Innovation processes

Innovation processes

1. Corporate innovation processes

   • It is useful to divide innovation into three partially overlapping processes
     • The production of scientific and technological knowledge
     • The transformation of knowledge into working artifacts
     • Responding to and influencing market demands
       • Involves a continual process of matching working artifacts with users' requirements

2. The production of scientific and technological knowledge

   • A major trend that started since the industrial revolution
     • Scientific and technological knowledge production has become increasingly specialized, by discipline, by function and by institution
   • Functional specialization and integration: Industrial R&D laboratories
     • A major source of innovation in the 20th century was the industrial R&D laboratory
       • Collaboration between product design and other corporate functions is one of the most important factors differentiating successfull from unsuccessfull innovation
       • Intrafirm collaboration has increased the importance of cross-functional integration spanning departamental boundries
   • Technological convergence and vertical desintegration in production techniques
     • Technological convergence and vertical desintegration have been common features of 20th century capitalist development
       • New opportunities have emerged from breakthroughs that have created applications spanning multiple product groups
   • Industrial linkages with universities
     • The range of interactions between firms and universities is considerable
       • 3 common features of university-firm links
         • The importance of personal and often informal contacts
         • The university research that is valuable for industries is also valued by academics
         • The practical benefits of university research emerge from processes that are roundabout and indirect
   • Heterogeneity in innovation process
     • The heterogenity and contingent nature of innovation means that there can be no simple "best practice" innovation model to follow
       • Characteristics of heterogeneity
         • Manufacturing firms are path dependent
         • Firms that specialize in different products are related technological fields are likely to stress different features of the innovation process
         • Innovation processes will differ greatly between large and small firms in other respects

3. Transformation of knowledge into working artifacts

   • Theory remains in insuficient guide to technological practice
     • An underlying trend for growing complexity of technological artifacts, and in the knowledge bases underpinning them
   • Keeping technological practice (not too far) ahead of scientifica theory
     • Continous innovation requires constant improvement in methods of technological search
       • Technical complexity cannot be too far ahead of scientifica understanding
       • Advances in molecular biology and materials technology have opened major opportunities for technical change
       • Large-scale computing and simulation technology has reduced costs and created opportunities for increasingly complex systems
   • Government-funded programs
     • Technological activities funded by governments have been of major importance
       • Creating and exploiting innovative opportunities
       • Most of these occur in the military, but then "trickle down" to civilian use
   • Multi-technology firms, modularization and systems intergration
     • Multi-technology firms
       • Specialization in knowledge prodcution has increased the fields of knowledge that contribute to the design of products
     • Modularization
       • Increasingly complex products make it difficult for firms to master advances in their respective fields
         • Modular product architectures are important because they reduce this complexity
           • By the standarization of component interfaces
           • By decoupling interdependencies amongst components
     • Systems integration
       • To integrating existing, often disparate systems
         • They have to be integrated in a way that focuses on increasing value to the customer
   • "Managing" Uncertainty?
     • The process of innovation is complex, involves many variables
       • The understanding of the values and properties of these variables is imperfect
         • Firms are not able to predict accurately the technical performance or the acceptability of their innovations
     • There needs to be a balance between "knowledge building and strategic positioning" and "business investiment"

4. Matching of artifacts, organizational practices and market demand

   • A major responsibility for managers overseeing innovation in the successfull corporation
   • Matching technology and organizational practices with market needs
     • Organizational and marketing practices that must match key features of technology
       • External linkages with potential customers, and with important sources of knowledge and skills
       • Internal linkages in the key functional interfaces for experimentation and learning
       • Centralization of resource allocation and monitoring activities needs to be consonant with the costs of technological and market experimentaion
       • Criteria for resource allocation need to be consonant with levels of technological and market opportunity
       • Allignment of professional groups, who posses power and control, with fields of future opportunity
   • Coping with radical change
     • Radical innovations have reduced costs of economic inputs
       • They are the catalyst for major structural changes in the industry
         • New technologies are associated with the growth of the firms that pioneered them or perfected them
     • Firms in the vanguard of developing and exploiting radically new technologies are distinguished from the ones that integrate the new technologies for their activities
       • For the latter in-house competencies in new technologies are backgroung
       • For the former in-house competencies in new technologies are foreground
   • Tribal warfare
     • Various scientific disciplines are described as tribes
       • Tribal conflict between different professional groups with specialized knowledge is an important element of the process of innovation
       • The new will always be in conflict with the old
         • For the corporate manager there are no simple tools, or strategy to neutralize the uneasy and politicized task of dealing with radical innovations
           • What the manager needs is 3 things
             • Good judgement
             • Experience
             • Trial and error with learning from error

Bilder und Dateien der Mindmap