Project management and management of innovation in small industrial firms

In innovation projects, three sub-processes have to evolue concurrently. These are problem solving, to bring about a new product or process; internal innovation diffusion, to disseminate information and engender a positive attitude towards new developments; and change in the organization so that it may function successfully with new products or processes. The characteristics of these sub-processes and a need for special roles relating to them were suggested by a study of the innovation processes in small companies. A case history shows the possible use of the processes and roles indicated above to manage innovation projects.     

The role of openness in the fuzzy front-end of service innovation

The early stages of innovation involve high levels of uncertainty, leading to it being labelled as the “fuzzy-front end” (FFE). Although openness has been identified as pivotal to innovation performance in the open innovation literature, little effort has been put into exploring its role in the FFE. Specifically, this study examines ‘openness competence’ within the FFE–i.e., the ability of a FFE team to explore, gather and assimilate operant resources from external sources by means of external searches and inter-organisational partnerships. The aim is to investigate the impact of openness competence on front-end uncertainty reduction and service innovation success. Data were obtained from a survey of 122 IT-based service innovation projects implemented by IT service provider firms in Thailand. The results suggest that openness competence positively influences both the degree of uncertainty being reduced during the FFE and the overall success of service innovations. These findings offer several implications for research on open innovation and the FFE as well as encouragement to managers to apply a more open approach to the FFE of their service innovation projects.     

Synchronization of Innovation and Vehicle Projects: Proposal of a Management Tool at Renault SAS

The success of a vehicle on the market depends on its price, reliability, and attractiveness; for the latter, innovations are the key elements in the differentiation from competitors. Managing the processes of selecting and integrating innovation projects into vehicle projects is therefore crucial. This article presents a management tool that aims at managing the interplay between innovation projects and vehicle projects. The objectives are to increase and optimize the amount and value of innovation projects integrated into vehicle projects. The tool, called “Profilor,” is based on the concept of intrusiveness, which is presented from a theoretical and empirical point of view.     

Making Innovation Happen in a Megaproject: London's Crossrail Suburban Railway System

Isolated pockets of innovation can be found in projects—such as the novel solution used to redesign the Velodrome roof during the London 2012 Olympics—but there have been few, if any, systematic efforts to manage innovation in a megaproject. This paper presents the initial findings of an ongoing three‐year (2012–2014) action research project between Crossrail and researchers at Imperial College London and University College London. Action research is well suited to a setting where an intervention is required to diagnose and solve an organizational problem and produce scientific findings (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Van de Ven, 2007). Undertaken in collaboration with practitioners, the aim of action research is to transform the research setting through a process of critical inquiry and action. Our engagement with Crossrail aimed to formulate and implement an innovation strategy to improve the performance and outcomes of the project. We identified four stages—or windows of opportunity—to intervene to generate, discover, and implement innovation in a megaproject: (1) the bridging window during the front‐end when ideas, learning, and practices from other projects and industries can be used to create an innovative project process, organization, and governance structure; (2) the engaging window, when tendering and contractual processes can be used by the client to encourage contractors and suppliers to develop novel ideas and innovative solutions; (3) the leveraging window, when all the parties involved—clients, delivery partners, and suppliers—are mobilized to develop novel ideas, new technologies, and organizational practices to improve performance; and (4) the exchanging window at the back‐end, when ideas and resources for innovation can be (re)combined with those of other projects in the wider innovation ecosystem to improve performance. The first two stages had largely occurred when we became involved in the Crossrail project in 2012. Our intervention addressed the final two stages, when we assisted in the development and implementation of an innovation strategy. Core to this strategy was a coordinated mobilization of the innovative capabilities across the project supply chain. Though, to be successful, this approach had to be open enough to span organizational boundaries beyond the supply chain, reaching into the broader ecosystem. The four windows provide a valuable new heuristic for organizing innovation in megaprojects, pointing to areas where project managers can craft targeted innovation interventions and compare their efforts with those of others.     

