Moray, 1996), in information systems (Lankton, McKnight,
& Thatcher, 2014), in robotics in terms the attractiveness of robots and the
feelings people have towards them (Yuksel, Collison, & Czerwinski, 2017) and
in CAs (Siddike & Kohda, 2018). Previously, Siddike and Kohda (2018)
conceptualized the components of trust in interacting with CAs. However,
trustworthiness as an influential factor was developed based on the results of
data analysis from this research.
The findings of this research indicate that relative advantages also influence
users to interact with CAs. Relative advantages have similarities with the technol-
ogy acceptance model (TAM), technology readiness index (TRI) and theory of
diffusion of innovation (Davis, 1989; Parasuraman, 2000; Rogers, 2003). In TAM,
Davis (1989) stated that using a particular system would enhance his or her job
performance. Similarly, TRI refers to people’s propensity to embrace and use new
technologies for accomplishing goals in home life and at work (Parasuraman,
2000). Finally, Rogers (2003) indicated that innovativeness provides relative
advantages to users of a particular technology.
This is the first time we attempted to investigate the value co-creation through
interactions between people and CAs. The results indicate that a diversity of value
is co-created through people’s interactions with CAs. Enhanced communication,
better task management, enhanced information retrieval, enhanced learning and
better data-driven decisions are the values co-created through interactions between
people and CAs. Enhanced communication is co-created through placing calls
while driving and showing routes and maps. The CAs make people’s daily life
more convenient (Davis, 1989; Siddike et al., 2018). Enhanced task management
is co-created in terms of managing different tasks including managing calendars
and to do lists, dictating memos and setting alarms. As CAs help people manage
different tasks more efficiently and effectively (Rouse & Spohrer, 2018). Enhanced
searching is ensured by quickly searching for information, places to eat or visit,
music and videos. Lee and Choi (2017) showed that CAs (conversational agents)
help users conduct such searches. Enhanced learning is co-created in terms of
learning new things, word meanings and solving numerical calculations. From the
augmentation perspective, CAs (AI technologies) augment people’s capabilities
through learning (Rouse & Spohrer, 2018). Finally, enhanced decision-making is
co-created in terms of providing better options, recommendations or choices.
Therefore, CAs help people make better data-driven decisions (Demirkan et al.,
2015; Spohrer & Banavar, 2015). People might think that relative advantages and
co-created value overlap. However, relative advantages are like potential value
(value proposition), and co-created value is actual value (determined value) deter-
mined by users. People might also think that co-created value makes up a list of
functionalities of CAs. Yes, CAs have certain capabilities (functionalities), but the
co-created value is the actual value (benefit or usage) determined by people while
interacting with CAs (using the functionalities of CAs).
We developed our service-system framework in which CAs will evolve as
actors based on the findings of this research and diffusion theory of innovation
(Rogers, 2003), as well as the theory of inevitable future (Kelly, 2016). People
might think that 32 interviews are too few for developing a service-system frame-
work. However, 32 interviews are sufficient to generalize the findings. We applied
the techniques of ‘grounded theory’ from data collection to theory development.
In grounded theory, the sample size is not the main factor for developing a theory
(Glaser & Strauss, 1967). In general, grounded theory leads from codes to con-
cepts to categories to theory development. As a result, the developed theory does
not need separate justification and testing because it came from real data (Glaser
& Strauss, 1967). Therefore, our service-system framework is a generalized
framework because it was developed from real data.
There are several limitations of this research. First, the expert interviews were
conducted at only one technology company in the USA. Therefore, future research
should be conducted covering several companies in which they have their own
CAs. Second, this research proposed a service-system framework in which CAs
will become actors. Therefore, future research should be carried out to justify and
validate the proposed framework. Finally, we introduced the term ‘autonomous
agency’ as an institution. Therefore, future research should be carried out to
deeply understand and explain this institution in service systems.

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship
Funding
This research is supported by a scholarship from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,
Science and Technology (Monbukagakusho) at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science
and Technology, Japan. In addition, we would like to thanks Dr. Jim Spohrer, Director,
Cognitive Opentech Group, IBM Research, Almaden, San Jose, CA, USA for allowing to
access in IBM and providing all kind of supports for data collection.
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Article
Solving a Social Issue Journal of Creating Value

