Innovation strategy pdf

It creates a sense of importance about innovation and builds an environment in which members have an intentional quest to identify new ideas.

It is essential that the firm treats it as a regular activity and takes part in the innovation process as an organization rather than leaving it on the employees Mazzei et al Leadership to encourage willingness to change To implement innovative methods that would require new set of skills, the members of the organization would have to be willing to consider change Zenger The leaders can influence them to foster innovation through appropriate communication and motivation Gilley et al They can stimulate innovative behavior among the employees who have low self- esteem.

They can encourage activities such as debates and open communication to build a creative knowledge environment. They should make innovation meaningful; members would do a better job when they believe in what they are doing and that their work is beneficial for the society. Moreover, the leaders need to be warm and accessible to their employees and develop a collaborative relationship with them. It builds a sense of trust and assurance among the employees when they are not punished for honest and well-intended mistakes Zenger ; HBR Skilled Workforce A skilled workforce is crucial to initiate innovative ideas and implement them in the organization.

ESRC Centre for Research on Learning and Life Chances carried out a study on the links between skills, absorptive capacity, innovation and productivity in manufacturing industries from eight countries. It found that high skilled workers have the ability to turn external knowledge into innovative output. It emphasized that the support of intermediate skilled workers such as technicians is also essential in implementation of new ideas.

Traditionally, focus has been made only on high skilled workers with formal qualifications to drive innovation; however, the workers with uncertified skills are extremely important in helping the organization adopt new practices and models. Therefore, the HR department should focus on all levels of skills at the time of recruitment in order to boost innovation. Flexible Work Environment A relaxed and flexible work environment fosters the flow of ideas.

Employers should let the employees work according to their rhythm instead of following the rule as a protocol. They should be encouraged to take time off from work for a healthy and balanced work life. Breaking these traditional and rigid rules to foster a flexible atmosphere will enable the members to work when they are fresh and rested, and are at their best.

Influence of top management teams is critical as innovation strategies are shaped at top management level. Therefore, the organisations need to hire new and diverse talent, to bring great people together from a variety of backgrounds and capabilities, to enhance the ability to discover creative ideas at workplace Zenger ; Pisano However, if teams are too diverse, misalignment among groups may arise. Investment in Research In order to develop new practices such as discovering new applications for technologies, it may be required for the organisation to make investment in long-term research.

Research increases the availability of high quality scientific and technical information for innovation processes. A European Union report suggests that the countries that have invested most in research and innovation have outperformed the ones that have invested less. Investment in research has a multiplier effect that makes major contribution to jobs and economic growth.

Crowdsourcing Apart from implementing strategies that enables employees to boost innovation, the firm can also incorporate innovation strategy that involves talent outside of the organization. It enables the firm to invite people, whom it otherwise could not have found, to work on its problems by posting them through mediums such as open source software projects.

Evidence suggests that crowdsourcing can help in a more creative, efficient and faster problem solving Pisano It allows a better use of resources by reducing redundant efforts and costs. Moreover, the firms are able to create as well as acquire knowledge by letting higher number of specialised people work on small tasks.

Collaboration with Consumers Involving customers in the innovation process can help broaden the perspectives. It lets a situation be looked from their point of view. It can provide information that can make fruitful contributions. The firm can get to know about challenges faced by customers and can accordingly figure out a plan to solve those problems.

Collaborating with customers is crucial for the companies whose business strategy is focused on devising critical components of highly innovative systems.

The food industry, on the other hand, is an example of relatively lenient regula- tory environment, because it has not witnessed a great deal of green regulatory pres- sure, except through voluntary agreements between industry and regulators to reduce the environmental impact of packaging and packaging waste.

Firms were selected on their size, because size has an impact on the nature of inno- vations in general Schumpeter ; Chandy and Tellis and GPI strategy in particular Noci and Verganti The smallest organizations in the design have approximately 20 employees, the two largest are multinational firms with 50, em- ployees and over. To en- sure diversity on the first criterion, two control products were studied, one in chemi- cals and one in food. The control products are products that were reported by the firm to have been developed without taking green issues into account.

The control products were taken from firms in which at least one other product serves as a case study for a green product.

In these firms, data were collected on more than one product innova- tion project and general insight was gained on product innovation processes in the organizations. To ensure diversity on the second criterion, both successes or failures were selected.

