The Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne HES-SO (University of Applied Sciences Western) is organizing a Workshop on Strategic Renewal, Adaptation and Innovation (March 3-4, 2016) aimed at identifying the major forces that drive hospitality innovation. In this workshop we seek contributions that enhance our understanding of innovation in service and, specifically, international hospitality management. The objective is to integrate the largely interdependent works on strategic renewal and innovation, so hospitality management can apply what contemporary research on service innovation has revealed on organizational transformation.
Recent studies on service firms highlight their increasing reliance on innovation for strategic transformation. Not surprisingly, hospitality innovation has experienced mounting interest in recent years. One important driver of this trend is the need for continuous sustainable innovation to stay competitive, which might lead hospitality firms to search for and to implement a variety of innovative solutions. Notwithstanding the relevance of these developments for hospitality firms, the field is still in its infancy and many open areas have emerged.
Many questions remain, including:
1) How does innovation facilitate strategic transformation and add value to hospitality firms? And how does it develop?
2) How do different forms of technological and non-technological innovation contribute to the goal of renewal?
3) What are the drivers of technological and non-technological innovation, organizational transformation, and sources of sustained competitive advantage?
4) Should hospitality firms attempt discontinuous transformation or incremental strategic renewal and the joint adoption of specific pairs of technological and organizational innovations?
5) When and how to assess the impact of different forms of non-technological innovation—business model, organizational, and marketing innovation—in hospitality firms’ dynamic capabilities?
This workshop is the first one of its kind in the hospitality field that aims at developing a more integrative and comprehensive conversation about the antecedents, characteristics, and output of strategic renewal by means of innovation in hotels, resort, restaurants, recreational, and other hospitality and tourism industries firms. The topic of this workshop is genuinely global in its reach and scope, providing an interdisciplinary forum for research and debate in strategic management, innovation, and human resource management, with a focus on topics related to strategic renewal, innovation, and management issues.
The motivation for bringing together a group of around 25 people, comprising academics, businesspeople, and industry policy advisers, is to advance our understanding of what drives strategic renewal in hospitality firms. The workshop will feature panels of industry experts, keynote speakers, conference sessions and a dialogue between academics and practitioners. Three types of contributions are invited: “Full papers” (no word limit) – to report research that has been completed. “Research notes” (2.000 words or five pages) – to report exploratory, work-in-progress research. “Practitioners’ presentations (abstract required) – to report state-of-the-art on hospitality innovation practice.
If you would like to participate as a presenter, please send an abstract of up to 500 words before January 20, 2016 to me at Carlos.MARTIN-RIOS@ehl.ch. There is no fee for registration or meals for those who are invited to attend, but all participants will be expected to cover their own travel and accommodation expenses. Further information will be made available to participants via the conference website once the decisions have been made.
About the author
Dr. Carlos Martin-Rios (PhD Rutgers University) is Assistant Professor of Organizational Innovation and Talent Management Systems at the École hôtelière de Lausanne. He performs research that aims to understand and predict the factors that determine non-technological innovation (e.g., business model innovation, organizational innovation, and management innovation), inter-firm collaborations and knowledge exchanges, and innovative talent management in knowledge-intensive service firms at large and, in particular, hospitality firms.
The Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL) is an ambassador for traditional Swiss hospitality and has been a pioneer in hospitality education since 1893. It offers a complete cycle of university studies to 2,289 enthusiastic and talented students from over 90 different countries. It has created and inspired a unique professional community of 25,000 hospitality managers, united by the values and the legacy of EHL.
