Stakeholder Analysis enriched with the Analysis of Inter- Organizational Interactions and Interdependencies: Case- study on innovative Smart Living projects

To become more innovative, increasingly companies in Smart Living domain initiate and participate in trans-sector collaborations. Trans-sector collaboration is marked by involvement of various actors from distinct sectors with sometimes, if not often, conflicting strategic interests and incoherent operational business processes and procedures. To gain an in-depth insight into the actors’ relationships and interactions, ‘stakeholder analysis’ is suggested and adopted by many scholars and practitioners. However, the literature on stakeholder analysis is too concerned with abstract strategic analysis, often limited to conceptual and static understanding of stakeholders. This paper argues that a “true” understanding of stakeholders can only be achieved by analyzing the stakeholders’ interactions and interdependencies. This study borrows a conceptual framework from service innovation domain, i.e. the VIP framework, to extend stakeholder analysis by a systematic analysis of stakeholders’ dynamic requirements and interactions. The qualitative evaluation of the frameworks application shows that this extension is needed to gain in-depth understanding of stakeholders, and the potential operational conflicts and critical dependencies between them, that otherwise would be overlooked. KeywordsStakeholder Analysis, The VIP Framework, Inter-Organizational Interactions, Trans-sector Collaborations, Smart Living