The product innovation literature has historically had a bias toward studying successes Craig and Hart ; Montoya-Weiss and Calantone Stud- ying successes as well as failures can be very rewarding for GPIs, because the trade press as well as informal discussions with managers seem to suggest that many GPIs have failed miserably. Table 1 shows that six green cases and two, non-green, control cases were selected, and that one product was identified a priori as a failure, three as success, and that with four cases success or failure was not clear beforehand, most likely somewhere in be- tween.

It is important to note that greenness and innovation performance are subject to investigation in the case studies, and that the selection was based on initial assess- ments. Data collection Data were collected using in-depth interviews with key informants, other site visits, and studying documents, thus creating method triangulation Eisenhardt ; Yin Key informants were identified by a snowballing method, where each inform- ant was asked to identify other potentially interesting informants Drumwright Informants were invited to elaborate about GPI strategy by responding to probes about each of the initial constructs.

The environmental management business function was present as a separate entity in the large firms, but was never involved in the product development and in- troduction activities. By investigating multiple domains, source triangulation was achieved Yin Analysis The case data were analyzed in five steps.

First, case reports were written, in which the information was ordered. Second, case analysis meetings with other researchers were held to summarize the current status of the case Miles and Huberman Third, partially ordered information displays were developed for each case Miles and Huberman Fourth, five large, case-ordered matrices were developed for cross- case analysis summarizing the findings per variable Miles and Huberman Fi- nally, we used a pattern matching method to allow for cross-construct relationships to be identified Miles and Huberman ; Yin RESULTS The analysis identifies constructs that are important or specific for understanding GPI strategy and reveals patterns between the constructs that allow us to explore causal relationships.

The results of the case studies are reported in a condensed format in Table 3. Space limitations and confidentiality restrictions do not permit us to elabo- rate on the unique identifying context of each case.

Identified important or specific constructs We identified the most salient and discriminating constructs. A dominant character- istic of GPIs is greenness. The most commonly advocated approach to determine the greenness of a product is life-cycle analysis Graedel and Allenby ; Fuller and Ottman Therefore, the construct of greenness was con- ceptualized from the results of the interviews. Most informants focused during the interviews on the major green aspects of the product category.

The responses of the informants suggest to compare products only on those green aspects in which im- provements are technologically feasible, and that are thought to be important. All im- provements on the selected green aspects of each case are then identified and com- pared with the available information on the green aspects of other products, both of the case study firm and competing firms. Results for greenness indicate that the initial categorization into green and control products needs adjustment.

Very high product cost Org. High product cost positioning Innovative reputat. High product cost Innovative reputat. Note: Cases are ranked in decreasing order of product greenness. This is because the firm insisted on performing a vital element of the manufacturing process in its own state-of-the-art energy-efficient production facilities.

Green company policy refers to the level of commitment a firm shows in its values, norms, and management practices to initiatives to limit environmental im- pact of the firm. The firm developed a very green product, Coffee1, even though it had no information that such a product will be received favorably in the market. Coffee2, which was not intended as a green product, is moderately green.

An explanation for this finding will be provided by the identified patterns. Green information collection and use was identified as a construct because some of the firms collected specific information about green issues. In some cases, the infor- mation about green issues that is collected refers to customers or competitors. In the case of Coating2, information about regulators was collected and used.

This infor- mation formed the basis for developing a new product based on radically new green technology. Information about customers and competitors played a minor role. Fur- thermore, the informants for green products suggest several stakeholders other than customers and competitors that have some level of importance in the product innova- tion strategy. Furthermore, the results show that characteristics of the development process are to be considered separately to better understand GPI strategy.

This is especially true for priority of green issues, which refers to the weight that is attached to green issues when they are balanced against non-green issues, related to relative advantage and product cost. All green and very green prod- ucts in the study have high or very high product costs, which suggests that none of the firms succeeded in developing a green product without incurring extra costs. In the case of Coating4, greenness was sacrificed to ensure better functional properties of the product.

In other cases, where green issues were given higher priority, the outcome of the trade-off was in favor of greenness. The priority that was given to green issues during the development process is not perfectly associated with product greenness. Therefore, priority of green issues is identified as a salient construct.

The results on introduction characteristics reveal that the most salient differences are to be found in targeting strategies and positioning. Targeting differs in the degree in which a green consumer group is targeted, with green niche targeting on the one hand, and targeting of a non-green segment or even mass targeting on the other.

