Front End Of Innovation Research Articles

Income Inequality and Frontend Innovation: Evidence from Frontier Markets

Income Inequality and Frontend Innovation: Evidence from Frontier Markets

Exploratory and exploitative capability paths for innovation: A contingency framework for harnessing fuzziness in the front end

Based on the results of a multiple case study of seven manufacturing firms, a contingency framework for harnessing fuzziness in the front end of innovation is proposed by delineating two discrete capability paths through which new product ideas are developed into corroborated product definitions. The study illustrates that ideas characterized by high levels of fuzziness benefit from following an exploratory path, where the creative potential of fuzziness is embraced by deploying problem-formulation and problem-solving capabilities. In contrast, ideas at low levels of fuzziness benefit from following an exploitative path, where fuzziness is tolerated by drawing upon idea-refinement and process-management capabilities. When the fuzziness level of the idea and the set of capabilities to develop the idea are poorly aligned, the idea-development process is either inefficient or runs the risk of stalling. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for the front end of innovation and new product idea development.

ACTIVITIES WITHIN CIRCULAR-ORIENTED INNOVATION PROCESS: CASES OF BIOMATERIAL DEVELOPMENT

Within the research field of innovation management, the so-called circular-oriented innovations are focused on combining circular economy tenets within the development of innovation. Even though academia agrees that an economic transition has to develop from the bottom up, studying the implementation of circular economy on micro-level has been thus far neglected. Thus, the paper examines the circular-oriented innovation specific activities within the general innovation process and its distinct phases. Via multiple case study, the paper analyses the development of innovations suitable for the biological cycle of circular economy in the industry of biodegradable plastic substitutes. The findings show that circular economy aspects influence the innovation development from its very beginning. Starting from the triggering of idea generation, the end-of-life considerations and material choice show high importance in the front-end of innovation. Moreover, the research shows the high importance of cross-cycle and cross-sector collaborations throughout the entire development process.

THE DARK SIDE OF A B2B CO-CREATION RELATIONSHIP IN THE FRONT END OF INNOVATION: A GENERATIVE REVIEW

This study aims to conceptualise the risks of a co-creation relationship between providers and customers in the front end of innovation (FEI). The existing literature on the topic of the interactions between customers and providers is vast but mostly reflects the vision of each respective field of science addressing specific issues and dynamics. This review paper combines integrative and generative approaches (Post et al., 2020). The narrative overview methodology (Green et al., 2006) fits the purpose to integrate the contributions of scholars from different areas and with distinct perspectives. The authors present a comprehensive view of the complex and, sometimes, conflictual customer–provider relationship in a business-to-business (B2B) context applied to the FEI. The review, mostly focused in the service industry, included the identification of inconsistencies and poorly explained phenomena. This work contributes decisively to the innovation, management and organisation literature, advancing a model of the projected risks of the specific customer–provider relationship in the FEI phase.

Tourism towards Sustainability and Innovation: A Systematic Literature Review

In this paper, we analyze the progress of tourism towards sustainability and innovation through a systematic literature review summarizing the last five years of research strictly focused on innovation and sustainability applied to tourism. This research comprises a range of theories, practices, methods, and results pursuing innovation and sustainability across different levels, stages, and drivers, and in many tourism contexts. Wide, in-depth, and structured analysis, evaluation, and examination (using the PRISMA and VOSviewer tools) of a final sample of 50 scholarly papers from 27 journals, published between 2017 and the first quarter of 2021, were undertaken. Current publications emphasize qualitative, quantitative, and mixed research methods, as well as statistical and econometric methods, such as descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and structural equation modeling. This study categorizes the four major topics identified, sustainability, innovation, sustainable development, and sustainable tourism, which comprised the contextual dimensions and relevant stages of the subject areas examined. This systematic literature review highlights advances and the significantly increasing overall number of papers over recent years. Currently, sustainability is in a more advanced state compared to innovation. The outcomes highlight that the indicators of sustainability and innovation still need further analysis within the tourism context. However, more concrete process indicators are needed for continuous improvement of the front-end of innovation and sustainable tourism. The results help in better understanding the sustainability and innovation process as applied to tourism. In particular, this study explores further direct linkages between sustainability and innovation and tourism, discussing and providing new future directions aligned with the closing remarks as well as a strategic agenda for future action post-COVID-19.

