Critical success factors for the insertion of autonomous vehicles as a product service system in a country

Abstract

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are embedded in the most significant historical change to the automobile and transportation industry. Governments, universities, and organizations worldwide identify AVs as a key-research factor. Based on theories of disruption and innovation, the general objective of this work is to analyze AVs as a Product-Service System (PSS), seeking to identify critical success factors (CSFs) for their insertion in a country in order to propose and test an innovation framework.Starting from an teorical investigation and field approach, this thesis was drawn up as academic articles. Article 1 reviews the management and business research field of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) in a bibliometric context to identify strategies, practices, and management tools; and summarizes existing studies and research gaps. The study is qualitative and descriptive, based on a bibliometric review on Web of Science, Scopus, and Science Direct, followed by a systematic integrative review. Results show that, in the near future, AVs will certainly be introduced in the society. However, such insertion is still surrounded by uncertainties, doubled by governments‘ lack of planning. Paper 2 aimed at identifying the CSFs and proposes a theoretical model of the innovation radar for the insertion of AVs as a PSS in a country. The study has exploratorydescriptive nature, quantitative-qualitative approach and adopted theoretical-empirical procedures. Through a systematic literature review, it was possible to map the main CSFs for a country, next, we used questionnaires to filter key CSFs that could be used in AVs scope and context, and thus, we have the proposition of a theoretical framework that allows the mapping the CSFs. The framework presents 4 key dimensions that work like anchors: (1) Technology and Innovation, (2) Social and Political Environments (3) Consumer and Market, (4) Infrastructure and Patters. Among these four anchors, we imbedded 12 factors of the innovation system that can serve as pursuit avenues. Paper 3 seeks to map and discuss the innovation context of Brazil and France. The study has exploratory-deciptive nature, quantitative-qualitative approach and adopted theoretical-empirical procedures. A case study method was used, with questionnaires as a data source. The results obtained in Brazil and in France were crossed with official data and statistics and corroborate the use of this tool. Through the outputs of this research we could address the gap between the development of AVs, the differences between two national contexts, and the lack of specific knowledge about how to manage disruptive innovation in countries. Hence, the main contribution of this thesis is the integration of data and information from different sectors (social, political, economic, technological, and structural) of a given country, making it possible to map, discuss, and divedeeper on the real panorama for AVs‘ insertion. As for future studies we suggest to extend the data collection to other countries and also, based on the outputs of this research, a future agenda must include the elaboration of key guidelines for AVs governance, including short, middle, and long term actions and requirements for the complete and successful insertion of AVs in the countries.