Success Factors Of Innovation Research Articles

Managing postharvest innovation: a review of developments and trends

Purpose of the review: With the fast developments in technologies, combined with increased global competition and changing customer demands, innovation is increasingly seen as a means for sustainable growth. This paper reviews literature on the management of innovation and the most prominent findings from postharvest innovation practices. Main findings: Three areas of postharvest innovation were identified: product innovation, enablers for fresh foods and quality improvements and netchain innovation. Several examples from the agri-food industry illustrate the developments in these three areas. With regard to the management of innovation, the firm's network plays an important role. Cooperation is seen as a way to lower development costs, accelerate product and process development and maximise commercialisation opportunities in innovation, especially when the innovation concerns change of interdependent chain and network processes. Directions for future research: From a management perspective, a more comprehensive view of the critical success factors for postharvest innovation is needed. This is even more important for netchain innovations, where different organisations cooperate. More specifically, packaging plays a key role in current postharvest innovation, so new packaging technologies should be explored by postharvest researchers in industry as well as in academia. In this respect, a food package design should be regarded as an integrated component of the food supply chain, influencing the efficiency of the entire value chain in terms of functions, features, information and costs, but also influencing the environment. Furthermore, concerns about functional foods have to be overcome if firms fully want to benefit from this potential for added value.

Strategic venture partner selection for collaborative innovation in production systems: A decision support system-based approach

Collaborative innovation and product development projects can be regarded as an emerging challenge in innovation management, being partly reflected by the currently observable industry demand for support from strategic planning tools serving this purpose. A software tool for providing operationalized decision support has been developed, based on previous research in the area of collaborative innovation success factors. By applying experience of coaching a public research organization in finding a suitable partner for joining forces in the research and development of a future energy technology, this paper presents a solution taking into account the given competitive restrictions. Being designed for usage within a coaching framework, the tool provides a multi-perspective and interactive overview of potential venture partners to the decision-makers. Furthermore, the adoption of an integrated partner selection process for supporting technology-intensive organizations in their preparation and implementation of successful collaborative ventures is suggested.

High‐Technology Service Innovation Success: A Decision‐Making Perspective

Successful innovation is crucial for firm survival in high‐technology service industries. This article reports on an empirical study, exploring internal innovation success factors—success factors associated with the innovating firm's competencies—by taking a decision‐making perspective. The likelihood of innovation success is associated with the systematic reduction of decision‐making uncertainty, as a result of organizational information gathering, diffusion, and processing activities. Effects of interfirm differences are investigated in the new service development phase of the innovation process. Cross‐sectional data were collected about 251 innovation projects from companies in Europe, the United States, and Japan. Innovation success is found to be related positively and directly to how well informed and knowledgeable decision‐makers are. Furthermore, the study provides evidence that a market orientation contributes as an internal success factor: An organizational climate favorable to information sharing powerfully mediates the positive effects of intelligence gathering with respect to customers and technology. The effects of competitor orientation carry a negative sign, and managerial seniority appears not to play a major role in this turbulent business. Managerial and research implications are provided.

Unternehmenskultur und Innovationserfolg — Eine empirische Analyse

A review of the literature on success factors for innovations reveals that a profound empirical study analyzing the relationship between corporate culture and innovative performance on the firm level is lacking to date. Based on a typology suggested in the literature for measuring corporate culture a contingency and efficiency model is derived to test the relationship between contingent factors, types of corporate culture and innovative performance. In order to test the validity of the suggested typology to measure corporate culture, a multiple informant approach is used. Assessments from respondents with different hierarchical and functional positions in 43 organizations are examined by means of Multi-Trait Multi-Method (MTMM) analyses. MTMM analysis leads to the identification of those respondents who make a valid assessment of corporate culture in their companies. The empirical results show that the type of corporate culture to be found in companies is dependent on environmental factors and that innovation-enhancing cultures have a positive impact on innovation success, whereas hierarchical cultures have a negative effect on innovation success.

Best practice in product innovation at varian Australia

The purpose of the case study is to investigate a product development project at Varian Australia Pty Ltd, the “Bushranger” Project. Varian Australia is the centre for research, design, manufacturing and strategic marketing for its range of benchtop scientific instruments. The company has $140 M turnover, and exports 95% of what it manufactures. The case study captures the perceptions of various players on the “Bushranger” project with respect to the innovation process from product conceptualisation to launch. A number of senior managers were interviewed using a methodology that was being developed by CIMA (CIMA Methodol. (1998)). The purpose of the methodology was to understand the relevant behaviours and factors that drive the organisation to apply certain levers in order to influence behaviours which may lead to performance improvement. The qualitative analysis revealed that Varian Australia focuses on optimising two critical success factors of product innovation: meeting and exceeding customer needs and expectations by innovating new products and accelerating the cycle time from conceptualisation to market launch. The most significant success factor was found to be the establishment of cross-functional, multi-disciplinary teams.

