Co-Creation Among Small Scale Tourism Firm: Role of Information Communication and Technology in Productivity and Sustainability

Abstract

ICT enabled tourism brings planners and actors into a common platform. Uttarakhand falls under the L4 (above average) category as per an e-readiness report and subsequently within the span of 5 years, it has climbed to level L3 after the infusion of web-based technologies. Tourism Firm's innovation is primarily based on following criteria: coexistence with existing competitors, cross-value chain income generating activities (IGA) along tourism, new products/processes developed in the past 2 years. An intensive literature review has been done, out of which three critical success factors were identified: (a) Internet usage; (b) firm's innovation and competitiveness; (c) income generating activities (IGA) by the firm. Together, these critical success factors (CSFs) express high cumulative variance. The study identifies co-innovation strategies among supply chain actors at the micro and small levels, which is based on cross-functional linkage between allied industries, and on internet use and IGAs. Validation has been done using an explorative study.