Developing firm capabilities to utilise social media for the fuzzy front end of innovation

ABSTRACT Despite the growing importance of using social media to leverage external knowledge for new product development (NPD) in innovation, few studies have examined firm capabilities that underpin this knowledge acquisition route. This paper provides an empirical examination of firm capabilities that leverage external knowledge, utilising social media for the fuzzy-front-end (FFE) phase of the NPD process. With evidence from 27 interviews conducted with executives’ from large fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) firms, a thematic analysis using NVivo 12 is used to develop a conceptual framework capturing the key capabilities for using social media in the FFE. The findings reveal that the utilisation of social media is an ongoing process of experimenting with new technologies within the NPD phase of a firm’s innovation efforts. Hence, the results of the study suggest FMCG firms may consider developing the following capabilities to help effectively acquire external knowledge via social media: use staff specialised in social media for external knowledge identification; dedicate an independent department for social media knowledge acquisition; and encourage an open innovation culture.

Illuminating Opportunities for Smart Tourism Innovation That Foster Sustainable Tourist Well-Being Using Q Methodology

Technology innovation has become one of the driving forces that advance the tourism industry, but the industry has yet to account for the manner in which personal technologies can foster tourists’ sustainable well-being. Generating innovation that promotes the sustainable well-being of individuals is deemed to be challenging because the experience needs to account for users’ psychological well-being and their attitudes towards technology. A holistic apprehension of these needs, which requires multidisciplinary perspectives, can help designers to identify design spaces for further design investigations at the fuzzy front-end of innovation. Hence, the goal of this study is to identify design opportunities for smart tourism innovation that foster sustainable tourist well-being by using Q methodology to gather participants’ attitudes on the future use of such technology. The study involved 43 participants ranking 46 statements derived from the extant literature. The results show four opinion clusters related to the optimal use of personal technologies for sustainable tourist well-being. These clusters, which highlight both hedonic and eudaimonic user experience considerations, provide directions for designers for developing innovations that promote well-being. Recommendations of using Q as an exploratory design research method are discussed.

AI-based audit of fuzzy front end innovation using ISO56002

PurposeThis paper aims to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) audit tool for auditing text-based evidence and determine its efficiency and effectiveness.Design/methodology/approachA manual audit checklist and an AI audit tool are developed with fuzzy front-end (FFE) from Innovation Management System Standard (IMSS) as the audit scope, First, a manual audit of five organisations is conducted to determine their compliance scores. The transcripts of the audit are recorded which are used by the AI audit tool to assign compliance scores for the same organisations. The effectiveness and efficiency of the AI audit tool are determined by comparing their results with the manual audit.FindingsThis paper demonstrates the development of the FFE AI audit tool which led to 92% improved efficiency while being 95% effective compared to a human auditor.Practical implicationsThe publication of new financial and non-financial standards (such as ISO56002: IMSS) have implications for internal auditing (IA). The scope of IA must expand to include new standards while remaining efficient. Emerging technologies, such as AI help achieve this. Even though the use of AI in financial auditing is widely studied, it has not received similar attention in non-financial auditing. This paper develops a non-financial AI audit tool to audit an essential component of the IMSS, the FFE of innovation and determine its efficiency and effectiveness.Originality/valueThe study develops an FFE AI audit tool for the first time. The methodology used has practical and academic implications for the use of AI in non-financial auditing.

Opportunity‐led ideation: How to convert corporate opportunities into innovative ideas

Opportunities, that is, action possibilities for innovative business models, goods, services and processes, particularly affect idea generation, which is vital for innovation success. Capitalizing on opportunities requires complementing predominating problem‐centred innovation approaches. Despite mature knowledge on idea generation, there is still a limited understanding on how to leverage opportunities. Hence, there is a limited set of methods available that provide formalized guidance. To address this gap, we co‐developed an opportunity‐led ideation method in an action design research project with one of Australia's leading financial service providers. Thanks to this immersive collaboration, our method reflects not only the intent of researchers and existing knowledge but also the influence and needs of practitioners. Building on established opportunity sources from the literature, this method structures the idea generation stage of the innovation process into the activities initiation, immersion, investigation and integration. The method provides guidance on how to transform opportunities into ideas and presents activities, techniques, tools and roles that are important within the idea generation stage. Our research theoretically extends the understanding of opportunity identification within the front end of innovation. Moreover, it provides insights on balancing formalization and creativity within idea generation. Organizations can use the method as a blueprint to systematically and proactive sense, assess and translate opportunities into ideas.