Likewise, some of the case products were positioned as green products in the market, whereas others were positioned using functional aspects or a combination of both. For both green and nongreen products, informants pointed to innovation outcomes, other than financial, customer, or technological performance.

The alternative out- comes are all of a noneconomic nature, and relate either to external reputation of the firm or internal reputation, i. For the green products, noneconomic performance outcomes appear to be more salient, occurring even with not-so-new products. The case product Additive gained an innovative reputation with its potential customers by cooperating in a showcase project that demonstrated the greenness of the product.

Coffee1 also had reputation offsets, both in the market and within the organization. Also, Coffee1 clearly contributed to organizational identification within the firm, which can be seen as a form of internal reputation.

Organizational identification in this firm was particularly strong. Identified patterns between constructs From the results reported in Table 3 it is possible to identify patterns of association that suggest relationships between constructs. As noted in the previous section, the absence of a perfect association between priority of green issues and greenness is in- teresting. Additive is the deviant case in this respect, because it was originally not developed for green applications, but is green nevertheless.

This case shows that it is possible to develop a green product without devoting specific effort to green issues during the development process, e. None of the green or moderately green products have high financial or customer performance. In fact, the three non-green products are the most successful, based on financial or customer performance. A possible explanation for this general observa- tion is that none of the market environments displayed a sizeable green demand.

Some green products do have a high technological performance, though. Technological per- formance does not seem to be directly related to greenness however, but displays a strong relationship with newness to the industry instead. This finding makes intuitive sense, because products that are new to the industry can represent a technological breakthrough, that allows other innovations to be developed based on the same tech- nology.

The most successful green product is Coffee1. This product is well received by a green niche. The other three green products, Coating2, Coating3, and Additive, have low or very low financial and customer performance.

In all three cases, informants attribute this to a failure to collect and use high quality information about green issues. The results show an associative pattern between market environment, greenness, and targeting strategy. If a green product was developed, then a green niche targeting strategy is used, under the condition that a green niche was present or emerging.

In the case of Coating2, a green product was developed, but with green demand absent, a mass targeting strategy was adopted. Coffee2 is a special case. Although the product was moderately green, and a green niche was present, the product is not targeted at a green niche.

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The dynamics of Indonesian creative industry sectors: An analysis using input—output approach. Journal of the Knowledge Economy , 6 , — Download references. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. Piotr F. Borowski graduated as M. He was a member of the Faculty Council — and — and of the departmental committees for quality of education, for teaching, and for didactics. Multiple Erasmus programs scholar, under which he lectured at universities in France, Ireland, Turkey, Portugal, and Italy.

Member of the International Soil and Tillage Research Organization, organizer and participant of many international scientific conferences, including in Turkey , , , , Ukraine , , Egypt , , Dubai , , Greece , and Russia , He repeatedly conducted his own research in Ethiopia, Guinea, Egypt, and Georgia, and the results of his research were published in scientific journals.

He is specialist in transport biofuels and CO 2 emission reduction, innovation strategy as well as sustainable development. He is the author of numerous papers in the field of renewable energy, adaptation strategies in the power sector as well as co-author of monographs related to biofuels.

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Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative. Skip to main content. Search all SpringerOpen articles Search. Download PDF. Abstract Innovations and new technologies allow companies to function, work, and develop in an ever-changing environment. Introduction The strategy of innovation can be described as a plan of company activities and development in order to encourage, mobilize, motivate, and achieve advancements in technology or service by investing financial and human assets in research and development activities.

The difference between innovation and innovative When conducting research on innovation and innovative, it is worth paying attention to both concepts, because in the literature on the subject, there is a noticeable difference in the understanding of both concepts.

Types of innovation The concept of innovation is derived from the Latin word innovatio meaning renewal. Because the concept of innovation is understood in various ways among economists, managers, and practitioners, here there are some synthetic definitions: Innovation —innovative action in industry or services both in relation to products by creating new or significantly modifying existing ones and in relation to processes through their improvement. Table 1 Definition of innovation from business practitioners Full size table.

Relation between adaptation and innovation. Full size image. Results The results of the conducted research on the implementation of innovation in enterprises can be divided into two groups: results based on statistical methods and results based on literature review and surveys.

Table 2 Individual employee groups that are a source of innovation Full size table. Conclusion The results of the conducted research can be shared into two main groups, which interpenetrate and complement each other.