Overcoming equivocality on projects in the fuzzy front end: Bringing social networks back in

The management of the fuzzy front end (FFE) phase of innovation is crucial to the ultimate success of new product and process initiatives. A critical challenge that teams face at this stage is dealing with equivocality – the extent to which project participants grapple with multiple, and plausibly conflicting, meanings and interpretations of the information available to them (Daft and Lengel, 1986; Weick, 1979). While initially, a certain level of equivocality is beneficial for enhancing teams’ creativity and preventing early closure, at some point it must be resolved in order for an idea to become a viable New Product Development (NPD) project. This study employs a social networks perspective to understand how different types of informal work-based relations and their structural properties affect equivocality on project teams in the FFE. In particular, it examines the structural effects of two types of social relations and their associated networks—those of technical-advice and friendship ties. The findings suggest that while high density in projects’ technical-advice network is likely to reduce equivocality, high density in projects’ friendship network is likely to increase it. More interestingly, having multiple members on projects who are highly central in the lab's technical-advice network tends to increase equivocality unless it is balanced with members who occupy positions of high centrality in the lab's friendship network. In addition to contributing to the scholarship on NPD, FFE, and social networks, the results offer managerial insights for deploying social networks in order to assemble NPD teams and structure the flows of communication on projects so as to resolve equivocality in the FFE.     

Technological innovation versus non-technological innovation: different conditions in different regional contexts?

This study identifies the conditions that, at a regional level, facilitate the emergence of technological and non-technological innovation. One of the most promising lines in the discussion of the processes of regional innovation lies in explaining the different conditions of the various forms innovation process can take. We use fsQCA methodology to test the model. QCA is a method based on set theory that assumes the influence of certain elements in a specific outcome that depend on the combination of those elements; not just on the levels of the individual elements, as in traditional methods. First, we found that the absence of a single condition appears limiting for both types of innovation, which calls for customized innovation policies tailored to the regional context. Second, we found that some sets of innovation characteristics are sufficient conditions for regions to innovate. Among the selected sets, we found that the combination of firm collaboration and public and private R&D are sufficient for both types of innovation, which should be informative for regional policy. The fsQCA also identified alternative pathways—different for both types of innovation. Collaboration seems to be relevant since it is present in all the configurations for sufficient conditions.     

Innovation processes: Which process for which project?

The innovation process has traditionally been understood as a predefined sequence of phases: idea generation, selection, development, and launch/diffusion/sales. Drawing upon contingency theory, we argue that innovation process may follow a number of different paths. Our research focuses on a clear theoretical and managerial question, i.e., how does a firm organize and plan resource allocation for those innovation processes that do not easily fit into traditional models. This question, in turn, leads to our research question: Which configuration of innovation processes and resource allocation should be employed in a given situation, and what is the rationale behind the choice? Based on a large-scale study analyzing 132 innovation projects in 72 companies, we propose a taxonomy of eight different innovation processes with specific rationales that depend on a project׳s contingencies.     

Managerial Complexity in Process Industrial R&D Projects: A Swedish Study

Process industries often have features that differ from other businesses, such as round‐the‐clock production and costly and specialized production processes—features that have not been dealt with in the project management literature. We highlight and identify the complexity of R&D projects in the Swedish process industry and its interrelated process development and product development activities based on results from interviews and a case study. The different competence areas in which a project manager must integrate and manage R&D projects is illustrated. We conclude that a project manager needs both production and product‐related competence, including customers' processes.     

Networked creativity: a structured management framework for stimulating innovation

The effect of today's turbulent environment means that organisations need to improve their competitive advantage and swiftly respond to changing technology and markets. An organisation's ability to continuously innovate its products and business systems is essential to its future success. However, this ability to stimulate innovation is highly dependent upon the stock of potential ideas and problem solutions, which is available to feed the innovation process. These ‘seedlings of innovation’ are the product of the creative processes of an organisation. Whilst continuous, sustainable innovation is an essential competitive capability for future organisational success, to date the creative process has been allowed to operate in an ‘ad hoc’ and serendipitous fashion. Continuous innovation means that organisations need to be able to effectively manage their creative processes to ensure their innovation process has a plentiful supply of good ideas and solutions. To this end, a framework for enhancing networked creativity is presented as a means towards the effective management of the creative process within organisations.     

