Innovation is vital to a firm’s competitive edge and long-term success. This means a company must be capable of mastering inherent changes in the future. At the same time, however, companies often lack the ability to flourish in innovation and struggle to deal quickly and effectively with these changes. Companies are taking a greater interest in the field of innovation management due to this troubling impairment. In essence, effective and efficient strategic decision-making is of great interest, with the goal of increasing the precision of the goals of progress and the directions to achieving them. In other words, a framework is needed to formulate a strategy for innovation.
Market dynamics lead to increased competitive pressures on the manufacturing industry. Throughout shortened product lifecycles, the exacerbated pressures of competition emerge, contributing faster to obsolescent goods. The collection of ideas in many businesses is based on subjective tastes and individuals ‘ coincidental awareness. The choice is never systematic and logically understandable.
While management literature highlights the importance of innovation strategy, there is no method-oriented, structured, and constructed concept of formulating an innovation strategy that represents a discrepancy in the literature.
127 our experts are availableright now
This goal of this master thesis is to make a significant contribution to closing this gap. Thus, the relevant question is: how can a concept be designed and implemented for innovation-driven companies to formulate a tailored innovation strategy process?
Working theories are developed based on a literature review as guidance. A two-stage research methodology is implemented in this thesis.
Firstly, a framework for conceptualizing innovation strategy is built by conducting interviews and currently available theory. This process is based on a new tool which can be called as– innovation process architecture.
Innovation process architecture can also be seen as framework for any company’s innovation system in terms of complexity and organizational engagement and growth, which should be the foundation for better management and strategic planning. Innovation process architecture is also a useful tool for fostering strategic ingenuity, as well as in technology and business innovations, including in organizational developments.
The designed innovation strategy formulation process and the innovation process architecture are implemented and validated in the Passive Safety Systems Group, which is accountable for the car industry’s production and development of passenger safety systems.. The department is also known as Div.-R in the ZF Group dealing with range of products including airbags, airbag inflators, seat belt systems and steering wheels.
Research Focus and Relevance
A key for competitive advantage and the long-term success of a company is innovation understood as first successful commercialization of something new. A quantitative survey was analyzed in practice by Haapaniemi for the well renowned global management and technology service firm Accenture targeting 350 COE’s from various sectors of industries on innovation strategy and implementation (Haapaniemi ,2002).
CEOs agree that creativity is important to gaining competitive advantage. More than 50% of respondents said innovation is one of the five most important factors in building competitive advantage, and more than 10% concluded it is the most important single factor. Communication and high-tech executives, as well as those at multinational operating companies, found innovation to be particularly important. Nevertheless, only one out of ten CEOs strongly agreed in the same report that their company was excellent in innovation (Haapaniemi ,2002).
This concerning statement shows an incapacity in reality to succeed in creativity. This creativity deficit is compounded by the movement toward the growing importance of innovation, verified by several authors (Aregger 1976, Hauschildt 1997: 44ff, Afuah 1998: 99; 2002: 369), Tidd, Bessant and Pavitt 2001: 65, Bullinger and Auernhammer 2003: 29, Horsch 2003: 68).
They compare the ability to master possible fundamental changes with the ability to design innovations. Examples of such radical changes in the future include technological changes, Cultural and social changes, Economic and industrial changes. Such transitions are multidimensional and are highly complex in nature (Backhaus and Zoeten, 1992)
In hopes of improving the ability to develop innovation effectively and efficiently, a company’s individuals and organizations must first be informed of changes in order to carry out prompt renewals and predict the situation. In other words, this means that businesses must work to make sure a high degree of innovation. In order to develop innovations, a company must be mindful of three different dimensions in terms of positive renewals: business, technical and organizational innovations (Zahn and Weidler, 1995, p. 359).
The resulting inventions called as ‘integrated innovation’ would thus have a wider range, additional counterfeit protection, and thus businesses will achieve sustainable competitive advantage by differentiating from others. To create ‘ integrated innovations ‘ an approach to innovation management is required that takes a holistic view of the company’s renewals (Zahn and Weidler, 1995, 358f).
