Benefits and challenges of new mobile service development in R&D network

The competitive environment of organizations has changed remarkably in line with rapid technological development and globalization of markets. This has lead to a situation where the amount of resources and knowledge needed in the development of new offerings has become overwhelming for a single organization. Consequently, nowadays organizations—both commercial and non-commercial—are performing research and development activities in networks consisting of multiple types of actors. This is also the case in industries developing new services for consumers’ mobile handhelds. This paper introduces a network view to new mobile service development and argues that a thorough understanding of acting in the network environment is a pre-requisite for successful mobile service creation. This viewpoint is emphasized in an information-rich case study, which describes the formation and operations of a network, which created a new mobile service for a sports team.