Can supplier innovations substitute for internal R&D? A multiple case study from an absorptive capacity perspective

Prior literature suggests that significant internal R&D resources are needed to leverage suppliers for innovation and that external knowledge sources can be used to complement the internal knowledge base. Based on the analysis of four inbound open innovation projects at Fortum, a multinational energy utility company, we argue that companies with low R&D intensity may adopt an alternative approach which aims at substituting – not merely complementing – internal R&D with external innovations. We adopt the absorptive capacity perspective while investigating the cases and focus on four distinct capabilities: acquisition, assimilation, transformation, and exploitation. We find that the substitution approach consists of short-term research on new technological areas in order to gain the ability to identify and evaluate alternative technologies, as well as joint business models and operations based on complementary capabilities between the parties. The cases also suggest that the innovation process requires significant collaboration and the buying company's supplier management capabilities may improve the success of inbound open innovation projects of this type.     

Designing the innovating organization

The innovating organization described is one that recognizes and formalizes the roles, processes, rewards, and people practices that naturally lead to innovations. The point we have emphasized throughout this article is that the organization that purposely designs these roles and processes is more likely to generate innovations than is an organization that doesn't plan for this function. Such a purposely designed organization is needed to overcome the obstacles to innovation. Because innovation is destructive to many established groups, it will be resisted. Innovation is contrary to operations and will be ignored. These and other obstacles are more likely to be overcome if the organization is designed specifically to innovate.Managers have tried to overcome these obstacles by creating venture groups, by hiring some entrepreneurs, by creating “breakthrough funds,” or by offering special incentives. These are good policies but by themselves will not accomplish the goal. Figure 1 conveyed the message that a consistent set of policies concerning structure, process, rewards, and people are needed. The innovating organization is illustrated in Figure 7. It is the combination of idea people, reservations in which they can operate, sponsors to supervise them, funding for their ideas, and rewards for their success that increase the odds in favor of innovation. Simply implementing one or two of these practices will result in failure and will only give people the impression that such practices do not work. A consistent combination of such practices will create an innovating organization that will work.     

Towards risk-aware roadmapping: Influencing factors and practical measures

In spite of the significance of uncertainty and risk in strategy, there is still a general lack of attention to their explicit consideration in strategic planning processes. This lack of attention is also obvious in roadmapping in its application to strategic and innovation planning. This paper introduces and explores the concept of risk-aware roadmapping, which explicitly manages uncertainty and risk in roadmapping, and sheds light on what such a process will entail given the factors that influence it. The study adopts a qualitative approach involving in-depth interviews with roadmapping experts and case studies of roadmapping exercises. This paper contributes to knowledge by providing a process that adds three significant steps to the standard risk management process, to suit roadmapping and strategic front-end innovation planning and identifying the risk of missing valuable innovation opportunities, which is very often overlooked in practice. Theoretical implications for organisational sensemaking are identified especially in the use and management of constraints for sensemaking activities such as innovation planning.     