4(2) 273–284
Using Information and © 2018 SAGE
SAGE Publications
Communication sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2394964318804697
Technology http://journals.sagepub.com/home/jcv
Yoshitoshi Kurose1
Yuuko Akiyama1
Ifte Hasan1
Abstract
In this study, we have introduced an information and communication technology
solution which enables the supporters of dementia patients to provide useful
information or hints to the concerned parties (family member, etc.) and thus
can support them in searching for such patients in case they go missing. Several
simulation/onsite testings of the solution were executed with the participation
of dementia patients, their family, dementia supporters and general residents of
a city. According to the result of the testing, the solution was proved to be effec-
tive in searching for missing dementia patients and was highly evaluated by the
concerned parties. While still there are some technical tasks need to be solved
before taking the service to a commercial level, the feedback from probable
users reflects that they think it is worth enough to pay a reasonable fee for using
such a service.
Keywords
Dementia-supporter, SDGs, AI, ICT, open innovation, co-creation
Introduction
In Japan, senior citizens (65 years or more) account for 26 per cent of the total
population in 2014, and it is expected to rise up to 39.9 per cent in 2060 if the
current state continues.1
1
Fujitsu Limited, Japan.
Ifte Hasan, Fujitsu Limited, Japan.
E-mail: hasan.ifte@jp.fujitsu.com
Therefore, the shift to an aging society is a vital issue in Japan. Among the
senior citizens, a very common disease is dementia which is a state of medical
condition when memory and other mental abilities gradually become worse due to
the loss of or damage to neurons in the brain.2,3 Very often, a dementia patient gets
stranded or finds it difficult to return home autonomously after going outside, and
according to several studies a good number of such patients goes missing every
day. A report says that the number of missing senior citizens with dementia
increases to 15,432 people in 2016 from 9,607 people in 20124 and still continues
to increase every year.
Thus, missing senior citizens with dementia has become a social problem, and
it is thought that an additional support is required to limit the damage caused by
this problem. Specially, when thinking about the future as the number of such
missing persons is expected to increase further, a social support system seems to
be a realistic solution. We think that the power of the information and communi-
cation technology (ICT) could be utilized in this regard which is already being
used for various purposes for an aging society.5 The major aim of this study is to
verify the hypothesis that ICT could be used to solve a social problem like demen-
tia patients get missing. To be more specific, we wanted to examine whether any
support by the ICT system could be effective to make it easy for the voluntary
co-operator (called a supporter) in taking initiative to rescue the missing dementia
patients, and we have done this based on a design thinking process.6 We have
designed a unique ICT system, developed the prototype and executed a couple of
proof-of-concept (PoC) tests to collect the actual feedback from the user of the
system. According to the result of the tests, it was understood that such a system
could be effective in searching for missing dementia patients and was highly eval-
uated by the users.
The remaining of this article consists of the background of the study, the
hypothesis, prototype development and verification, onsite testing and result,
discussion about the test result and, finally, the conclusion.
Background
When a dementia patient gets stranded and finds it difficult to return home auton-
omously, searching for such a person becomes both a mental and a physical bur-
den to the concerned parties. In addition, because of such senior citizens have the
risk of getting involved in serious occurrences such as train accident and so on, an
immediate correspondence is needed. So far, such missing dementia patients are
usually searched for by his/her family, police, municipality, security company,
private supporters and so on.7,8 But from now onwards, a further support is neces-
sary as the number of such missing persons is increasing day by day. A report in
2015 says that an estimated 7.3 million people in Japan will have dementia by
2025, and the impact on the society will be huge. To face that challenge, the coun-
try is trying to create a society where everybody contributes to make the living
quality of dementia patients better.9 Enhancing a professional system, assisting
Kurose et al. 275
through private mutual collaboration and so on, seems to be a suitable method of

such a support, as there has been already pointed out a considerable budget short-
fall about public support. And even in the case of private entities, not only it is
difficult to secure the management expenses, but also there is a likely scenario
where the cooperation cannot necessarily be received in necessary timing by the
family, as it is based only on one’s good intention for cooperation. As a measure of
this issue, it is thought that expanding the number of supporters could be an effec-
tive solution. For this, it is important to make it easy for the person (supporter) who
has feelings of cooperation to rush into action for that. Authors think that the fol-
lowing points need to be considered in order to make it easy for the supporters:
• Tasks need to be very simple, and any complexity should be avoided.
• Usual life of the supporters should not be influenced much because of this.
• A response to the consequence of actions of the supporters will give him/her
an actual feeling of self-contribution.
When the above points are considered to be achieved with functions of ICT, it
becomes like ‘easy to operate’, ‘sharing information by the cloud’, ‘autonomous
matching by the system’, ‘receiving notifications when the registration succeeds’,
‘autonomous notifications to the family by the system’, and ‘the application for a
familiar device (smart phone)’.
And, if the cost to maintain the system which is needed to continue the support
to the supporter can be widely collected from supporters themselves instead from
the beneficiaries (patients with dementia and their family), it is expected to be a
sustainable model of support activity without imposing additional burden on
dementia patients and their families. Communication charm of People Design
Institute10 is one of such examples where supporters buy and carry such goods
(communication charm) as the sign of being a supporter.
In our study, we have followed the design thinking process, which is thought
to be effective as the solution of several social problems.11 According to the design
thinking process, the recommended steps to solve a social problem are empathize,
define, ideate, prototype and test (refer to Note 6). In this approach, after
completing empathize, define and ideate steps, it is necessary to develop the
prototype and finally test it. Regarding the test phase, the participation of an actual
user is important, and it is preferable to do in an environment which is similar
with the usual use case. In our study, we have also followed this method and a
local municipality (Machida city) cooperated with us in performing the onsite
testing in an actual living space.
Hypothesis
Fujitsu Limited agrees and is working on the achievement of Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015.12 The authors
think that reducing (making it zero) the number of cases where a dementia patient
goes missing is a way of contributing in achieving the goal 11 (make cities and
human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable) of SDGs list. And in
this regard, Kurose (one of the authors) is proposing a follower support system (FSS).
The FSS is an idea or mechanism to increase the so-called ‘nosy-busybody’ in the
society for the achievement of a society where a little trouble would not cause much
worry. There are a lot of people who hesitate to pay their attention and help even
when they find a person in trouble on the street, although they might have an
intention or feeling to help that person. In most cases, this is because the person is
not 100 per cent sure whether the person is really in trouble or not and even if he/she
is in trouble then whether he/she would welcome his help or not. The FSS supports
the transformation of the action of such persons (follower) who has the intention of
helping and eventually realizes the required help. Without bothering the troubled
person, this system aims to help the follower’s action to take him/her one step
forward from the current standpoint. The authors think that by offering FSS to
around 10 million supporters of dementia (as of 31 March 2018) in Japan,13 it would
be possible to reduce the number of dementia patients going missing to zero.
Besides, various municipalities are taking initiatives to perform simulation/
onsite testing and so on for searching for missing dementia patients/elderly citizens.
In these simulations, when a general citizen finds a senior citizen seeming in
trouble talks directly to that person and tries to help him/her out of that. However,
considering the general condition of today’s society, one might find himself/herself
struggling to start greeting and talking suddenly to a stranger (the elderly citizen).
As one of the methods of monitoring elderly citizen, now a days there is a way
where the elderly persons wear a badge or put shoes which are able to originate
wireless signals. Thus when any supporter with the smart phone application
programme that can detect the wireless signal passes by that person can collect
his/her data. We have not selected the method of using a wireless badge. When the
symptom of dementia is severe, it may also happen that the patient goes outside
without even putting on shoes. An elderly citizen who finds it difficult to return
home is usually thought to be a dementia patient of very advanced level, and it is
much likely that such a patient will forget to wear the badge or put on shoes when
going outside. So our idea is to involve only the surrounding people rather than
the elderly citizen him/herself, which we think will increase the possibility and
shorten the time to find a person who is unable to return home autonomously.
Therefore, from the FSS point of view we preferred the mechanism where
supporters take pictures with a smart phone and share it on the cloud. We expect
supporters to participate proactively and finally talk to the stranded elderly person
to cuddle up to the state to be helped. In FSS, we have considered supporter’s
proactive participation which we think can encourage and lead the supporter to
take the matter as his/her own. In a way, with this system the elderly citizen can
be monitored by the cooperation of the entire city without the necessity of the
person him/herself doing anything.
Kurose et al. 277
Prototype Development and Verification

