Innovation Process - Science topic

In recent years, technological innovations, including, for example, innovations in the field of new information technologies, ICT and Industry 4.0, increase the possibilities of international operation of enterprises and corporations. These processes take place in many economic entities operating internationally and thus accelerate the processes of informational, technological and economic globalization.

Regards,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

I suggest Klaus Fichter 's innovation community construct - based on Witte's promotor theory - which helps to analyse cross-functionional and cross-organisational (multi-level) innovation processes. We further developed the theory in the context of circular economy (and broader sustainability) innovation here by adding specific collaboration mechanisms: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344281476.

I'd start by embedding the simplification in every aspect of the institution's fabric, then the rest falls in place.

Thank you Bryan Higgins . I'll read your papers suggestion. I hope it would help me. Regards.

The sums and the averages should be essentially the same thing, assuming all respondents completed all questions.

If you use the sums or averages, these are usually treated as interval data, not ordinal data, and something like ols regression is preferred over ordinal regression.

Using sums or averages is called creating a scale. You might look in to that.

The fact that you are calling for DV's e.g. "product innovation" and "process innovation" suggests that you want these to be kept as separate DV's.

I would recommend reading the following artilce:

M Röglinger, J Pöppelbuß, and Jörg Becker (2012) Maturity models in business process management, Business Process Management Journal Issue 18, Vol. 2.

Hi,

Note that a Patent Must have these three attributes:

1. Novel

2. Inventive

3. Industrially applicable

otherwise it will not be granted Patent Status. The concept, method, formulation, device, invention, or alike must be considered NOVEL and INVENTIVE to those who are: "Skilled in the art".

Therefore, it should not be possible to protect any naturally occurring molecule by a Patent, copyright or Trade Mark. 

Mr Ardito, I happen to come by this question today, as the year 2016 is rapidly coming to an end.

I see no further responses than that  given by Mr Cua in 2012. His question: "What phenomenon at the trademark is bothering you? Why did you focus on the relationships between technologies and products a company is developing?" strikes the right note and I agree. I cannot see how a trademark could determine a product's characteristics. Toshiba makes cars, but they also are into power generation including using turbines and nuclear reactors. GE is into aviation engines,  healthcare/medical equipment, locomotives; Siemens is into a range of products from high voltage electrical equipment, to medical equipment to micro-electronics.

I would think trademarks have little to define  in a products characteristics, if you consider the examples I have cited. I hope my response even at this belated moment helps in a small way to answering your question.

I see two different issues:

The first thing to do is to clarify Sylvia's critique to the terms and how they relate to one another. My take is that creativeness and ideas are linked via the appraisal of creativeness of that idea. The idea itself must be valued (that becomes another issue completely different. One which I have taken interest on).

The second is that one must be careful that one set of problems do not reinforce and bias the study. For example, given that I work on X and my work focuses on analizing productivity I reinforce my well being and the next day I may be able to tackle 10 ideas about how to solve a certain problem. The same can be said in reinforcing frustration or anxiety of coming only with 5 instead of 10 ideas. I would space the problems further apart to avoid biases. I would also narrow it down to a specific profile of individual.

You might be interested in the recent papers:

Dear Marta,

First of all I would like to say that in many IC papers the authors link innovation of IC potential and not IC operational, which is actually the capability of generating innovation as a process. Please read my paper about Organizational integrators posted on ResearchGate to see the difference between potential IC and operational IC. Secondly, in many research and publications people address the innovation as a result because it is easier to measure and to produce quantitative data. Analyzing innovation as a process it is much more difficult and there is no rigid link between innovation as a process and good innovation outputs, since innovation is not a deterministic process like industrial production. Statistics show that out of 100 new ideas in a company, in a given period of time, may be 10-15 % of them will transform into useful and successful products on the market. Thus, from this point of view the output is more convincing than the innovation as a process. However, in order to get successful innovation outputs a company must be able to develop an efficient innovation process, based on its operational IC (i.e. with efficient organizational integrators).