Rapid validity testing at the front end of innovation

AbstractTo efficiently and effectively reduce the uncertainty inherent in the front‐end of innovation processes, recent literature emphasizes new approaches that facilitate rapid knowledge generation and learning such as design thinking, lean innovation, and pretotyping. However, these approaches differ in their conceptualizations and, despite their popularity, the empirical evidence on the performance relevance of such approaches for established organizations is limited. In this research, we propose rapid validity testing (RVT), in which we conceptualize and harmonize existing approaches toward a unique and comprehensive set of front‐end activities necessary to reduce uncertainty and equivocality inherent to this phase and enable planned flexibility. Drawing on information processing theory, we argue that organizations implementing RVT also increase the probability of achieving innovation outcomes of superior quality on time and within budget. We further argue that the effectiveness of RVT depends upon internal and external environmental factors. Drawing on multirespondent data collected from 1022 informants in 129 firms, we find empirical evidence that organizations implementing the RVT approach in their innovation activities achieve higher performance of their innovation programs, and that the performance relevance of RVT depends upon technological turbulence and the organization's long‐term orientation and risk propensity. We contribute to the literature by conceptualizing RVT as a set of activities that enable planned flexibility. Furthermore, we overcome empirical shortcomings of studies on popular approaches that relied primarily on anecdotal or case study evidence and imply the generalizability of their effectiveness. Our findings highlight that organizations indeed not only benefit from RVT but also challenge the notion of a one‐size‐fits‐all approach to the front end of innovation.

THE IMPACT OF TEAM GOAL ORIENTATION IN THE FUZZY FRONT END OF THE INNOVATION PROCESS

Many organisations face intense pressure to produce radical innovations. Consequently, innovation researchers have highlighted the need for incubating dedicated radical innovation capabilities. R&D teams are especially pivotal in generating these radical, highly-novel, original ideas at the front end of innovation (FEI). But such efforts end more often in failure than success. Organisational learning theorists have begun to draw on Goal Orientation theory as a motivational driver that might boost the success rate of teams working on such radical innovation projects. But, as yet, no fieldwork has been conducted on R&D teams to explore this promising theoretical model. In this paper, we use a case study of a corporate experiment comprising two innovation teams to investigate how situationally induced goal orientation in R&D teams might impact the radicality of innovation ideas. We find that a shared team Learning Goal orientation is associated with radical innovation and that a shared team Performance Goal orientation is associated with incremental innovation. This paper provides field-based evidence of the role of shared team goal orientation on FEI ideation outcomes. An implication of our findings for R&D managers faced with the difficulties of generating radical innovations from internal teams is that more attention should be paid to the situational cues that impact team FEI efforts, and in particular, a team’s goal orientation.

Co-design-based learning for entrepreneurs in the digital age

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to adapt the design-based learning (DBL) approach for entrepreneurship education. Having in mind the aim to improve the innovative thinking competence of nascent entrepreneurs that operate at the fuzzy front end of innovation, the research identifies key characteristics of the co-design-based learning (Co-DBL) approach for nurturing entrepreneurs in the digital age.Design/methodology/approachThe exploratory research is based on qualitative and quantitative analysis. To get feedback and to evaluate the progress of innovative thinking competence of Co-DBL participants, the pre- and post-co-design workshop surveys were administrated. The statistical analysis of the surveys was carried out to determine the effects of the Co-DBL.FindingsThe research has revealed key dimensions relevant to Co-DBL in entrepreneurial learning (features of the project, facilities for project activities, features of the teaching process, features of learning context and assessment) and found the corresponding characteristics. The results of the current study show the perspective of the suggested Co-DBL approach in entrepreneurial learning to improve creativity, analyticity, intuition and flexibility of thinking of nascent entrepreneurs.Originality/valueThis paper presents a new look at co-design that can be applied to entrepreneurship education to enhance innovative thinking, improve the ability of nascent entrepreneurs to identify and create opportunity and to tolerate ambiguity and conditions of uncertainty in the search and development of innovative solutions.

Significance of operational capabilities of suppliers on the front-end decision making in apparel product innovation in Sri Lanka

PurposeThe suppliers are recognized as important external sources who can significantly contribute by working together with the buyer during the innovation process. Operational capabilities of suppliers can be one of the considerable factors when selecting them to participate in the activities at the front-end of innovation. However, proper understanding of the influence of operational capabilities of suppliers on front-end decision-making in apparel product innovation is still very limited particularly in the context of the Sri Lankan apparel industry. Therefore, this study aims to explore the influence of operational capabilities of suppliers on the front-end decision making in apparel product innovation in Sri Lanka.Design/methodology/approachBoth semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire survey were used as data collection techniques. Six senior managers for the interviews and 60 participants for the questionnaire were randomly selected. All those who participated in interviews and the questionnaire respondents have been involved in the front-end of innovation in different apparel manufacturing organizations in Sri Lanka.FindingsThe results indicated that the operational capabilities of suppliers had a direct positive influence on front-end decision-making, and the suppliers’ production flexibility was found to be the most influential. Further, the results highlighted that 27.3% of the front-end decisions associated with apparel product innovation in Sri Lanka were influenced by the factors governing operational capabilities of suppliers.Originality/valueThe findings of the research will be beneficial for both academia and industry. The findings will be useful to extend the current understanding and make a noteworthy contribution to this topic and to provide useful and practical guidance to material suppliers and supporting industries who work with Sri Lankan apparel manufacturing.

