Innovation management

Innovation management is the management of innovation processes. It refers both to product and organizational innovation.

Innovation management includes a set of tools that allow managers and engineers to cooperate with a common understanding of processes and goals. Innovation management allows the organization to respond to external or internal opportunities, and use its creativity to introduce new ideas, processes or products. It is not relegated to R&D; it involves workers at every level in contributing creatively to a company's product development, manufacturing and marketing.

By utilizing innovation management tools, management can trigger and deploy the creative capabilities of the work force for the continuous development of a company. Common tools include brainstorming, virtual prototyping, product lifecycle management, idea management, TRIZ, Phase–gate model, project management, product line planning and portfolio management. The process can be viewed as an evolutionary integration of organization, technology and market by iterating series of activities: search, select, implement and capture.

Innovation processes can either be pushed or pulled through development. A pushed process is based on existing or newly invented technology, that the organization has access to, and tries to find profitable applications for.

A pulled process is based on finding areas where customers needs are not met, and then find solutions to those needs. To succeed with either method, an understanding of both the market and the technical problems are needed. By creating multi-functional development teams, containing both engineers and marketers, both dimensions can be solved.

The product lifecycle of products is getting shorter because of increased competition. This forces companies to reduce the time to market. Innovation managers must therefore decrease development time, without sacrificing quality or meeting the needs of the market.

Innovation Management

Innovation management is based on some of the ideas put forth by the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, working during the 1930s, who identified innovation as a significant factor in economic growth. His book “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy” first fully developed the concept of creative destruction.

Innovation management helps an organization grasp an opportunity and use it to create and introduce new ideas, processes, or products industriously. Creativity is the basis of innovation management; the end goal is a change in services or business process. Innovative ideas are the result of two consecutive steps, imitation and invention.

By utilizing innovation management tools, management can trigger and deploy the creative capabilities of the work force for the continuous development of a company. Common tools include brainstorming, virtual prototyping, product lifecycle management, idea management, TRIZ, Phase–gate model, project management, product line planning and portfolio management. The process can be viewed as an evolutionary integration of organization, technology, and market, by iterating series of activities: search, select, implement and capture.

Innovation processes can either be pushed or pulled through development. A pushed process is based on existing or newly invented technology that the organization has access to. The goal is to find profitable applications for the already-existing technology. A pulled process, by contrast, is based on finding areas where customers' needs are not met and finding solutions to those needs. To succeed with either method, an understanding of both the market and the technical problems are needed. By creating multi-functional development teams, containing both engineers and marketers, both dimensions can be solved.

Innovation, although not sufficient, is a necessary prerequisite for the continued survival and development of enterprises. The most direct way of business innovation is technological innovation and institutional innovation. Management innovation, however, plays a significant role in promoting technological and institutional innovation.

The goal of innovation management within a company is to cultivate a suitable environment to encourage innovation. The suitable environment would help the firms get more cooperation projects, even ‘the take-off platform for business ventures’. Senior management's support is crucial to successful innovation; clear direction, endorsement, and support are essential to innovation pursuits.

Managing complex innovation

Innovation is a change that outperforms a previous practice. To lead or sustain with innovations, managers need to concentrate heavily on the innovation network, which requires deep understanding of the complexity of innovation. Collaboration is an important source of innovation. Innovations are increasingly brought to the market by networks of firms, selected according to their comparative advantages, and operating in a coordinated manner.

When a technology goes through a major transformation phase and yields a successful innovation, it becomes a great learning experience, not only for the parent industry but other industries as well. Big innovations are generally the outcome of intra- and interdisciplinary networking among technological sectors, along with combination of implicit and explicit knowledge. Networking is required, but network integration is the key to success for complex innovation. Social economic zones, technology corridors, free trade agreements, and technology clusters are some of the ways to encourage organizational networking and cross-functional innovations.

