Prof. Dr. Christina Raasch is Professor of Digital Economy at Kühne Logistics University. She holds a joint appointment with the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), where she is part of the Research Center focusing on Innovation and International Competition.
Professor Dr. Raasch studied economics at the Universities of St. Gallen and Oxford and holds a doctorate in management from Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen-Nuremberg. During her habilitation studies, which she completed at TU Hamburg-Harburg, she spent 1.5 years as a visiting researcher at MIT Sloan School of Management. Before joining the KLU faculty in March 2017, she was an Associate Professor of Technology Management at Technische Universität München.
Before becoming an academic, Professor Dr. Raasch worked as a consultant at ZS Associates, advising large clients in the pharmaceutical industry. Today many of her research projects are conducted together with companies in the automotive and high tech industries and the digital economy.
In her research, Professor Dr. Raasch investigates how digitalization changes innovation processes and outcomes inside and outside established companies. Her current research projects focus on, e.g., effective idea creation and evaluation, additive manufacturing, enterprise crowd-funding, and disruptive innovation by and with customers. In her view, the digital age offers huge opportunities for co-creating value and innovation together with customers.
Prof. Dr. Raasch published her research in Management Science, Research Policy, Journal of Product Innovation Management, and Sloan Management Review. She is a Fellow of the Open and User Innovation (OUI) Society and hosted the OUI Conference at KLU in July 2023.
Selected Publications
(2024): When necessity is the mother of disruption: Users versus producers as sources of disruptive innovation, Journal of Product Innovation Management, 41 (1): 62-85.
Abstract: This study investigates the sources of disruptive innovation. The disruptive innovation literature suggests that these do not originate from existing customers, in contrast to what is predicted by the user innovation literature. We compile a unique content-analytical dataset based on 60 innovations identified as disruptive by the disruptive innovation literature. Using multinomial and binomial regression, we find that 43% of the sample disruptive innovations were originally developed by users. Disruptive innovations are more likely to originate from users (producers) if the environment has high turbulence in customer preferences (technology). Disruptive innovations that involve high functional (technological) novelty tend to be developed by users (producers). Users are also more likely to be the source of disruptive process innovations and to innovate in environments with weaker appropriability. Our article forges new links between the disruptive and the user innovation literatures, and offers guidance to managers on the likely source of disruptive threats.
(2023): Distributed decision‐making in the shadow of hierarchy: How hierarchical similarity biases idea evaluation, Strategic Management Journal, 44 (9): 2255-2282.
Abstract: Research Summary Companies are increasingly opening up decision-making, involving employees on all levels in distributed—and purportedly “hierarchy-free”—decision processes. We examine how hierarchy reaches into such “democratized” systems, arguing that it is a source of homophily that biases idea evaluation decisions. Using a data set from internal crowdfunding at one of the world's largest industrial manufacturers, we show that idea evaluators overvalue hierarchically similar others' ideas. Competition in the form of lateral closeness dampens this bias, whereas uncertainty in the form of novelty amplifies this bias. We contribute to the literatures on decision biases in centralized versus distributed innovation and on structural similarity as a driver of employee behaviors. Managerial Summary Many companies are starting to involve employees on all levels in strategic decisions, so as to curb hierarchical rigidities and integrate multiple perspectives. However, such distributed decision-making opens the door to new biases and, ultimately, suboptimal strategic decisions. In the context of internal crowdfunding at a large industrial manufacturer, we show that employees evaluate hierarchically similar others' ideas overly favorably. Thus, hierarchy is not just a source of rivalry, but also of identification, leading to favoritism among hierarchical peers. Further, employees are particularly likely to assess ideas based on hierarchical similarity rather than content if the ideas are novel and therefore hard to evaluate. We provide suggestions for the design of distributed decision-making systems.
(2023): Does familiarity with an idea bias its evaluation?, Plos one, 18 (7): .