As we have already mentioned, in this study we wanted to verify our hypothesis
of utilizing ICT in order to solve a social problem like dementia patients get miss-
ing. In doing this, we have developed a system (code name MACHIMIMA) for a
trial purpose which can cooperate with a general resident in searching for a
dementia patient/elderly citizen when he/she goes missing. The system is com-
posed with image processing function, image analysis function, cloud database14
and map application (see Figure 1). The system was developed by Fujitsu
Limited.15 Fujitsu Network Solutions Limited16 and ASILLA Limited,17 as a part
of co-creation through open innovation activities.18
The system has the following features:
1. When a senior citizen goes for walking or jogging, the family members
can take a photograph of him/her with the smart phone. The face of the
person is hidden by the image processing, and the processed data is sent
to the cloud.
2. Image analysis of the data is done by the cloud (artificial intelligence [AI]
in a wider sense), and traceable characteristic points such as clothes and so
on are extracted.
3. When a supporter finds any elderly citizen, who seems to have been stranded
on the way and unable to return home, takes a photograph of him with the
smart phone without bothering the person. The face of the person is hidden
by the image processing and the processed data is sent to the cloud.
4. On the cloud, characteristic points of each data are compared, and in case
there is any data matching the family members and so on are informed
soon with an email.
5. After receiving information, the family member confirms the elderly per-
son by the processed image data and the person’s whereabouts by the map
application programme.
6. The family member then goes to pick the elderly person if there is a necessity.
In this way, by preparing such a system that can easily cooperate with general
people we can expand the number of supporters, which we thought eventually
will improve the possibility for volunteers (family and municipality, etc.) who
help stranded elderly people to return home obtaining information according to
necessary timing.
This time, we have evaluated below three points by simulation/onsite testing
using our trial system considering that we offer this system as a commercial
service.
1. Can this service add any value for the dementia patient himself/herself and
the family (whether the system is effective or not)?
2. Whether supporters (users of this system) think it is worthy enough to pay
for the service.
3. Extracting technical/systematic issues when this service is used by supporters.
Figure 1. Outline of the MACHIMIMA System

Especially from points 1 and 2, our target was to know about psychological sense
of incompatibility when using ICT and AI. From point 3, we wanted to find out
what quality should be improved further from a technical point of view to make
the system user friendly. The outline of the simulation/onsite testing and findings
are described in the following section.
Simulation/Onsite Testing and Result