See also

• Collaborative innovation network, a social construct used to describe innovative teams
• Diffusion of innovations, a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread through cultures
• Open innovation, a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas
• Pro-innovation bias, the belief that an innovation should be adopted by whole society without the need of its alteration
• Technology forecasting, the prediction of future characteristics of useful technological machines, procedures or techniques
• Technology Scouting, a method of technology forecasting

Further reading

• Edward Huizenga (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands & Benthurst & Co, The Netherlands) (2014). The Knowledge Enterprise Innovation Lessons from Industry Leaders (2nd Edition) Available at: http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/p964
• Edison, H., Ali, N.B., & Torkar, R. (2013). Towards innovation measurement in the software industry. Journal of Systems and Software 86(5), 1390-1407. Available at: http://www.torkar.se/resources/jss-edisonNT13.pdf
• Abrahamson, E. (1996). Management fashion: Academy of Management Review, 21: 254–285.
• Amabile, T. (1996). Creativity in context. New York: Westview Press
• Burgelman, R. A. (1991). Intraorganizational ecology of strategy making and organizational adaptation: Theory and field research. Organization Science, 2: 239–262.
• Brown K. and Stephen P. Osborne (2005) MANAGING CHANGE AND INNOVATION IN PUBLIC SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS. New York: Routledge. P6.
• Brown, Terrence and Ulijn, Johannes. 2004. Innovation, entrepreneurship and culture: the interaction between technology, progress and economic growth. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
• Cappellin R. and Wink R. (2009) International Knowledge and Innovation Networks Knowledge Creation and Innovation in Medium-technology Clusters. UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.
• Chen J. and Qingrui Xu. (2012) Leverage Innovation Capability Application of Total Innovation Management in China’s SME’s Study. Singapore: ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY PRESS. P35.
• Damanpour, F. (1996), “Organizational complexity and innovation: developing and testing multiple contingency models”, Management Science, Vol. 42 No. 5, pp. 693–716.
• Damanpour, F., & Aravind, D. (2012). Managerial innovation: Conceptions, processes, and antecedents. Management and Organization Review, 8(2), 423-454.
• Damanpour, F. (2014). Footnotes to research on management innovation. Organization Studies, 35(9), 1265-1285.
• Eveleens, C. (2010). Innovation management; a literature review of innovation process models and their implications. Working Paper HAN University of Applied Sciences.
• Freeman, C. (1995), The national system of innovation in historical perspective. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 19(1) : 5 -24．
• Fonseca, Jose. 2003. Complexity and innovation in organizations. New York: Routledge.
• Fuglsang, Lars. 2008. Innovation and the creative process: towards innovation with care. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
• Griffin, Ricky. 2011. Fundamentals of management. New York: Cengage Learning.
• Jason, F. 2013. Our 'Kodak moments' – and creativity – are gone. The Guardian. [Online]. 23 August 2013. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/23/photography-photography. Accessed 26 April 2014.
• Kelly, P. and Kranzburg M. (1978). Technological Innovation: A Critical Review of Current Knowledge. San Francisco: San Francisco Press.
• Levine, Arthur. 1980. Why innovation fails. Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Malerba F. (2008). Innovation Networks in Industries. UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.
• Mr. Donal O’Connell (2011). Harvesting External Innovation: Managing External Relationships and Intellectual Property. England/USA: Gower Publishing Limited/Gower Publishing Company .
• Oslo Manual (2005) - ISBN 92-64-01308-3 – © OECD/EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES 2005
• Paul, B. 2007. Entrepreneurship and Innovation Opportunity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. In: Paul, B. (eds). Entrepreneurship and Small Business, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 55-76.
• Rothwell, R., (1994) Towards the Fifth-generation Innovation Process, International Marketing Review, Vol. 11 No. 1, 1994, pp. 7–31
• Siltala, R., Taatila, V. & Alajääski, J. (2014). Finnish teachers' views on innovative teaching. In Virkajärvi, M. (eds.) 2014. Työn tulevaisuus. University of Tampere. Tampere, Finland, 280-297.
• Silverstein D. (2008) Insourcing Innovation How to Achieve Competitive Excellence Using TRIZ. US: Auerbach Publications.
• Schumpeter, J. A. (1934), The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest and the Business Cycle, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
• Shavinina, Larisa. 2003. The international handbook on innovation. Oxford: Pergamon.
• Thompson, V.A. (1965), “Bureaucracy and innovation”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 10, pp. 1–20.
• Verloop J. (2004). Insight in Innovation: Managing Innovation by Understanding the Laws of Innovation. Netherlands: Elsevier B.V.
• Wagner, Stephen. 2008. Managing innovation: the new competitive edge for logistics service-providers. Vienna: Haupt.
• Zbaracki, M. J. (1998). The rhetoric and reality of total quality management. Administrative Science Quarterly, 43: 602–638.