Wishing you good luck in your research!

Constantin

I’m not sure if I completely understood your question: you try to measure the overall openness of a company, or the openness of particular processes or even of projects? From my perspective, a project-specific openness is most reasonable since it depends on a variety of influence factors, such as industry sector, type of innovation object (product, service, PSS, process, etc.), phase of product life cycle, need of secrecy and resources (referring to OI “permeability” of Dahlander&Gann 2010).

Therefore, I’m not sure if you can openness limit down to two parameters. For instance, you could take the variety of OI partners and the intensity of cooperation with them (Laursen and Salter 2006). But then you would probably neglect aspects, such as the general publication of information about the OI project (depending on the specific need of secrecy and strategic relevance of the OI project, in one case only the results of the OI project need to stay secret, in another case its even the existence of the project), or the type of OI partners, which can range from actors from other departments, via network partners to crowds.

Hopefully my ideas are useful, although they are not a clear statement of parameters ;-)

Quite clearly no. EO is a subjective preference for pursuing a specific objective, such as growth. This may be based on a judgement of your resources and capabilities or simply a mis-judgement of your skills, or even a psychologically motivated thing. 

in construction the client/user drives innovation in the product (building) to satisfy their own  needs and priorities. As for process innovation, in most cases, its is driven through the internal organisational dynamics. The industry suffers when a gap is created between both due to the inertia and traditional mindsets that dominates industry. having said that there has been a strong movement where clients, including strong public clients, have pushed the industry to deliver process innovation through setting challenging targets for improvement.

Hello Ms Kuhne,

I chanced to come by, or on to your questions and they  intrigued me. At the outset I must admit that I am not a food scientist;   I am an innovator.  I also happen to be an academic who  has been involved in teaching  innovation and technology, innovation and entrepreneurship, or  courses that were variations on those themes. Thus,  your questions were  a source of puzzlement to me. And my response may well be unusual. Your questions which I quote were:

“a) How should a network be structured in order to facilitate innovation and knowledge exchange of (food) SMEs?

b) Which methods could be applied to enrich our understanding of SMEs' needs for innovation and knowledge exchange? “

The first one seem to implicitly suggest that innovation  ( and perhaps knowledge exchange amongst food SMEs) is not occurring to the extent that you would like. If this is indeed the case, there is a tacit acceptance on your part that networks may well  or could help

The second question seems to suggest that we need methods “to enrich our understanding of SMEs’ needs for innovation and knowledge exchange”. Is that correct? Is that what you  are seeking to achieve?

If innovation is not occurring, this is what I would suggest by way of innovation, again  not through the lens of a food scientist but as an innovator of sorts with a general interest in all things innovative. We know for a  fact that  with the long period of drought in  some parts of Africa, there is food shortage. 1) Why not work on developing crops that  do not need much water?  2) Why not develop crops that can grow quickly when the rains come, albeit over just a few days? 3)  Why not develop methods to conserve water that comes  incessantly and unexpectedly? 4) Why not develop crops that can cope with long periods of drought and still produce a healthy yield?   Those obviously apply to Africa. 

But here are a few more: Why not develop crops that  are pest resistant? Why not develop crops that are not affected by the use of pesticide, and  if  used, do not affect those who consume such food? – I assume that food treated with pesticides may have undesirable effects on humans. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Moving away from Africa to  the rich West, I notice that many food items  being sold in our supermarkets  contain all kinds of preservatives such as, for instance, nitrites and other chemicals , including phosphoric acid, alcohol  supposedly used to preserve them, to enhance taste like MSG,  to raise sweetness levels like additive sugar, aspartame, stevia, and  all those additive substances that run the gamut from A-numbers to Z-numbers  including E-numbers. They may extend shelf-life and endow the food with  all sorts of desirable characteristics. Personally speaking, aspartame and stevia cause a bad taste in my mouth and  even nausea.  Is it not possible to  come up with some innovative processes that do not require the use of such  factory-produced chemicals, or synthetic chemicals to act as shelf-life extenders or as taste enhancers or as appearance modifiers ( colouring agents)  so that  they look fresh, appetizing, etc? 