So far, we have executed two testings with the cooperation of Machida city
office (in Kanagawa Prefecture) and a participation of all concerned parties
(dementia patients, their family members, dementia supporters and general resi-
dent of the city).
• Test 1: in September 2017, with supporters of dementia patients as the only
participants who have the knowledge of such activities19
• Test 2: in January 2018, with general resident of the city and dementia
patients (other than supporters of dementia patients) as participants.20
As we can see from Table 1 and Figure 2, the number of participants, their pro-
file and testing area were different for the two tests. Number of participants in
Test 2 was almost four times than that of Test 1. And in Test 1, the role of the
senior citizens was played by supporters; whereas, in Test 2 we have got coop-
eration from the actual dementia patients (attended by concern relatives). In
order to match the testing environment further similar to the actual scenario,
Kurose et al. 279
Test 2 was performed within a wider area than Test 1. A summary of the test
results is shown in Table 2.
Table 1. Test Method
Test 1 Test 2
Date 27 September 2017, 14:00–15:30 15 January 2018, 14:00–16:00
Number of 8 31
participants
Profile of Role of senior citizen: dementia Role of senior citizen: dementia
participants supporters patients (attended by a
Number of participants: 2 concerned relative)
Role of family member: dementia Number of participants: 4
supporters Role of family member: family
Number of participants: 2 and dementia supporters
Role of supporter: dementia Number of participants: 4
supporters Role of supporter: general
Number of participants: 4 people and dementia supporters
Number of participants: 23
Testing area Surrounding (see Figure 2) of Surrounding (see Figure 2) of
Kanagawa Prefecture, Machida city, Kanagawa Prefecture, Machida
Naka-cho and Morino city, Naka-cho and Morino
Testing The dementia supporter plays the The dementia patient plays the
procedure role of a senior citizen and strolls role of senior citizen and strolls
around the streets. Photograph of around the street. Moreover,
the senior citizen is taken beforehand one person (family member or
and the processed data is uploaded someone related to the dementia
to the cloud. When any supporter patient) attends the senior
finds any probable stranded senior citizen. Photograph of the senior
citizen on the street takes a snap and citizen is taken beforehand and
the processed data is uploaded to the the processed data is uploaded to
cloud. Processed data are compared the cloud. When any supporter
by the cloud and if there is any finds any probable stranded
data matching then the concerned senior citizen on the street
family member is informed by an takes a snap and the processed
email. Then the family member can data is uploaded to the cloud.
confirm the senior citizen and his/ Processed data are compared by
her whereabouts from the processed the cloud and if there is any data
data and the map and go to pick him/ matching then the concerned
her up. family member is informed by an
email. Then the family member
can confirm the senior citizen and
his/her whereabouts from the
processed data and the map and
go to pick him/her up.
Figure 2. Map of Testing Area

Table 2. Test Result
Test 1 Test 2
How successfully 100 per cent 50 per cent
a family member One of the reasons was that
can find a senior some of the senior citizens
citizen had already come back to the
test centre before their family
members picking them up.
Whether it is Supporter: 100 per cent Supporter: 96 per cent
okay to use ICT Senior citizen: 100 per cent Senior citizen: 67 per cent
and AI Family member: 100 per cent Family member: 100 per cent
Whether the Supporter: 100 per cent Supporter: 72 per cent
service is worthy Senior citizen: 100 per cent Senior citizen: 75 per cent
enough to be Family member: 100 per cent Family member: 84 per cent
paid for
Discussion/Consideration
The following was understood from the result of the questionnaire of testing.
Kurose et al. 281
Regarding Test Result

How Successfully a Family Member Can Find a Senior Citizen
In Test 1, all (100%) senior citizens were rescued successfully, where as in Test 2
it remained only half (50%) of the total number. The area range for simulation in
Test 2 (three times wider than Test 1) and the free movement of the senior citizen
are thought to be the main reasons of this.
Pattern of actions of the senior citizens was various like few were resting on
the street-bench, few were shopping in the convenient store, while few had already
come back to the test centre interrupting the simulation due to tiredness.
On the other hand, there was a conviction on supporters’ mind that ‘people
unable to return home would be walking wandering’. This kind of conviction may
also happen in the real society, and there is possibility that the successful discov-
ery rate can be improved by noticing each one’s such conviction.
Whether It Is Okay to Use ICT and AI
It can be said that as all the participants in Test 1 are dementia supporters they
realize the limitations of existing methods, and that is why they have responded
positively about the introduction of a new system.
In Test 2, due to the fact that the simulation area is wider and there are some
participants without any previous experience of dementia patients or not so con-
cerned about their missing issue, they struggled to evaluate the system.
Whether the Service Is Worthy Enough to Be Paid for
It can be thought that as in Test 1 all the participants were supporters of dementia
patients, they have the sense of crisis about senior citizens’ missing problem, and
that is why all of them have felt this service to be necessary.
It seems that the reason of service to be found not so effective in Test 2 is
because some of the participants were general people who have no concern about
dementia patients and due to the low percentage (50%) of family members suc-
cessfully picking up the senior citizens.
Regarding Test Method

Some of the senior citizens had already come back to the test centre at the middle
of the testing (before their family members picking them up). So it should be
noted that participating in such a kind of onsite testing is a physical burden for the
patients, and we should take proper care of them considering this point.
Another point is that it seems the participants have struggled to understand the
contents of the user’s manual (about installation and usage method, etc.) of the
application programme. We think this happened because we had not enough time to
explain the contents in detail, and the lecture room was bit noisy due to the large
number of participants. So from next time we should consider this point and make
sure the participants can use the application without any difficulty. In case the num-
ber of participants exceeds a certain level, we may need to divide them in several
groups while briefing about the application, or we can provide them the users’ man-
ual prior to the testing date and allow them enough time for understanding.
When it comes to the actual use scenario, still we have many things that need
to be assumed. Like we should consider the technical point that the appearance/
outlook such as cloths or colour of cloths might be changed or might seem to be
different on the processed data and that of the actual target. It is because, the target
may put on or off his jacket depending on the outside temperature, or the colour
of the photo may differ a bit depending on from which angle of daylight (sunny or
shady) it was captured. Thus, the participation of the general resident of the city
helped us understand and dig up various use scenario issues, which is very impor-
tant while taking this solution to the next stage.
How Value Is Created