Tracking innovation: The need for reliable measures of its presence and effects

It is generally accepted that innovation is an essential ingredient of corporate success and, when pervasive, strengthens the economy while warding off foreign competition. Many point to a perceived weakening of this process in U.S. firms as a contributing factor to the steady decline of productivity growth vital to our nation's stability. They clamor for government programs to encourage technical venturing, embracing the “R & D hypothesis” which declares that privately sponsored research is the wellspring of innovation, and thus the key to a producer's prosperity — leading to more vigorous industries.In response, Washington is seeking ways to spur private spending on R & D during this era of diminished Federal backing for research. Such initiatives are handicapped by a lack of data establishing the existence and extent of the apparent slump in industrial creativity. Also there is scant information available to management that demonstrates a close correlation between fortunes of the firm and activities characterized as innovations. Without such evidence, business appears reluctant to abandon its cautious attitude towards support of R & D that cannot be readily commercialized.Little is known about innovation's economic impact or bearing on the survival of an enterprise. The connection between industrial research and the launch of desirable products is too abstruse to permit the assumption that in-house R & D inevitably spawns viable innovations. We do not have data which permit rational decisions for the effective management of innovation by firms, or the design of a workable model for the process. This information gap has a deleterious effect in industries traditionally dependent upon research, and leads to strategies — aimed at fostering innovation — that are inadequate, badly timed or ill conceived.An innovation stems from a series of management decisions motivated by the quest for profits and tempered by industry conditions — government incentives notwithstanding. Companies pay for R & D which promises revenues that would not otherwise appear, and back a new product when the expected return is comparable to that from less risky alternative investments. They require an easily administered method for verifying, in accounting terms, the outcome of an innovation so its contribution to profits can be contrasted with the yield from product improvements or line extensions. Management could then weigh a proposed innovation the same way it evaluates other commitments.Authors of public policy need to monitor the pace of innovation on a regional or national scale so that they can determine when stimulants are called for — to restore this activity to the desired level. The traditional indices of innovation's intensity are imprecise, and misleading if the purpose be to identify a trend. “R & D expenditures” must be viewed with circumspection for they are not always incurred in pursuit of innovations, especially with increasing outlays for compliance with government regulations. “Patents awarded” or “technical articles published” are scant proof of seminal activity, and “government contracts awarded” is not a useful statistic. A true “index of innovation” is needed to guide public policy — one founded on data tied to the launching of products.In conclusion, this article suggests a technique for quantifying innovation inside the firm, as a planning tool of management and to provide the data base for a meaningful “index of innovation”. It describes the index, to be derived from data reported by a representative sample of geographically dispersed companies. A procedure is outlined for generating such data in firms, collecting it by a central authority, and calculating the index.     

The more the merrier? Network portfolio size and innovation performance in Nigerian firms

A positive relationship between firms' networking activities and innovativeness has been consistently established in the literature on innovation. However, studies considering different innovation types, and on developing countries are scarce. This paper addresses questions concerning the relationship between networking strategies and innovativeness of firms, using innovation survey data on Nigerian firms. Quantile regression is applied to trace the link between portfolio size and innovation at different levels of innovative success. The results show a positive relationship between a firm's innovation performance and the size of its networking portfolio. This relationship varies across different innovation types and with increasing innovation performance. The findings suggest that the widely accepted portfolio approach to external search for knowledge is not necessarily always the best—its utility depends on the firm's current level of innovative success. This poses a challenge for open innovation.     

Subterranean Commodification: Informal Housing and the Legalization of Basement Suites in Vancouver from 1928 to 2009

This article draws on Margaret Radin's theorization of ‘contested commodities' to explore the process whereby informal housing becomes formalized while also being shaped by legal regulation. In seeking to move once‐informal housing into the domain of official legality, cities can seldom rely on a simple legal framework of private‐law principles of property and contract. Instead, they face complex trade‐offs between providing basic needs and affordability and meeting public‐law norms around living standards, traditional neighbourhood feel and the environment. This article highlights these issues through an examination of the uneven process of legal formalization of basement apartments in Vancouver, Canada. We chose a lengthy period—from 1928 to 2009—to explore how basement apartments became a vital source of housing often at odds with city planning that has long favoured a low‐density residential built form. We suggest that Radin's theoretical account makes it possible to link legalization and official market construction with two questions: whether to permit commodification and how to permit commodification. Real‐world commodification processes—including legal sanction—reflect hybridization, pragmatic decision making and regulatory compromise. The resolution of questions concerning how to legalize commodification are also intertwined with processes of market expansion.     