Abstract: Although many organizations strive for radical or disruptive new ideas, many fall short of their goals. We propose that a primary reason for this failure is rooted in the individuals responsible for innovation: while they seek novel ideas, they prefer familiar ones. While prior research shows that individuals are biased against ideas with high objective novelty, it has overlooked the role of subjective novelty, i.e., the extent to which an idea is novel or unfamiliar to an individual idea evaluator. In this paper, we investigate how such subjective familiarity with an idea shapes idea evaluation in innovation. Drawing on research from psychology and marketing on the mere exposure effect, we argue that familiarity with an idea positively affects the evaluation’s outcome. We present two field studies and one laboratory study that support our hypothesis. This study contributes to the understanding of cognitive biases that affect innovation processes.
(2020): Work process-related lead userness as an antecedent of innovative behavior and user innovation in organizations, Research Policy, 49 (6): 103986.
Abstract: Recent studies have identified that employees can be lead users of their employing firm's products, and valuable sources of product innovation, residing within organizational boundaries. We extend this line of thought by recognizing that employees can be lead users with regard to internal work processes. We define work process-related lead userness (WPLU) as the extent to which employees experience unsatisfied process-related needs ahead of others, and expect high benefits from solutions to these needs. We hypothesize a positive association with user innovation in the workplace, evidenced by the development of tools, equipment, materials and methods. We test a moderated mediation model delineating how and when WPLU is related to user innovation within organizational boundaries. Drawing on survey data from 104 employees and 13 supervisors in a forensic services organization, we find that WPLU contributes to user innovation via engagement in innovative work behavior, especially when employees have higher self-efficacy (perceived capability to overcome obstacles) and lower job autonomy (situational constraints on the job).
(2017): The User Innovation Paradigm: Impacts on Markets and Welfare, Management Science, 63 (5): 1450-1468.
Abstract: Innovation has traditionally been seen as the province of producers. However, theoretical and empirical research now shows that individual users—consumers—are also a major and increasingly important source of new product and service designs. In this paper, we build a microeconomic model of a market that incorporates demand-side innovation and competition. We explain the conditions under which firms find it beneficial to invest in supporting and harvesting users’ innovations, and we show that social welfare rises when firms utilize this source of innovation. Our modeling also indicates reasons for policy interventions with respect to a mixed user and producer innovation economy. From the social welfare perspective, as the share of innovating users in a market increases, profit-maximizing firms tend to switch “too late” from a focus on internal research and development to a strategy of also supporting and harvesting user innovations. Underlying this inefficiency are externalities that the producer cannot capture. Overall, our results explain when and how the proliferation of innovating users leads to a superior division of innovative labor involving complementary investments by users and producers, both benefitting producers and increasing social welfare.
Academic Positions
| since 2022 | Professor of Digital Economy at Kühne Logistics University, a joint appointment with the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW) |
| 2017-2021 | Associate Professor of Digital Economy at Kühne Logistics University, a joint appointment with the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW) |
| 2013-2017 | Professor of Technology Management, Technische Universität München, TUM School of Management |
| 2010/2011/2012 | Visiting Researcher at Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA |
| 2007-2012 | Senior Research Fellow (Habilitandin), Lecturer and Head of the 'Open Source Innovation' Research Unit at Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) |
| 2000 | Visiting Researcher in the 'Directorate General Economics' at the European Central Bank, Frankfurt, Germany |
Professional Experience
| 2003-2007 | Management consultant with ZS Associates, Frankfurt, Germany |
| 2004 | Research project with Eli Lilly Germany, Bad Homburg, Germany |
| 2002 | Internship with Bain & Company, Strategy Consultancy, Munich, Germany |
Education
| 2012 | Habilitation, Venia Legendi in Business Administration, Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), Germany |
| 2006 | Doctorate at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany |
| 2002 | MSc (lic. oec.) of Economics and Management at St. Gallen University (HSG), Switzerland |