New Product Idea Selection in the Fuzzy Front End of Innovation: A Fuzzy Best-Worst Method and Group Decision-Making Process

New product development (NPD) is essential to most business organizations to create new values and protect existing values for maintaining high profitability and sustainability. However, the success of NPD projects is deemed to be difficult and challenging owing to high organizational complexity, uncertain business environment, and time-critical innovation. Under the smart manufacturing paradigm, NPD is an active research area to establish effective measures through the adoption of systematic approaches so as to facilitate idea management in the fuzzy front end for the product innovation. In this paper, the domain of new product idea selection is focused on and enhanced by means of the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach, in which multiple criteria and sub-criteria can be considered in the selection process. Among a number of MCDM approaches, the fuzzy set theory and best-worst method (BWM) are integrated as the fuzzy BWM in this study to structure the new product idea selection process under a group decision-making process. The hierarchy structure for the new product idea selection is also established to consider the perspectives of finance, marketing, engineering, manufacturing, and sustainability. Overall speaking, this study contributes to the field of NPD through overcoming the new product idea selection problem, while the group decision-making process is incorporated into the fuzzy BWM.

Systematic problem-specification in innovation science using language

PurposeProblem specification is a key front-end step in the innovation process. This paper aims to introduce ‘purpose-context’ – a conceptual framework to systematically explore problem-specification across mapped contexts. The framework’s logic is operationalized by the inherent structure of language – its syntax/grammar, which enables the systematic exploration of problem-specification. The method showcases two approaches to structurally explore the vast textual databases available to us today for problem-specification in innovation science, thereby furthering the pursuit of innovation through its foundational elements.Design/methodology/approachThe conceptualization of the purpose-context framework was guided by logic and the scholarship of integration applied to bodies of work including innovation, design and linguistics. Further, the key elements of the conceptual framework were unpacked and structured using the syntax of language. Two approaches to operationalize the method were developed to illustrate the systematicity of the process. The construct was then validated by using it to systematically specify problems in the technical context of Raman spectroscopy and in the socio-technical context of international development. Overall, this paper is a work of relational scholarship of integration that bridges academic-practitioner gaps.FindingsThe purpose-context framework is well-suited for application in the innovation process with applicability across several abstraction levels. One key contribution is the recognition that a broader problem-specification exercise covering one-one, one-many, many-one, many-many problem-context mappings expands the range of potential solutions (innovations) to address the problem-space. Additionally, the work finds that it is possible to provide structure to the cognitive elements of the innovation process by drawing inspiration from the structure inherent in other cognitive processes such as language (e.g., parts-of-speech, phrase composition). Drawing from language is particularly appropriate as language mediates communication in any collective pursuit of the innovation process and furthermore because a large amount of information exists in textual form. Finally, this paper finds that there is merit in approaching innovation science from its foundational elements – i.e. data, information and knowledge.Research limitations/implicationsWhile the purpose-context framework is broadly applicable, the methodical approach to provide structure to the front-end cognitive process is ‘one’ fruitful approach. We suspect other approaches exist.Practical implicationsThe purpose-context framework is simple in its framing yet provides innovators, scholars and thought leaders, the ability to specify the problem space with greater coverage and precision. Further, in the solution-space, it provides them the ability to choose the breadth of solution scope (e.g. targeted solution addressing a single problem, targeted solution addressing a set of problems, the combination of solutions addressing a single problem and combination of solutions addressing a combination of problems). In addition, by pairing the creative front-end innovation process with machine power, this study provides a formal method to scale-up the coverage of creativity (and potentially that of solutions to those problems) and reduces the chances of missed/blind-spots in problem-specification. Finally, evaluating purpose-contexts leads to ‘capability-contexts’ – a capability-oriented viewpoint informing capability development decisions such as the focus of R&D programs and related resource allocation decisions.Originality/valueThe paper uses logic to connect multiple bodies of research with a goal to provide systematicity to problem-specification – problem-specification, which is an under-addressed part of the innovation process. The use of data to systematically explore problem-space lends it systematicity (repeatability and measurability) and is therefore, valuable to innovation science. The proof-of-concept demonstrates the conversion of concept into a method for practical application.

