Innovation Process Management in Global Fashion Business: Modelling Iteration in Innovation Process Activities

Abstract

Following the previous sequel, we posit innovation activity management as managing process-based interactivity dependencies to achieve organizations’ desired goals for novel competitive advantages in global supply pipelines, either by means of product or process development. In this paper, we propose a computational method to address the specific issue of modelling and managing a dynamic innovation process, and posit inter-organizational process dependency as a fundamental issue within the modelling organization’s cooperation process. Adopting the perspectives of interdependency within an embedded network, we define innovation activities as networked process structure systems, and simulate and evaluate the dynamic performance of embedded process structures through an adaptive heuristic process. To illustrate the use of this method and its potential benefits, we apply it to real life case studies of inter-organization cooperation, concerning an innovative control and coordination system for globally dispersed textile firms. The validity of our methodology is partially justified by the results of several computational experiments. From an industry point of view, this framework aims to benefit those concerned with design and selection of organization cooperation and coordination systems that are characterized by a high degree of complexity and structural dynamics within today's proliferating organizational cooperation contexts.