Again, putting on my technology hat, why not develop some form of technology that shows how much longer the food can be consumed, once the sell-by, eat-by dates have actually been reached.  In that suggestion, I can see that food  suppliers, the last in the supply chain,  may not be happy as it might be inimical to their financial interests. Nonetheless, in that  way, we will be able to reduce food wastage. There are a whole range of social actions, often innovative,  that can reduce food waste, I am certain of that. That said, would supermarkets and their suppliers or all parties in the food supply chain be happy to  help?

Coming to your question b) which I take at face value, I am wondering if SME’s still do not understand the need for innovation.  As for knowledge exchange, a Master’s degree student of mine studied  the effects on innovation of  SME’s participating in EU-funded consortia, and the results were not always beneficial to the SMEs when consortia members also included larger parties. Coming to methods, I am at loss to understand what you are driving at. Perhaps you meant something else but articulated in a  manner that resulted in a misinterpretation, particularly by this present writer.  Do feel free to contact me here  or preferably by email to discuss any statements I have made that do not resonate with you. I am of course willing to help you from a  technologist’s viewpoint, should you so desire. I do know something about networks.

My own experience, finally,  is that knowledge-sharing is unlikely to occur between distant actors in the same company; perhaps in other industries -- I worked in the computer industry - it may happen. But, when I was able to bring them  together by inviting them  them  to come to the place I was located (in The Netherlands), with of course my manager's blessing and approval, there was a free flow of information, and yes, knowledge exchange of a a high quality. And this exchange continued when they went back to the UK, USA, Israel,  Italy, Germany, France, etc, or wherever they came from..

I could go on, but shall  go for that period or full stop right now.

Best wishes.

I am enclosing a recent case study

As Safar Husain and others indicated innovation can be seen as the result of innovativeness. And innovativeness is the capacity to innovate, the degree in which it can be done.  There are radical innovations, design and production of completely new products and incremental ones, the gradual improvement of an existing product or a process. Sometimes radical innovations can be achieved by chance, serendipitously, a one time thing, not done continuously. In such a case we can't  say that there is a capacity there for innovation: innovativeness. But if a company can come up with new products again and again, even if it is by chance in all cases, it has a capacity to achieve innovation. In the case of gradual continuous innovation a product is taken and tweeked time and time again, purposefully to achieve innovation. This  is innovativeness even if its done with one product or process.

A good place to start is with Peter Drucker ’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the paper of  A.M. Kamaruddeen, N.A. Yusof, I. Said ‘Innovation and Innovativeness: Difference and antecedent’. And also two Issue’s of Strategy+Business ‘Innovation Smartest Spenders’ (Issue 45, Winter 2006),  Creative Minds (Special Issue, Autumn 2006) and the Spring issue of Harvard Business Review (2007).

I agree that the missing link is about involving stakeholders in (social / environmental / financial) value creation. This points to a link to stakeholder theory and corporate sustainability, e.g.

Horisch, J.; Freeman, R. & Schaltegger, S. (2014): Applying Stakeholder Theory in Sustainability Management: Links, Similarities, Dissimilarities, and a Conceptual Framework, Organization & Environment, Vol. 27, No. 4, 328–346.

You also point to a link between innovation and (social / environmental) value creation. A recurring and broadly discussed theme. Maybe this conceptual overview helps:

Hansen, E.; Große-Dunker, F. & Reichwald, R. (2009): Sustainability Innovation Cube – A Framework to Evaluate Sustainability-Oriented Innovations, International Journal of Innovation Management, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 683-713.

The third connection you highlight is value co-creation happening in firm-customer interaction (do you want to focus on customers only, or argue more broadly with regard to stakeholders?). I do not know a current sustainability and customer-focused article yet (but there is definitively something published about it), but here is a very good basic and pragmatic article about this interaction from a conventional perspective which helps to better understand what the co-creation interface between firm and customer looks like, by Prahalad and Ramaswamy:

A fourth perspective in your question is about social media ...

