Abstract

Abstract

This paper summarizes the results of an extensive program on stimulating industrial innovation in the Netherlands (the Project Industrial Innovation, Pii). Over five years (1980–1984), 155 small and medium‐sized industrial firms were taught by 64 management consultants on how to innovate. The firms had fewer than 500 employees, most of them were not subsidiaries of large multinational companies, and most had a healthy financial situation. The types of industry varied from electronics and flexible automated production machinery to the leather and wood industries. The common problem of these companies was that they wanted to innovate, but did not know how to do so. The objective of the Pii program was not to find innovations for the firms, but to teach them how to become innovative. That is, not to give fish to the hungry but to teach them fishing.The consulting assignment involved teaching these companies: A step‐by‐step model of the innovation process. The role of the consultant. It was made clear to the companies that the consultant was there to help solve their problem by stimulating and improving their problem‐solving capacity and not to hand out solutions. The need to put together multidisciplinary, company‐internal innovation teams. How to stimulate the creativity of the innovation team members using creativity techniques like brainstorming, brainwriting, and synectics. How to collect and use external information. The overall results of the Pii program were measured by: The number of companies who were able to formulate design objectives for an innovation. A design objective in this study was defined as a combination of the design specifications with a business plan. The extent of learning effect, or the number of firms whose CEOs reported that they (a) could take the project beyond the design objective stage to manufacturing and market introduction, or (b) could start a new innovation project in the future on their own. The results of the Pii program were impressive. At the end of the program in December, 1984, 71% of the companies had formulated design objectives and 76% had achieved positive learning effect. Only 21 out of more than 300 innovations were introduced into the market place, however.A year later, in December, 1985, 43 innovations had been introduced. Design objectives were formulated by 83% of the firms, and positive learning effect took place in 88%. The quality of the innovations, in terms of their newness, was also very high.Many Pii participant companies reported encountering bottlenecks in realizing their innovations. Only 12% did not encounter problems in achieving their planned results. Money was not indicated as an important bottleneck (2%). The most important bottlenecks, which the author categorized as “management capacity” problems, consisted of a lack of quality key‐personnel, lack of understanding of project management, different visions between members of the management team or between the owners and the managers, and incompetency of the people at the top.The long‐term learning effect on the firms was also reported to be positive. Nearly 90% of all CEOs were positive about the learning effect in their firms. In more than 85% of the companies the innovation process was continued after the assistance of the Pii program. Sixty‐five percent of the firms did this without the help of a management consultant. In 55% of the firms, internal innovation teams were maintained. Sixty percent of the companies had already started a new innovation process with projected market introductions in 1990 or later. More than 30% of the Pii participants now use techniques like brainwriting and synectics, not only for innovation purposes but for other problems. More than 90% of the firms, as compared with 18% before, are now active in getting and using external information. This article raises hope that firms can learn how to innovate. The market success of these innovations appeared promising. More in‐depth analysis was not presented in the paper, and it is still too early to reach conclusions on some of the issues. The limitations of the Pii program seem to be its exclusive concern with the initiation phase of the innovation process, and the little attention it gave to the implementation phase. Also, the data on firms' innovation activities before their participation in the Pii program are not presented for comparison, and measurement of the learning effect is not clearly explained.