International Journal of Innovation Science

Glassman, Brian; Trusko, Brett

2012 International Journal of Innovation Science

doi: 10.1260/1757-2223.4.4.i

Trotter, Patrick; Vaughan, Jason

2012 International Journal of Innovation Science

doi: 10.1260/1757-2223.4.4.191

With the global economy facing its toughest test in over 60 years never has it been so important for companies, large and small, to innovate and grow. Whilst few business leaders would argue with this statement, research has highlighted the difficulty that businesses face in developing commercially successful, innovative products and services. It's well documented that between 80-90% of new product launches fail and whilst 80% of business leaders believe that innovation is important 65% are dissatisfied with their ability to innovate. To understand why successful, innovative products and services appears to be so elusive we conducted original research amongst a sample of UK based companies. The aim of the research was to identify how companies generate potential product ideas and what barriers they face in taking these ideas to the next stage of development. The results showed that whilst small and medium sized companies recognized the importance of innovation they did not have formal processes for generating ideas. In contrast all respondents from large companies reported that their organizations did have formal documented processes for innovation activities. Worryingly, all companies failed to use a sufficiently wide range of research tools to identify customers unmet needs. Another key area of the research was regarding barriers to innovation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, cost was considered to be the greatest barrier. Several of the other top and middle tier barriers to innovation were: lack of communication between departments; senior management; politics; poor decision making processes; and incomplete scientific or technical understanding. These barriers are directly rectifiable by putting specific transparent front end innovation processes in place. Although these problems are likely to differ between different industries the use of some innovation methodologies such as technical forecasting would help in the strategic decision making process. These findings suggest that both SMEs and large companies have gaps in the quality of their innovation systems which present a significant risk that the new products they develop may meet with commercial failure.

Duening, Thomas; Shepherd, Morgan; Czaplewski, Andrew

2012 International Journal of Innovation Science

doi: 10.1260/1757-2223.4.4.205

Recent research into effectuation and effectual logic show that entrepreneurs think and make decisions dramatically different than typical enterprise managers. One of the major issues in applying entrepreneurship and innovation to corporations is likely the misunderstanding and failed application of these core concepts to management practices. Thus, those studying intrapreneurship and innovation would find great value from this paper's discussion of effectuation and effectual logic as it explains its major differences between entrepreneurs and typical enterprise manager views as they pertain to: Goal setting, risk taking, resource selection and gathering, dealing with setbacks, building networks, and management control. To dive deeper into these valuable concepts, effectuation and its core principles were applied to the product development process and systems development process. This includes applying them to: Screening of ideas, business analysis, development, product validation, and the market launches phase of product development. This article should help those applying entrepreneurship practices to their organizations and result in more innovative managers and employees, or as the authors term it "enterprise entrepreneurs."

Dubey, Rameshwar; Singh, Tripti; Tiwari, Saurabh

2012 International Journal of Innovation Science

doi: 10.1260/1757-2223.4.4.217

The following statistical study shows the results of an investigation of supply chain innovation practices of Indian Cement Manufacturers, which are a significantly large and quickly advancing industry in India. Aside from being a study of adoption of supply chain innovation practices (SCIP) in an emerging super power (India) the benefits of supply chain innovation (SCI) are discussed including the major advances in supply chain management. The statistical study compared innovation supply chain practices (like JIT, WMS, CPFR, and others) in 125 large cement firms to their financial performance measures (ROI, market share, EBIDTA, customer satisfaction, productivity). The resulting correlations showed very high levels of reliability and adequacy, and were uses to make conclusions on which supply chain innovation practices had a positive impact on company financial performance. The conclusions are somewhat astounding with the interesting finding that some innovation practices do not support firm performance and maybe should be avoided; while others ICS practices are shown to support firm performance to a high degree.