Interesting. But to me it looks like the relations between these at least four perspectives need some clarification - looks like a research gap!

I think our paper (written by Jeltje van der Meer-Kooistra and Robert W. Scapens) about product co-development projects can help you with finding an answer to your question. In this paper we describe in detail a product co-development project in which various small parties contribute their knowledge and learn how to become a system supplier rather than a supplier of specific components. This paper will be published in the journal Management Accounting Research in September and is now available on its website. You can also find the paper on Researchgate. The paper is entitled: Governing product co-development projects: the role of minimal structures.

Jeltje van der Meer-Kooistra

I recommend that you go over two papers (if you already have not) that might help you with this question:

Adams, R., Bessant, J., & Phelps, R. (2006). Innovation Management Measurement: A Review. International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol 8, Iss 1, pp. 21-47.

Damanpour, F. (1991). Organizational Innovation: A meta-analysis of effects of determinants and moderators. Academy of Management Journal, 34, 555-590.

I think you need to narrow your question / search down a bit. This will help in coming up with a possible tool. Context (as identified by Arash Hajikhani above) is important.

Best wishes with your research!

Attached are 2 files: (1) IMF's macroeconomic data of all member countries, and (ii) World Economic Forum annual report on Global Competitive Report which contains information on national innovation listed by countries. With these data on hand, you should be able to construct a model and test it. Cheers.

There are numerous papers arguing that whilst "stage gate" is a useful concept and provides a basis for governance, it should not be viewed as an innovation process.  More recent papers have criticised it as too linear.  Cooper himself has attempted to defend "stage gate" as never being linear, although if you read his original article it's hard to draw any other conclusion than it's linear.   More recent models suggest network

You should have a look to teh journal Economic Dynamics and Control, with a special attention to Giovanni Dosi's articles.

Regards,

MV

Well I just want to add the largest European Reference that you are missing is Brussels North.

I have studied problem of deweloping of information society. Information technology developing similar like Internet or PC. Look my articles.

Best wishes

Jan Grzegorek PhD

BOTTOM UP & HORIZONTAL CO-CREATION WITHIN FIRM: innovation in the companies or private sector generally involves the people at the lower rung, middle and then reaching the top management. Although the top management adopts innovation as policy goal, really the people the carry them out are at operation level---even R&D would belong to this level. Since these people are close to the source of the problem then top management, they would have a better chance in succeeding at innovation.

TOP DOWN APPROACH BY INNOVATIVE "BOSS" IN PUBLIC SECTOR: If the same model in the private sector is applied to the public sector, it would most likely not be functional. However, this is not to deny that innovation in the public sector is slow to come by. Take a look at the political scene, i.e. US presidential administration is a good example. Each president would have new idea to tackle new and old problems while keeping things within the bound of the rule of law. However, instead of calling it innovation, in politics it is called "reform" or policy shift. For instance, the renormalization of US-Chinese relation accomplished by ping-pong diplomacy under Nixon and the renormalization between the US and Vietnam under Clinton's administration are prime examples of innovative policies that break the norm of existing conditions of their days.

FAST OR SECOND INNOVATION IN PUBLIC SECTOR: New ideas and new faces through scheduled election or personnel rotation based on merits. The organizational culture must be receptive to change and possess adequate resources to support innovation.

Dear Saeed,

Could you explain a bit more about the context of your research or the case you are interested in? As Muhammed indicates, DCs are a type of organizational capabilities that focus on organizational change that in particular is also focussed on innovation. It may lead to organizational agility and flexibility and may allow the organization to act more quickly than competitors. Is this something that may prove to be helpful?