This service can achieve the following with ICT and AI technology.
• Easily sharing and matching information while considering the privacy of
concerned individuals by using a smartphone which is very commonly
available.
Realization of this idea enables the general people to act concretely who so far
were not used to do so even if they always had the will to help troubled dementia
patients. In other words, this service will encourage many people to transform
their behaviour to be changed to people who help the surrounding troubled peo-
ple. And as a result, it can provide a social value by creating a liveable society
where there will be no worry in little trouble, and dementia patients can go outside
more confidently. After the onsite testing, there were comments from participants
like ‘so far I had no concern that there might be such troubled people in the sur-
rounding. From now onwards, I will be more conscious and careful about this
matter while walking outside’. This also proves that the service can be really
effective to transform people’s behaviour which will ultimately result in creating
a more liveable society.
Over all, it was confirmed that MACHIMIMA which is using ICT and AI is
effective to finding the stranded senior citizen who are unable to return home,
and it was also understood that this service is worthy enough to be used even as
a paid service.
Conclusion
This time, the following results were obtained about the three points that we had
planned to verify through our study.
1. Can this service add any value for the dementia patient himself/herself and
the family (whether the system is effective or not):
Neither dementia patients nor their family have any odd feeling regarding
using the technology of AI, ICT and so on, and they think that the system
Kurose et al. 283
is even more effective than using human resource. In addition, those who
are somehow related with dementia patients expressed their opinion that it
will be an indispensable technology in coming days to make the current
society more secured and friendly to dementia patients.
2. Whether supporters (users of this system) think it is worthy enough to pay
for the service:
All concerned parties have responded positively about paying a reasonable
amount of fee for using such ICT service. However, it was also understood
that the parties may not think in the same way in case the charge for using
the service goes too high.
3. Extracting technical/systematic issues when this service is used by supporters:
If there is a long time gap between receiving information from the sup-
porter and going to pick the target up, there is a possibility that the target
might have changed his/her location which reduces the probability of find-
ing the target. Moreover, when the supporter is guessing someone as a
stranded person there is a tendency that he/she is influenced by the filter of
conviction, especially, when they see someone seeming to act with a pur-
pose (sitting on the park bench, being inside of a store, etc.). Depending on
the situation of taking the photograph, the supporter/photographer might
feel a psychological sense of pressure.
This time, we have had a primary idea about the acceptance of our developed
system, and by repeating the onsite testing twice we were also successful to dig up
the technical drawbacks.
In next steps, we would like to execute further simulation/onsite testing with
participants of more different attributes and analyse the test result. We are also
thinking about considering the measures for an elderly person who is living alone
and in which case it is difficult to collect data.
Thus, by enabling dementia patients or stranded people and their family to live
in the town being more autonomous and relieved, we will continue to contribute
in achieving the goal 11 of SDGs.