Project Portfolio Management in the Front-End of Innovation of Research Centers: a Literature Review

IntroductionThis study presents an integrative literature review on the processes, techniques, and capabilities of managing project portfolios, and on how they are discussed from the perspectives of innovation, ideation, and dynamic capabilities. The relationship among these topics is described in the scope of not-for-profit research centers. This study aims at addressing the

Front end of innovation

The objective of this research is to contribute to the improvement of knowledge of the ‘front end’ or pre-development of innovation, a process that comprises all the activities prior to the formal start of the development of innovation projects. In this aspect, we identify the most relevant ‘front-end’ techniques that have been developed in the previous literature.
 
 Keywords: Innovation, creativity, front end, pre-development.

Exploring the Role of IT in the Front-End of Innovation: An Empirical Study of IT-Enabled Creative Behavior

The front-end of innovation (FEI) is critical for successful innovation in contemporary organizations. Employee creativity, or creative behavior, is at the heart of the FEI and it encompasses three activities: idea generation, idea elaboration, and idea championing. Information technology (IT) can play an important role in enabling these activities but extant research has focused primarily on IT-enabled idea generation. This paper complements the extant research by examining the entire set of activities that compose FEI. Specifically, we develop a model that examines IT-enabled idea generation, IT-enabled elaboration and IT-enabled championing, and that, grounded in the componential theory of creativity, analyzes their key drivers. An empirical study establishes the applicability of the model. The paper contributes to IS research and practice by shedding light on the tripartite role that organizational IT can play in employee creativity, and it serves as a springboard for future research.

The Artist as Innovation Muse: Findings from a Residence Program in the Fuzzy Front End

In a highly competitive business environment, integrating artists into corporate research and development (R&D) seems to be a promising way to foster inventiveness and idea generation. Given the importance of individual level innovation for product development, this study explores the benefits that employees experience from the artist-in-residence-program at Robert Bosch GmbH, Germany. Qualitative content analysis of interviews with scientists and engineers was performed in order to explore the impact of their encounters with artists in the theoretical framework of the triadic concept and transmission model of inspiration. The findings corroborate the notion that inspiration is a suitable theoretical underpinning for individual benefits of art–science collaborations in the front end of innovation. Scientists and engineers are inspired by the artists’ otherness and transcend their usual modes of perception in favor of enhanced focal, peripheral and bifocal vision. Whereas shifts in perspective are reflected in individual thinking patterns, researchers are hardly motivated to change their work-related behavior. The exchange with artists does not have a concrete impact on technological innovation, because researchers neither integrate impulses into their experiential world nor link them to fields of activity. In the case under scrutiny, artistic impulses do not contribute to idea generation in the sense of front-end activities. The study contributes to research on artists in businesses by illuminating the R&D environment as a hitherto neglected field of activity. While substantiating previous research on artist-in-science-residencies, the results suggest that the potential of such interdisciplinary endeavors is limited.

Front End Transfers of Digital Innovations in a Hybrid Agile‐Stage‐Gate Setting

Digital innovations often follow a more fluid innovation process and, therefore, require different ways of managing the front end of innovation. Agile as alternative to established front end management practices is often suggested, potentially combined with Stage‐Gate, in what is called a hybrid Agile‐Stage‐Gate model, to reap the benefits from both. Implementing the hybrid model in the front end is however not sufficient for firms with separate Research and Development departments to succeed. In such organizations digital innovations still need to be transferred from Research, where the front end work on digital innovations takes place, to the Development department, where formal development actually starts. Yet, such front end transfers have been described as inefficient and ineffective. Realizing digital innovation front end transfers is likely even more challenging because of their fluid definition. In the absence of extant theory on front end transfers in such a setting, this research uses a case study approach to analyze the front end transfer experiences of the Research department of a firm in the lighting industry that is undergoing a transformation from traditional to digital lighting. The in‐depth analysis of triangulated data on eight front end projects shows that Research struggles to transfer digital innovations to Development, because transfer practices in terms of management, scope, and synchronization, turn out to be inherently challenging in a hybrid Agile‐Stage‐Gate setting. Specifically, the results reveal that each transfer practice plays an intricate role in either facilitating (i.e., transfer management) or inhibiting (i.e., transfer scope and synchronization) front end transfers of digital innovations. The discovery of these opposing forces has important implications for novel theorizing on the use of Agile in the front end of digital innovation, transfer practices from Research to Development in a hybrid setting, as well as for theorizing about digital innovation management.