Take a look too at managerial cognition as a driver of change through sensemaking and understanding (Eggers and Kaplan, 2013)

Erik,

good question! May be this paper can support you with a slice of the answer you need: http://www.saiplatform.org/uploads/Library/HBR_Sustainability_Driver_Innovation_Sept.2009.pdf 

I will search other papers on the subject. Regards, Farley 

Hi Lukas, you find a couple research materials in the official website of American Marketing Association. Good luck 

Yes and no. There is an obvious tension between management and labor since the purpose of being in business is to make a profit for shareholders, and the purpose of workers is to make a decent living, so the two do not always work fr the mutual benefit of management and workers. In a globalized economy many organizations use local contractors to conduct business in foreign lands because of the economy of scale in using local talent, and the potential for higher profits.

Local talent understands local customs, laws, etc., and is therefore a useful liaison between the organization, governmental and local authorities, and workers. However, the whole purpose of using contractors is to minimize the costs of producing goods and services, and maximizing profits; therefore, management practices involve seeking out the lowest production costs wherever they can be located. This translates into lower priced goods for consumers (especially in developed countries) but the same goods are often out of reach for the workers who make them, due to the very poor wages paid to these workers. So, on the one hand, consumers in developed or developing countries benefit, contractors benefit, but consumers in underdeveloped countries do not benefit at all. The reasons are myriad and they are too extensive to list for this post; however, a lot has to do with the entrepreneurial practices of the head organizations and the contractors that they hire.

Globalization has given rise to many entrepreneurs who rush to capitalize on the cheap labor and reduced trade barriers. For example, it is very common for celebrities to design clothing lines and manufacture them in underdeveloped countries. In America, many large corporations outsource to underdeveloped countries and pay the workers, through the contractors, less than subsistence wages, and prevent these workers from joining or forming unions – something that they generally cannot get away with in America (although unionism is under fierce attack in America at this time).

Abuses by contractors have been widely reported as a quick google of the topic will reveal. Most recently, spectacular fires or building collapses in Bangladesh have made headlines in America, and revealed the practices of contractors. They routinely lock workers in, prevent them from leaving the factories, and have them working under very unsafe conditions. They pay them below subsistence wages (see link below) and when these things are exposed, the organization can pretend that they are not at fault because they hired contractors to ensure that their goods are produced under international law that guarantees workers rights, etc. So, on the whole, globalization has benefited the developed nations, but placed the citizens of underdeveloped nations in economic slavery.

Links:

Recent accounts of such fires and working conditions can be viewed here:

Check the reference list on my theses on intrapreneurship amonst unit nurse managers. You might find something which interst you. Good luck

It depends on the branch of psychology (some use more math than others) and the country where psychology is studied - traditions and capacity to offer such courses (as well as quality of teaching) are important factors. There is even an area called mathematical psychology (see Society for Mathematical Psychology http://www.mathpsych.org/). Otherwise, math is widely used for quantitative research methods.

Here is a relevant article - "Mathematical Psychology: Prospects for the 21st Century" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2651093/

This sort of prize act as a motivating factor for many researchers and scientist throughout the world.

Of course there are differences in the two strategies. I also understand that it has to do with the market or markets to which it is addressed.

You can have high costs and produce on request outside your organization. Or you can have low costs and high production series.

The correct strategy should be one that allows to reach that market and at least break even. Maybe in the overall portfolio, the organization has increased profits, depending on the market or segmentation.

EO has many dimensions but most used in literature are innovation, Pro-activeness and Risk taking also there are two extra dimensions such competitive aggressiveness and autonomy..

Hi Muhamed,

You are right. Innovation processes differs with respect to firms' characteristics e.g. size, sector, services etc. It would be interesting to see if SMEs can apply existing innovation processes and tools, which are mainly developed for larger companies. Also whether the existing NPD models such Stage-Gate model, can be applied in small firms considering special needs and characteristics of these companies.