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of
this article.
Notes
1. http://www5.cao.go.jp/keizai-shimon/kaigi/special/future/sentaku/s2_2.html
2. https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/what-is-dementia
3. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/dementia/symptoms/
4. https://www.npa.go.jp/safetylife/seianki/fumei/H28yukuehumeisya.pdf
5. http://journal.jp.fujitsu.com/en/2015/02/09/01/
6. https://dschool-old.stanford.edu/sandbox/groups/designresources/wiki/36873/
attachments/74b3d/ModeGuideBOOTCAMP2010L.pdf
7 https://www.alz.co.uk/sites/default/files/conf2016/w-noriyo-washizu-aaj-dementia-
supporter-caravan.pdf
8. https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/11/22/how-japan-is-training-an-entire-
country-to-help-with-dementia.html
9. https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/11/22/japan-dementia-lessons-from-the-
worlds-oldest-country.html
10. http://www.peopledesign.or.jp/project/charm/
11. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/sarah-soule-how-design-thinking-can-help-
social-entrepreneurs
12. http://www.fujitsu.com/jp/about/csr/vision/sdgs/index.html
13. http://www.caravanmate.com/
14. http://jp.fujitsu.com/solutions/cloud/paas/iot-platform/
15. http://www.fujitsu.com/jp/
16. http://www.fujitsu.com/jp/group/fnets
17. https://www.asilla.jp
18. http://www.fujitsu.com/jp/services/knowledge-integration/ply/
19. http://pr.fujitsu.com/jp/news/2017/09/21-1.html
20. http://www.city.machida.tokyo.jp/shien/sogyosha/topics/fujitsuandasilla.html
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are capitalism?
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mahajan@gmail.com
Call for Papers: The Journal
of Creating Value
Editor
Gautam Mahajan
Guest Editors
Martijn F. Rademakers
Peter Stokes
ISSN: 2394-9643
2 issue per year
Vol. 5, No. 2
Special Issue on Organisational Agility and Value Creation
The Journal of Creating Value jcv.sagepub.com is inviting academics and professionals
to share their latest insights and research findings about why and how companies
transform towards organisational agility to meet the challenge of creating value in
changing business environments. Accepted papers will be published in our Volume 5,
No. 2 issue of the Journal of Creating Value, in November 2019.
Organisational agility has appeared on the strategic agenda of a broad range of
companies and institutions: from MNCs, to ministries and foundations to start-ups.
What they have in common is the challenge to cope with rapid, if not disruptive,
changes in their business environment. Their business models are changing – i.e., the
models describing how they are creating and capturing value (Magretta, 2002; Teece,
2010; Johnson, 2017), and so are their organisational models – i.e., the formal and
informal structures, systems, and culture (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1990) in which people
work together in the act of creating value. New, agile organisational forms are, for
instance, described by McChrystal et al. (2015), Holbeche (2015), Prange et al. (2018),
and Barton et al. (2018), ranging from hybrid forms combining hierarchal structures
and squads, to fully fledged agile organisations.
The growing attention for organisational agility in many different countries, industries,
enterprises and institutions has evoked an urgent need to better understand what
organisational agility is, how it works, and what it means for creating value by people
in (networks of) organisations. The current literature is scarce and dominated by
anecdotical and prescriptive work. Hence, this field of knowledge is in dire need of
more literature based on empirical evidence and solid theoretical foundation.
Relevant topics on creating value include, but are not limited to:
1. What is organisational agility (not)?
2. What are the antecedents of organisational agility?
3. What are the conditions for effective value creation through organisational
agility?
4. What are effective organisational forms based on, or combining agile principles?
5. What are the pros and cons of transforming towards an agile organisation?
6. What are typical challenges of organisations when transforming towards more
agility?
7. What are the challenges for organisations after they became agile?
8. What role does technology play for organisational agility?
9. Organisational agility for value creation: a management fad or a concept to stay?
10. What is the relationship between organisational agility and value creation/
destruction?
11. A history of organisational agility and value creation
12. Failures and fallacies of organisational agility
13. Leadership in agile organisations
14. In-depth cases of agile transformation
15. Organisational agility and strategies for creating value
Authors are invited to submit a max 500 words paper proposal to the Guest Editor of
this special issue, Dr. Martijn F. Rademakers, at m.f.l.rademakers@uva.nl, with a cc
to the Founder Editor of the Journal of Creating Value, Gautam Mahajan at gautam.
mahajan@gmail.com.
Deadline for the paper proposal: 1 January 2019
4 February 2019: Acceptance or rejection of paper proposals. Selection criteria will
include: originality, relevance, evidence, theoretical foundation, sound reasoning, and
clarity of writing.
30 April 2019: Deadline for authors of accepted paper proposals to submit a full,
compact paper of 2500–3500 words. The papers are subject to the Manuscript
Submission Guidelines of the Journal of Creating Value (see https://uk.sagepub.
com/en-gb/eur/journal-of-creating-value/journal202414#submission-guidelines). All
papers will be peer reviewed.
November 2019: Publication in the Journal of Creating Value, Vol. 5, No. 2.
The Journal of Creating Value is a refereed, professional journal focused on creating
value. The audience for the journal includes academia, researchers, professionals,
community and government agencies, business and industry.
References
Bartlett, C. A, & Ghoshal, S. (1990). Matrix management: Not a structure, a frame of mind.
Harvard Business Review, 68(4), 138–145.
Barton, D., Carey, D., & Charan, R. (2018). One bank’s agile team experiment: How ING
revamped its retail operation. Harvard Business Review, 96(2), 59–61.
Holbeche, L. (2015). The agile organization. How to build an innovative, sustainable and
resilient business. London: Kogan Page.
Johnson, M. W. (2017). Reinvent your business model: How to seize the white pace for
transformative growth. Massachusetts: Harvard Business Review Press.
Magretta, J. (2002). Why business models matter. Harvard Business Review, 80(5), 86–92, 133.
McChrystal, S., Collins, T., Silvermann, D., & Fussell, C. (2015). Team of teams: New rules of
engagement for a complex world. New York: Penguin.
Prange, C., & Heracleous, L. (Eds) (2018). Agility X: How organizations thrive in unpredictable
times. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Teece, D. J. (2010). Business models, business strategy and innovation. Long Range Planning,
43(2–3), 172–194.
The Second Global Conference on Creating Value
Gabelli School of Business – Fordham University
Lincoln Center Campus, New York City
May 14–15, 2019
In conjunction with the Gabelli School of Business at Fordham

University, Creating Value Alliance, Customer Value Foundation
and the Journal of Creating Value
“Value Creation for the Future of Business and Society”

The Second Global Conference on Creating Value invites business leaders and
leading academics from around the world to exchange views and to share and
learn from each other regarding how value can be created for the future of business
and society. The plenary sessions, invited speakers and paper presentations will
provide an opportunity for a meaningful discussion and conversation between
academics and practitioners about the meaning of value and value creation
opportunities not only for business and companies, but also for individuals and
society at large. Different approaches to value creation in the age of disruption,
innovation, technology, and artificial intelligence will be discussed. The goal is to
create a forward looking mindset to create, communicate, and deliver value to an
inclusive set of stakeholders. Particular focus will be on social value creation
through social innovation and social entrepreneurship that aim to improve the
well-being of the individuals and overall society.
Suggested Conference Topics*