论中小企业技术创新的价值管理

中小企业是为数众多的市场经济重要主体,其活力大小和发展状况将直接影响到国民经济能否长期稳定健康增长。企业核心竞争力水平的提高,极其重要的方面在于企业技术创新能力的增强。中小企业由于自身规模小、实力弱、资源相当有限的特点,在面对技术创新可能发生的技术风险、商务风险、市场风险等压力下,其技术创新的过程及其管理显得格外谨慎。将VE引入中小企业的技术创新工作,实施技术创新的价值管理,能够切实保障企业技术创新的顺利进行,帮助中小企业在是否技术创新、如何创新等方面进行正确决策,以提高技术创新的成功率,改善企业技术创新的成效。     

制造企业信息化系统建设的规划及目标

信息化建设过程是一个企业管理革新和业务流程优化的契机;通过信息化的建设改善企业业务流程,并将其固化下来,有利于企业的长远发展;本文在探讨现有制造企业信息化系统存在问题的基础上,对信息化系统建设的规划及目标提出了一些具体方案和建议。     

Do independent,female and specialist directors promote eco-innovation and eco-design in agri-food firms?

Eco-innovation and eco-design strategies are associated with firms' innovation capabilities. Moreover, they may impact on access to public subsidies and on financial performance. In this respect, the agri-food industry is especially vulnerable, because in general, this sector has less experience of technological innovation, and managers are more likely to be averse to such projects. On the other hand, the board may promote a proactive environmental approach to defend the interests of investors and other stakeholders, taking the view that these strategies reduce the environmental impact of the firm's products and its production processes and are therefore beneficial. Our study aim is to identify the profile of directors who may be favourable to eco-design and eco-innovation strategies, focusing on the traits of independence, gender diversity and environmental specialisation. The results obtained, from a dependence model based on panel data supplied by 321 agri-food companies for the period 2002–2017 (unbalanced panel data with 4878 observations), show that independent directors play a crucial role in implementing eco-innovation and eco-design projects. However, neither the diversity nor the specialisation of directors is a significant factor in this regard.     

Innovation policy in contemporary Queensland

This paper is about the how rather than the what of innovation policy in a contemporary setting. Most published research to date is concerned with the what: and the how of administrative reality appears to have been ignored by researchers.Political will (how public servants manage their commitment) to innovation policy creates a dilemma for scientists in politics. This dilemma is compounded by the bounded rationality of their training and cognitive processes, and their capacity to handle the administrative reality of innovation policy management.The significance of science-technology talk, and cognitive and occupational differentiation for appropriate management of innovation policy's “three-legged stool”—industry, government, and academia—is considered in relation to a learning rather than an administering bureaucracy.To illustrate this line of reasoning, a participant-observer approach using qualitative data from diary notes is used. Data reveal the patterning of a complex policy process. The importance in this process of carefully-constructed coalition networks and administrative reality is recognized.The most illuminating findings are that, for innovation policy, implementation is evolution through getting bits and pieces of the theme out at different places, at different times, with different people. Development of innovation policy requires multi-skilled professionals who possess varying experiential backgrounds. They have political nous, and are flexible and adaptable. They also understand that the patterning of process is beyond the reach of deliberate intervention by top-down views. In addition, mechanisms employed in attention directing, situation defining and evoking are significant for developing innovation policy.     

Some immediate - but negative - effects of openness on product development performance

This paper charts an unnoticed theme in the current debate on open innovation, namely the foundational question whether increasing openness is beneficial? The paper approaches this question by conceptualising the degree of ‘openness’ and analyses the importance of increasing degrees of openness for NPD performance. Inter-organizational relationships in New Product Development lay the foundation for operationalising openness because these represent important sources of ideas and knowledge in purposive inbound open innovation. This exploratory paper finds that on immediate NPD performance measures the single firm strategy is performing better than the collaborative strategy. However, we also find that the use of internal and external relationships is highly correlated and that these interact with each other. Finally, with increasing degrees of openness the product development projects are slower than the norm in the industry, slower than what is usual for the firm’s projects and had higher cost than the norm in the industry and the firm’s usual projects. These results offer a more critical perspective on openness and NPD performance than the literature on the open innovation paradigm suggests. The paper discusses these results and offers some challenges for management and research of open innovation.