Harrington, James; Voehl, Frank

2012 International Journal of Innovation Science

doi: 10.1260/1757-2223.4.4.231

There is an ongoing need to explore opportunities and build a healthy and prosperous future, create new revenue streams and wealth, discover new solutions, and transform our organizations, industries, and societies. This need leads us to focus on innovation management. Through innovation management, order can be found in chaos, while nations, industries and economies can be pulled out of crisis. This will lead to a new foundation for growth and prosperity, which may be realized sooner rather than later.Despite the growing awareness that innovation is the only sustainable source of growth, competitive advantage, and new wealth, the Council on Competitive Report [1] and a recent Arthur D. Little survey of 700 global companies and their executives found fewer than 25 percent of the companies believe innovation performance is where it needs to be if they are to be successful in the competitive global marketplace. Having tried endless alternatives, company leaders are now ready to accept innovation management as a key operational discipline, just as in the past they adopted the disciplines of quality, strategic planning, and performance management systems [2]. Innovation management is not a new concept in most organizations. However, the old tried and true ways, even those that may have worked in the past, are no longer adequate for the organizations of tomorrow. Across the board, organizations are engaged in new and exciting experiments to reinvent the way they conceptualise and create the future, because the old business-as-usual approaches have not produced the desired results [3].

Skalkos, Dimitris

2012 International Journal of Innovation Science

doi: 10.1260/1757-2223.4.4.245

The sustained competitive advantage of a company today requires the management of internal and external knowledge and leveraging it to create innovation. The 21st century is rapidly moving into what is being called the "global knowledge economy," marked by the increased turbulence, uncertainty, and ambiguity of the current economic climate. Managing innovation requires research methods which evaluate: a) the technological abilities, b) the procedures, and c) the needs of a company/organization and propose specific actions for improvements, progress, and development. This paper proposes a process for managing innovation in small to medium size enterprise (SME). In order to support this process, this article elaborates on the innovation management techniques through a directory, which organizes techniques and tools into four generic types and 36 sub categories. Finally, to demonstrate this process a fictitious case example is presented.

Borgianni, Yuri; Rotini, Federico

2012 International Journal of Innovation Science

doi: 10.1260/1757-2223.4.4.259

The research about the patterns of technology evolution is populated by descriptive models, explaining quite regular trends of product development processes. The most popular schemes share the idea of long innovation periods characterized by incremental improvements and punctuated by technological turmoil events. Within the engineering field, such pattern can be described by S-shaped curves depicting the growth of performances in charge of technological paradigms, which approach their natural limit after entering their maturity stage. The birth of a novel S-curve symbolizes the emergence of a new breakthrough technology, which is followed by the choice of a preferred paradigm in the industry, generally designated as Dominant Design. However, new exigencies expressed by practitioners have remarked the limitations of qualitative models. Whereas some contributions openly question the general validity of the described models, a remarkable amount of literature claims that certain conditions related to the innovation processes have to be respected to make the outlined frameworks be valid. A deeper understanding about the open issues raised by the paper would result in more conscious innovation practices. Indeed, the exploitation of reliable models pertaining innovation trajectories could result in assessing the advantages arising by introducing new product functions or characteristics, enhancing performances on which industry is currently competing, reengineering manufacturing processes.

Harter, Nathan

2012 International Journal of Innovation Science

doi: 10.1260/1757-2223.4.4.269

Glassman, Brian

2012 International Journal of Innovation Science

doi: 10.1260/1757-2223.4.4.273

This is not an advertisement for a conference; it is serious analysis and critique of a new product development and innovation conference from a learning perspective to determine if one could ‘learn new product development and innovation in a conference setting. The author attended the product innovation management annual conference in Orlando in October 2012 [1, 2] and audited the academic forum, workshop series, and general conference sessions with special attention paid to the format and content. Participant's ratings of "value" and "the amount they learned" were captured from "beginners" and "experts". The results show that individuals who prefer learning through auditory and reading/writing reported, "absorbing" the most; while kinesthetic learners and those who required all inputs (auditory, visual, written/reading, and kinesthetic) wanted a greater variety of formats namely more exercises, demonstrations, case examples, and videos examples. The author tentatively concluded that "yes" one can learn NPD and innovation practices effectively at a conference setting where content and quality of materials and speakers are high. Importantly, the content quality appears to be highly dependent on the conference organizer's depth of knowledge in the topic areas. Suggested improvements to future conferences to help individuals learn more would include providing handouts and summaries after each session for the read/write learners, to increase the number of charts, graphs, diagrams, and videos for visual learners, and to increase the Q&A time allotments and included moderated discussions sessions for auditory/ learners.

Spencer, Robin

2012 International Journal of Innovation Science

doi: 10.1260/1757-2223.4.4.279

Due to a misprint Figure 1 & 2 were incorrectly displayed in the original manuscript published in volume 4 issue 2; the following presents the corrected figures.