Co-creation innovation for business programs for educational institutions
- Autores: Agustín Peralt Rillo
- Directores de la Tesis: Gabriela Ribes Giner (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Politècnica de València ( España ) en 2015
- Idioma: inglés
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Ismael Moya Clemente (presid.), Rafael Ventura Fernández (secret.), Amelia Pérez Zabaleta (voc.)
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: RiuNet
- Resumen
Nowadays, universities are finding they have more and more competition regarding postgraduate programs. As educational institutions increase the offer, the need for them to improve their knowledge about the postgraduate market becomes more evident due to the lack of existing research and scarce literature about the topic. All this will help the educational institutions to develop suitable competitive strategies in order to attract postgraduate students¿ talent, thus distinguishing the institutions from the competition. This implies, on behalf of the universities and in order to initiate this differentiation strategy, the need to develop a proactive orientation towards the market. Besides, this proactive orientation towards the market, in the case of postgraduate programs, will have a peculiarity: it will not only have to take into consideration the adult student, but also companies, being that at times it is the companies that confide in these programs to send their professionals. This proactive orientation towards the market wills, like in many other markets, end up confiding in those programs which have successful marketing and allow for innovation and differentiation. At the same time, many authors relate this proactive orientation towards the market to co-creation. More specifically in the education sector, co-creation has been researched very little and has always been focused on the undergraduate student, not postgraduate. Lastly, the consequences of the postgraduate students¿ participation in these co-creation processes concerning satisfaction and loyalty is something that has not been studied either. Therefore, firstly, a bibliographic review of the concepts of ¿proactive orientation towards the market¿ is carried out as well as the ¿purchase process¿ of a postgraduate program by an adult student. In this first phase the first innovative model is raised which describes ¿the purchase process by the adult student¿ and which will be the perfect frame for the different reflections about universities, adult students and companies and all their interactions. In the second study, the concept of co-creation is also introduced through an in-depth review of the concepts of innovation based on co-creation and educational innovation. A new completed model is raised based on the first one, with an introduction of the concept of co-creation. This model will be tested by a Delphy study performed by experts and which includes proposed improvements. The next phase of our study continues with the aim of looking at greater depth which would be the best techniques and tools to implement successfully co-creation. With an exhaustive review of the different techniques used in other sectors, a classification is done on them in relation to the conceptual dimensions of co-creation. 10 After a review of these dimensions, and taking into account the peculiarities of the postgraduate educational sector, it is precisely the living lab which best represents this process of working co-creation because it stimulates the work process in real work situations and settings. At the same time and given the peculiarity of the purchase process of a master, we consider that the commitment of the Lead Users is something that should also be considered. In the last stage, the aim of our research is to empirically measure the impact and consequences of co-creation in the postgraduate student¿s satisfaction and loyalty towards the educational institution which facilitates participation in this co-creation. The proposed relations are a consequence of a literature review whose outcome is a structural equation model (SEM) where these hypothetical relations between co-creation and student satisfaction and loyalty towards the university are proven. From the analysis of the information it can be concluded that student participation in co-creation with the university leads to higher levels of satisfaction and greater loyalty. This first quantitative study has led to a validation of the proposed model which allows us to affirm that, independent of the results obtained in the co-creation process, the student involvement in it, will result in greater satisfaction and loyalty towards the institution. For this reason co-creation can help the educational institutions to develop competitive differentiating strategies which will generate not only a greater satisfaction for the student but also the possibility of achieving differentiation thanks to the resulting innovation. After this first quantitative study, a second study was carried out in a Business to Business context by sending a professional from the company to the educational institution. In this study an attempt was made to measure the consequences of co-creation in student satisfaction, strength of the relation and student loyalty. This new structural equation model (SEM) has more variables and relations than the former one, introducing the strength of the relation. In addition, the study is centered on adult students who in this case are professionals sent by their companies to study a master program, Business to Business as opposed to Business to Consumer from the former study. The conclusions of the study are that the co-creation where the adult student participates in the process takes them to higher levels of satisfaction and greater loyalty towards the educational institution. At the same time, our research shows that the strength of the relation is positively influenced by the process of creation of value. In this case, the research has only validated part of the model. Therefore, this last part of our research again reaffirms the idea that co-creation can be a beneficial tool for universities in order to develop competitive strategies which generate more value for their clients and which also makes it difficult for the competition to imitate. Finally it should be pointed out that the results of this research facilitate the implementation of a co-creation process between universities and postgraduate students as well as the possible areas of its application within the purchase process and choosing a master program. On the other hand, it has also been demonstrated that independent of the results of this process, co-creation itself leads to higher rates of satisfaction, an improvement in the strength of the relation and more student loyalty towards the institution.