Regards,

Lakhvir

ve colleagues that work with design and innovation. For example Anders Wikström, his thesis can you find here: http://mdh.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:640464/FULLTEXT02.pdf

Abstract:

This research proposes that design and visual thinking in combination with narrative theory contribute to enhance knowledge of innovation processes and support managers in their work. In particular, the focus is on the use of Storyboarding to support a better definition of a project’s brief. Innovation studies have shown that the initial phases of innovation processes (typically called the “front end of innovation”) are crucial for success. A proper definition of a brief, that occurs at the front of the front end, is therefore one of the most relevant events in innovation. This study investigates the early phases of innovation by developing and evaluating a new method for developing a brief.

First, an explorative approach has been used in order to develop knowledge of challenges in the front end of innovation and how design thinking, visual thinking and narratives can bring new insights in teamwork. In this explorative search the use of case studies has been employed. Then, the explorative search has focused onthe use of Storyboarding as a tool for reflection, and in particular for igniting dynamics of framing and reframing of innovation problems. Finally, in order to create a deeper knowledge in the use of storyboarding three hypotheses has been evaluated, four experiments has been conducted with the involvement of more than 60 people defining innovation briefs. In these experiments, storyboarding (visual and narrative) has been used to support “thinking” that leads to the brief. In other words, storyboarding has been seen as a process to enable innovation teams to think differently or more precisely, rather than just a tool to represent or to communicate the brief. The experiments show that using storyboarding has effects that can support innovation management. First, storyboarding is useful if management wants to “stimulate” a reflection on meaning when developing a brief, i.e. when they want an innovation team to consider both utilitarian and emotional/symbolic factors in an innovation process. Second, Storyboarding brings a narrower focus, compared to traditional written briefs, within the “area of interest” brought up by management, which sometimes may be asked for when the organization is in search for reframing the direction of innovation.

Malaysia, a tropical palm tree growing country, generates millions of tons of waste palm biomass from its numereous palm oil mills.The Palm Oil Mill Effulent (POME),like municiple waste also produces CH4 which is used as a source for electrical/ thermal energy. Depending upon the concentrations of CH4 in the POME samples, the details of the methods applied are given in:

Science of the Total Environment, 366 (2006) 187-196.

Click:

Baseline study of methane emission from anaerobic ponds of ...

Starting from CH4, graphene can be obtained by:

“Graphene Synthesis and band gap opening”

By

Deep Jariwala, Anchal Srivastava and Pulickel M.Ajayan

Specially concentrate on the last paragraph of 9/33 page.

Click:

Graphene synthesis and band gap opening Table of contents:

Really nobody?

Instead, could you give me some hints how to improve my question? What kind of informations do you need?

In my understanding, the difference is a level and time issue. Diffusion refers to the fact how an innovation has spread within a group, community or country. Adoption is more at the individual level (whether or not someone has used the innovation). If you look at individuals the difference is clear, individuals can only adopt. If you look at higher levels it gets confusing. A country can have an adoption rate, eg 60% of Greeks have adopted smartphones (own one). Diffusion would also describe how the process of adoption went (classical s-curve or a different curve)

Dear Anja,

Have a look at the innovation system failure framework developed by Klein Woolthuis, R., Lankhuizen, M., Gilsing, V., 2005. A system failure framework for innovation policy design. Technovation 25, 609-619.

You could analyse the potential for innovation by assessing the degree to which insitutional, infrastructural, capabilities, resources are constraining elements for innovations.

Marc

Michael Porter's three generic strategies are price,differentiation and focus. I feel, price and differentiation, link innovation and industrial engineering. From industrial engineering perspective ,work study ( Method study & Work measurement ) improves, the plant operational efficiency by improving productivity and thereby reducing the cost of production, and thus creating a competitive advantage of charging lower price from the customer. Further Value engineering and Value analysis create product differentiation advantage, thereby making the product more competitive in the market. For sustainable development ,any organization requires to concentrate on product development, product innovation and process improvement through industrial engineering practices to remain competitive in the market. Any innovative product may be subjected to value engineering at the design stage and value analysis thereafter.

Thank you for your valuable input. It seems I wasn't aware of the right category to search in.

Viele Grüße to Jena!