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The aviation sector depends on innovative solutions that have benefited the air travel industry and many other industrial and service organisations. Over the last few decades, challenges faced by this sector accelerated the development and adoption of innovations, primary to create value for sustainability, personalised services, and a safer and more secure environment. Since early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has unprecedentedly affected the global aviation sector. It has brought changes to air passenger travel behaviour, with demand reduced significantly due to border closures and concerns over the spread of the virus. As a result, the aviation industry has been required to adopt innovations and procedures to offer a safer journey, increase efficiencies and improve the passenger’s experience. This unique scenario has presented an opportunity for the sector to redesign practices and assume a more transformational perspective to create or foster solutions to restore trust for travellers and create value for the whole aviation industry production chain. Examples include smart drop-luggage kiosks, inground operations with digital systems supporting staff, data analysis platforms for predictions, technologies reducing queueing from airport touchpoints, and virtual reality systems enabling passengers to have a real vision of their journey and seats before travelling. The new challenges facing the aviation sector stimulate the adoption of innovative strategies in both internal and external contexts, developing integrative partnerships to solve real problems in the ‘new normal’ context. Promising collaborations include strategic alliances with start-ups or ‘air travel techs’. The fast technological development in most industries is increasing the emphasis on start-ups’ role in corporate innovation as a prominent field for theoretical and practical investigations. However, collaborations between the aviation sector and start-ups are a new phenomenon, and the existing studies are still limited. More research is needed in this field, involving theoretical frameworks and empirical cases to analyse how corporatestart- up collaborations happen and how they develop innovations and create value. Moreover, a lack of literature is still noticed when considering the start-up’s perspective on collaborations. These research gaps and lack of understanding of practices involving collaboration and technological advancements provide opportunities to research how this industry creates value by fostering innovations. In addition, understanding the role of collaborations with start-ups can enable the systematisation of the innovation process involving critical factors to enable the outcomes expected when creating value for the aviation industry production chain. Addressing these research opportunities, this research aims to understand innovation in the aviation sector in collaboration with start-ups proposing a conceptual framework for value creation. The thesis adopts a pragmatic paradigm, conducting mixed methods research based on systematic literature reviews (SLRs), surveys with aviation experts, interviews, secondary data, and multiple case analyses. The cases involve worldwide innovation programs supported by major organisations such as Hangar 51 (by International Airlines Group – IAG, in England), Plug and Play Travel & Hospitality (by Plug and Play Tech Center in the U.S.), Embraer (in Brazil), and JetBlue Technology Ventures (JTV, in the U.S.). The results provide an understanding of collaboration flows and the innovation process around the different types of aviation innovation programs, enabling a better comprehension of the needs and expectations of all stakeholders involved. The results also confirm the literature’s assumptions, showing that the alliance between the aviation sector and start-ups enable both types of organisations to enhance competitive advantages and create value. Aviation innovation programs can expand their innovation capabilities and increase their technology portfolio. The start-ups benefit by accessing complementary resources, social capital, market legitimacy, and increasing market traction. In addition, these collaborations and innovations promote various benefits to aviation stakeholders, such as cost reduction, increased revenue, and value creation towards a more technological transformation perspective. Consequently, these collaborations can improve the passenger journey and efficiencies of the aviation industry production chain. The findings provide evidence of mutual benefits created through these promising collaborations. The discussion around the research topic and proposed conceptual framework represent a novelty in studies on Open Innovation in this sector, facilitating the comprehension of connections between such heterogeneous organisations leading the sector to foster innovations and create value. This thesis contributes to the lack of literature on collaborations, primary considering the start-up’s perspective, which has been studied often from the established corporate point-of-view. The research still offers a comprehensive understanding of critical factors and dynamic processes to improve these interactions and increase the success rates of supported innovations. |
