Collaborative support environment for organizational innovativeness

Abstract

Could differences in process that depend the level of innovation help explain the mixed results with the House of Quality? Are product innovation and product development processes really the same? We question this assumption and strive to point out what is unique about the product development process when it addresses a true product innovation. The framework for this research includes a map of four categories of product innovation (radical, application, incremental and technical), based on technological advances combined with increased customer benefits. The framework also includes a generic model of the product innovation process based on four stages (discovery, decision, development and delivery). Then 21 process variables, organized by the four stages, are used to compare the innovation process for each category of innovation.A survey * of 116 Pacific Northwest high technology manufacturing firms provides the data base to evaluate this framework, as well as the assertions made by executives in interviews conducted before designing the survey. The executives evaluated their actual product innovations as they determined which types of innovations they produced, the associated success rates, and the underlying product innovation process.The results indicate that application innovations are the most successful (although the nature of success varies with the type of innovation), followed in tum by radical innovations, incremental innovations, and the least successful technical innovations. More significantly, the underlying processes are different for each category of innovation. The radical innovations require proper alignment of most of the 2 1 process variables for successful, true product innovation. The other categories of innovation, which are more typical outcomes of the product development process as often described in the literature, require the alignment of fewer innovation process variables.The connection to the House of Quality (a typical approach focused on development rather than innovation) is that "adding another room onto the house" to enhance creativity will not be sufficient. A significantly different process is required for true product innovation.We present preliminary results of the project INNOVISIO, which aims for support of organizational innovativeness in a contract research laboratory. In such an environment, new innovations are the object of everyday activities, and the demand for innovativeness is both emphasized and complicated. The overall objective of the project is: 1. to increase the sensitivity of the organization for new innovations, 2. to identify and experiment platforms for processing of new ideas, and 3. to set up a repository for ideas, tools and supporting material.According to our previous experience, a "creativity manifesto" has only a temporary effect on innovativeness. To overcome this, our approach is to introduce a cultural change through defined procedures, aiming for identifying and exploring new ideas. Our focus is on concrete methods and procedures for idea genera...