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Innovation through collaborative partnerships: creating the MSN News for iPad app at VanceInfo Technologies

  • Teaching Case
  • Published:
Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases

Abstract

This teaching case focuses on a collaborative project between a major software and services outsourcing company in China (VanceInfo Technologies) and one of its major Western clients (Microsoft Inc.). VanceInfo and Microsoft had been engaged in a long-term client/vendor relationship since 1997 and the project had been the result of this long-term partnership arrangement. The project was deemed quite successful and innovative; hence it provided an opportunity to determine how collaborative innovation could work between two remote and culturally different supply chain partners and how the lessons from this project could be used to inform SSO providers of ways in which they could move up the value chain to more client-focused value added services. The case looks in-depth at the actual working practices that enabled the distributed Microsoft/VanceInfo team to produce a market-led innovative product. Agile methods were highly integral to the functioning of those work practices and are quite carefully scrutinised from the point of view of how they were adapted for use in a distributed, cross-cultural environment. Users of the case study will be asked to formulate answers to several questions geared towards providing general guidelines that SSO providers can follow to achieve similar successful outcomes.

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Notes

  1. See http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=CN2577404X for more details.

  2. VanceInfo and hiSoft recently merged to become China's leading software outsourcing provider as measured by revenue and headcount. For more details, please see the merger press release: http://www.vanceinfo.com/en/newsroom/PressRelease/20120810-2.

  3. See http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=CN2577404X for more details.

  4. BFSI is an acronym for ‘Banking, Financial Services and Insurance’.

  5. Other includes manufacturing, retail, distribution, travel and transportation and public services.

  6. Annual reports in VanceInfo NYSE SEC filings: http://secfilings.nyse.com/files.php?symbol=VIT.

  7. http://www.vanceinfo.com/.

  8. See VanceInfo's press release concerning this: http://www.vanceinfo.com/en/newsroom/PressRelease/20110901.

  9. Shared or group intelligence emerging from competition and collaboration among members of a group who share similar objectives.

  10. An app refers to a software application designed specifically for use on mobile devices such as SmartPhones and tablet PCs such as the iPad.

  11. See http://extras.uk.msn.com/about-msn/ for more information about MSN's channels.

  12. See statistics at http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/MSN.com.

  13. Apple's iPad shipments total 58% globally (http://www.strategyanalytics.com/default.aspx?mod=pressreleaseviewer&a0=5167).

  14. Microsoft Online Service Division.

  15. A set of methods based on a philosophy of software development called the agile manifesto (http://agilemanifesto.org/).

  16. A Microsoft integrated programming environment, for more details see: http://www.asp.net/mvc/mvc3.

  17. For further information, see: http://tech.uk.msn.com/microsoft/msn-for-ipad-how-to-use-the-bing-lasso.

  18. See for example: http://www.mitchlacey.com/resources/distributed-agile-development-at-microsoft-patterns-practices.

  19. SharePoint is a Microsoft product that facilitates information sharing, collaboration and document management.

  20. Pinging is a technique used in the Microsoft Lync product for initiating an instant message conversation with a distant colleague.

  21. An electronic collaboration platform that incorporates features meant to reduce the distance problem between distributed teams: http://lync.microsoft.com/en-gb/Overview/Pages/what-is-lync.aspx.

References

  • Abbott, P., Zheng, Y., Du, R. and Willcocks, L. (2010). From Boundary Spanning to Creolization: Cross-cultural strategies from the offshore provider's perspective, in Proceedings of Americas Conference on Information Systems (Lima, Peru, 12-15 August).

  • Whitley, E.A. and Willcocks, L. (2011). Achieving Step-Change in Outsourcing Maturity: Toward collaborative innovation, MIS Quarterly Executive 10 (3): 95–107.

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Acknowledgements

This teaching case was prepared with support from VanceInfo Technologies Inc., China. The research for this teaching case was sponsored by the CIGREF Foundation (http://www.fondation-cigref.org/home/) and the Sophia-Antipolis Foundation (http://sophia-antipolis.org/)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Systems & Computing, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK

    Pamela Abbott

  2. School of Management, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

    Yingqin Zheng

  3. Department of Management, School of Economics and Management, Xidian University, Shaanxi, China

    Rong Du

Authors
  1. Pamela Abbott
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  2. Yingqin Zheng
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  3. Rong Du
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pamela Abbott.

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Abbott, P., Zheng, Y. & Du, R. Innovation through collaborative partnerships: creating the MSN News for iPad app at VanceInfo Technologies. J Info Technol Teach Cases 3, 16–28 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/jittc.2012.17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/jittc.2012.17

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