Success factors for improvement and innovation of process technology in process industry

In a study of the development of process technology in the process industry, 25 potential success factors were developed and later ranked in a survey to R&D managers in the European process industry. The results show that success factors for process development and product development are different, but also that success factors for process improvement and process innovation are different. For R&D managers in the process industry, the success factors can be used as a “shopping list” for the development of a company‐specific list of success factors for process development. The difference between success factors for process improvement and process innovation indicates that there is a need to better distinguish between process development work of different nature and content.

Troubling Successes and Good Failures: Successful New Product Development Requires Five Critical Factors

This article examines several critical success factors for innovation and new product development and then applies them to eight development projects from AT&T, BOC Gases, and Rhodia, Inc. From these projects, we observed that neither all innovation successes nor all failures are created equal. There are successes and successes, as well as failures and failures. A company can succeed with a new product project, but it may not be repeatable—and one battle does not win the competitive war.We found that for companies to have repeatable new product success, their teams must balance five critical factors. Most interesting to our study was our discovery that success can still be achieved by heroic efforts or extraordinary circumstances in only a subset of the five factors. Similarly, failure can result from unsatisfactory efforts or lack of attention in merely one or two of the five factors. We term these product development projects “Troubling Successes and Good Failures.” We assert that this unbalanced strategy is not prudent and is unlikely to produce long-term viability in new product development.

Reengineering of materials management system: A case study

A business process reengineering (BPR) project relating to the materials management function of a cement manufacturing plant is presented in this paper. The BPR project evolved out of an organisation development (OD) intervention initiative. Such an intervention aimed at improving value innovation capability of materials management professionals of a large cement manufacturing plant in India. The proposition here is that the value metrics relate to inside-in value innovations in order to deliver inside-out value to the customers in the face of fierce competition in Indian Cement industry. Materials of all types used in a cement plant constitute 60–70% of the total cost and hence the effective operations of procurement and inventory are the critical success factors for strategic value innovations and thereby competitiveness. The primary emphasis in this project was on learning and implementation, by creating an urgency for instilling responsible leadership and building organic partnership through knowledge networking.

Critical Success Factors for Radical Technological Innovation: A Five Case Study

We analyze the critical success factors for radical technological innovation according to four perspectives: as R&D projects, as technological innovations, as internal ventures, and as changes in corporate strategy. We apply ex‐post eleven critical success factors to the pairwaise comparison of three radical innovations: GE Project EHV‐UHV (success), GE non‐impact printer (failure), and Xerox non‐impact printer (success). We then apply ex‐ante the same factors to “predict” the failure of Motorola’s Iridium satellite communication system and the success of Nokia’s cellular phones.

Systems Integration for a Developing Country: Failure or Success? A Malaysian Case Study

AbstractThis paper presents the findings of a case study on three government departments. The study focuses on the triggering factors, obstacles and success factors of systems integration innovation and diffusion. The paper starts with a definition on systems integration and a brief explanation on the need for integration. This is followed by a description of each department studied. The subsequent sections dwell on the triggering factors, obstacles and success factors for systems integration. The paper concludes with a recommendation that most of the obstacles to the successful implementation of systems integration can be resolved through inter‐organizational cooperation, inter‐organizational structures and a change in business processes.

Innovation forecasting using bibliometrics

Counting research and development publication and patent activity can help generate competitive technical intelligence. Combining such counts with content analyses oriented toward “innovation success factors” can greatly enrich the intelligence value. The authors offer a framework of three types of technological innovation indicators—life cycle, contextual influences, and value chain/market prospects. They illustrate how these aid a case analysis of the application of ceramics to tank and automotive engines. The case demonstrates how use of these types of indicators can efficiently and effectively scan broad domains of the competitive landscape, and justify strategic decisions. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Managerial efficiency and the Schumpeterian link between size, market structure and innovation revisited

This research uses a unique survey on innovation conducted in Belgian high-tech industries to investigate (a) the effects of managerial efficiency on the firm's innovative activity; and (b) the effects of controlling explicitly for managerial efficiency on the Schumpeterian-like relationship that firm size and market concentration are both conducive to innovation. The key findings are: • managerial efficiency is an important determinant of the firm's innovation performance; • only when one controls for managerial variables considered as success factors for innovation, the Schumpeterian effect of the impact of the firm's market share emerges for a wide range of measures of performance, which confirms Rothwell's suggestion [18] that small firms have a advantage in the management of their innovation.