The Second Global Conference on Creating Value welcomes paper submissions
and special session proposals on the topics that include but not limited to:
– Creating value for yourself, business, and society
– Creating value through social innovation and social entrepreneurship
– Creating value through transformative services
– Creating value in the age of disruptions
– Value creation in the sharing economy
– Value creation for employees in the age of artificial intelligence and
machine learning
– Value creation and leadership
– Value creation and organization
– Measuring value creation and developing value creation related analytics
– Creating value through the use of big data
– Values as a belief, attitude, and perspective
– Values and the relationship with (organizational) culture(s)
– Value destruction and dark side of value creation
– Challenges and opportunities of creating value at the Bottom of the
Pyramid
– Sustainable and responsible management and value creation
– Corporate Social Responsibility and value creation
*Please note that this list is not exhaustive. We are open to any submission explor-
ing new and emerging ideas and trends related to value creation.
Submission Guidelines
– Interested participants are invited to submit an extended abstract about
their research and ideas not exceeding 750 words (excluding references,
tables, and figures).
– The abstract should outline the importance and relevance of the topic, its
potential contributions, research question(s), conceptual framework, and
methodology and findings if applicable, discussion, and conclusion.
– Submissions using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and
different approaches including practitioner cases are encouraged.
– Each abstract should have four to five keywords.
– All abstracts must be in English, double-spaced Microsoft Word docu-
ments using Times New Roman 12-point font.
– At least one author from each paper must register and be present at the
conference to present their paper.
– Abstracts should be submitted using the online submission link on the
conference website at: http://www.creatingvalue.co/submissions/
Important Dates
– Abstract submissions are open.
– Abstract submissions close: Feb 15, 2019.
– Authors notified of outcome: No later than March 1, 2019.
For details, please visit the conference website: http://www.creatingvalue.co/conference/
Conference Co-chairs
Gautam Mahajan, President of Customer Value Foundation and the Editor of the
Journal of Creating Value
Dr. Sertan Kabadayi, Professor of Marketing, Gabelli School of Business
– Fordham University
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Journal of Human Values
Editor:
Manish Thakur
Indian Institute of Management Calcutta
ISSN: 0971–6858
Special Issue on Temporal Pluralism:
Alternative Ethics of Law and Society 2 issues per year
Volume 26, Issue 1, January 2020
http://journals.sagepub.com/home/jhv
Concept Note
We live in transformative times, that is, times when time itself is under threat
by losing on its singular character. Interestingly, our times have become plural
times in which individuals who are in the same material and spiritual conditions
get divergent, at times conflicting, temporal experience. What we call temporal
experience is nothing but the ‘sense of time-space’ which is a holistic awareness
one has about one’s existence. Of late, this existence has become problematic due
to the anachronistic intervention of one time-space into another time-space. It is an
interpellation of known past (déjà vu), unknown present (individual solipsism and
social amnesia), and to-be-known future (transcendental) into the present state of
existence. Largely, it is a case of time losing its chronology and linearity.
Within the boarder theme which we have submitted, we also seek contributions on
the following sub-themes:
• Rational law, rational societies: Economic approaches to social ordering
• Global ethics in global times: Ethics in law/society/education/professions
• Redefining/rediscovering/reinventing human values
• Role of individual in temporal transition
• Communities in transforming times
• Role of religion and other value systems in reimagining societies
• Scope of judicial participation in grappling with temporal pluralism
Submission Timeline:
31 March 2019: Submission of Full Article
April-May 2019: Editorial Comments/ Peer Review
June 2019: Revised Final Versions due to Editors
Manuscript Submission Guidelines:
Please visit: https://in.sagepub.com/en-in/sas/journal/journal-human-values#
submission-guidelines
Guest Editors:
Dr R. Rajesh Babu Dr S. G. Sreejith
Professor of Law Associate Professor and Vice Dean
Indian Institute of Management Calcutta Jindal Global Law School
E-mail: rajeshbabu@iimcal.ac.in E-mail: sgsreejith@jgu.edu.in
Journal of Operations
Asia Pacific Media
Educator
and Strategic Planning
Editor:
Editor:
Stephen Tanner
Tirthankar Nag, International Management Institute Kolkata,
India
University of Wollongong, Australia
Special Issue on Data Journalism - Practice, ISSN:

ISSN:2516-600X
1326365X
Problems and Pedagogy 2 2issues
issuesper
peryear
year
Journal
Volume of 28,Operations
No. 1, June and Strategic Planning, a peer-reviewed journal seeks high
2018
quality, analytically rigorous papers in all areas of operations management (broadly
defined). Theoretical as well as applied (or empirical) research is welcome. Some
Guest Editor:
http://ame.sagepub.com
of theDavies,
Kayt topics Head
includeof operations management
the Journalism Program, theory, operations
Edith Cowan management
University, Perth,
research, etc.
Western Australia
Data journalism
Journal is blazing and
of Operations new Strategic
trails through the media
Planning landscape,
is conceived as atackling big
bi annual
issues, illuminating
international journalsocial patterns
designed and exposing
to inform and shape connections,
academicbut doing it requires
discussions around
skills additional
empirical to the usual
and theoretical journalistic
facets canon. management and strategic planning.
of operations
How are
Backed byjournalists
conceptual finding
rigorways
and to interrogate
peer reviewed, andthe
present data
journal stories?
shall How are
lay emphasis
educatorsscholarly
creating rising to the challenge
impact as wellof teaching
as havedata journalism
practice skills?
oriented This specialhaving
implications issue
of Asia
wide Pacific Media
acceptance Educator aims
for academicians andtopractitioners.
document the new ideas
Masking and approaches
the complex process
being embraced by journalists and educators.
of concept development yet not sacrificing on the underlying rigor, articles are
Submissions are welcome from journalists and educators experimenting with
expected to exude an intuitive appeal for applicability. The journal shall consider
and pioneering approaches to storytelling using large and small data sets. We are
management ideas across the following disciplines: a) Operations Management
seeking commentaries of 2000–4000w and research articles of up to 6000w.
Theory b) Operations
New approaches includeManagement
info-graphic Research
journalism, c)dataOperations
scraping and Management
cleaning,
Applications d) Strategic Planning e) Areas in Strategic Management
hacking and hunting for information on the dark web, as well as fostering Research and
shall be spreadof across
understanding Supply
statistics chain management,
and quantitative literacy. Project management, Quality
management, Technology
Authors are invited management,
to explore Distribution
themes including, but notand Retail
limited to: Management,
Operations Processes, Business Processes, Corporate and Business Strategies,
• Applied research on data journalism teaching strategies
management of technology and other topics. There shall be specific emphasis on
• Applied research about experiences teaching with various software packages
emerging economies in particular.
• Theoretical approaches to data analysis
• CThis journal is meant for academics and practitioners across the entire spectrum
oding in the context of teaching data journalism
of
• Coperations management. The journal has an international editorial board and
ontent analysis about data journalism in practice
advisory board.
• Infographics as a journalistic medium
• Geodata and story-maps
• Data journalism in the pacific media
The submission guidelines are here: https://in.sagepub.com/en-in/sas/journal-of-
• Ethical issues in data journalism
operations-and-strategic-planning/journal203510#submission-guidelines
The submission
Submission of guidelines are here:
manuscripts https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/asia-
should be made electronically at https://
pacific-media-educator/journal202138#submission-guidelines
peerreview.sagepub.com/osp
Submission deadline: 30 January, 2018
Please submit 250 word abstracts to k.davies@ecu.edu.au by November 14, 2017.
Call for abstracts now extended to December 14 - due to delays in sending out
the initial call for papers.
All submissions in double space should be submitted to k.davies@ecu.edu.au by
email.

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Journal of

Volume 4 Issue 2 November 2018 Creating Value

The Journal of Creating Value is a refereed, professional journal focused on creating

Special Issue: Role of Technology and AI on Value Creation

Introduction to the Special Issue

Value Creation and Cognitive Technologies: Opportunities and Challenges

Actors, Actor Engagement and Value Creation 196

Commentary on ‘Value Creation and Cognitive Technologies:

Situating Humans, Technology and Materiality in Value Cocreation 202

A Systematic Review of Artificial Intelligence and Robots in Value

Creating Value through Social Media: Fresh Evidence from

Co-creating Value in People’s Interactions with Cognitive Assistants:

Solving a Social Issue Using Information and Communication Technology

List of Reviewers 286

Value Creation and Journal of Creating Value

By far the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude

self-driving cars, social robots and others. It seems to be creating unprecedented

Value Co-creation: Negative and Positive Sides

Techno-optimists see them as a strong enabler of changing value-creation prac-

New Actors and/or New Actors’ Roles

New Resources and Enhanced/Worsening Resource

not a mathematically complex programme expressly designed towards a pre-

New Practices and the Constitutive Entanglement of

Framing Value Co-creation Complexity within a Post-

Assuming a post-humanist approach means acknowledging economic and

Lusch, R. F., & Vargo, S. L. (2014). Service-dominant logic: Premises, perspectives,

Actors, Actor Engagement Journal of Creating Value

inter-actor resource linkages and encourage actors (humans and/or machines) to

Commentary on Journal of Creating Value

Situating Humans, Journal of Creating Value

Mimicking Firms: Future Journal of Creating Value

acquiring more resources whether financial, human or social capital. As a logi-

The Firm as a Market for Labour

Future of Work, Future of the Firm, Future of Tech

A Systematic Review of Journal of Creating Value

Current Status and Future http://journals.sagepub.com/home/jcv

Figure 1. Flowchart of Publications Included and Excluded by Researchers during the

Overview of the Publications Selected

Table 1. Dispersion of Reviewed Literature by Research Outlet

Generic Field Advancement

Supporting Service Providers

Enabling Resource Integration between Service Providers and

Table 2. Thematization of Reviewed Articles

Future Research Agenda

Generic Field Advancement of Technology in Value Co-creation

AI and Robots in a Service Provider’s Value Co-creation

AI and Robots in a Beneficiary’s Value Co-creation

1. How can robots enable better frontline customer service?

AI and Robots in a Systemic Value Co-creation

Shopping Bots in Value Co-creation

Autonomous Shopping Devices (Shopping bot 3.0) in Value Co-creation

Postphenomenological Research on AI and Robots in Value Co-creation

Limitations of the Study

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Value Transformation in Journal of Creating Value

Furthermore, it is the application of skills developed through associated creative

produced by participants (streamed videos) was used to evaluate references they

Table 1. Sample Description

Sample Method Data Analysis

Research Channel Duration of Connectivity

Discussion and Conclusion

Figure 1. Value Transformation in Let’s Plays

Figure 2. Summary of Value Flows in Let’s Play

Actors, Actor Engagement and Value Creation 196

Situating Humans, Technology and Materiality in Value Cocreation 202

List of Reviewers 286