A Proposal for a Standard With Innovation Management System

Piotr Chwastyk
made at lower levels of management. Medium term innovations include several budget periods.
Because they involve making decisions that could affect the functioning of the entire company, they
are subject to approval at a higher level of management. They concern the fundamental changes in
the scope of manufactured products and processes under implementation. Last time horizon is
related to innovations, which require a complex process, planning adequate financial resources for
this purpose and also require the cooperation of companies and external organizations. These are
innovations of creating new business and are related to strategic planning in the company. They are
related to long-term development of the company. Planning this kind of innovations is the most
difficult, but also most relevant from the strategical point of view. Their meaning is associated with
long-term consequences of decisions taken and their financial requirements. This affects the level of
risk in relation to these innovations. Difficulties in the implementation are related primarily to the
dynamics of changes in the surroundings of the company and the way to conduct strategic analysis
and its relevance.
3. The issue of innovative solutions evaluation
With the introduction of innovation, companies must make decisions regarding the solutions belonging
to different innovation groups according to the proposed classification. The analysis of the proposed
concept of innovation and evaluation of solutions is complex and difficult. Especially if they are
innovations in different categories are considered together. Besides the benefits that are expected as
a result of innovation, we can not forget about the processes of innovation, which in a decisive way to
distinguish innovations between each other. The complexity of innovation processes consists of two
main distinct phases innovation processes. The first phase is called Front-End (Cooper 2001). It is
characterized by nonlinearity of performed tasks. Front-End is based on collecting ideas, their
development, analysis and evaluation. This should end with a choice of solutions, which will be
developed in later stages of the process. In turn, among these solutions should be chosen one that
will eventually be implemented. The steps that make up the Front-End phase are repeated several
times. Equally often relapses to earlier stages are required. Such pattern results from the parallel
analysis of multiple solutions that are in the circle of interest. This instability is also associated with a
large number of uncertainties that accompany the proposed solutions. The evaluating team has to
make a choice at a high level of uncertainty and risk, which arises from the lack of information,
because the innovation process are unique and their effects are poorly predictable. The second
phase, which is presented as Stage-Gate (Cooper 2001), requires the implementation of further steps
in the process of innovation in an arranged in series. It includes stages of: developing a chosen
solution, which takes the form of design, its implementation and commercialization. Important is here
the consequence and quick response to the disruptions, because the execution time is important in
this phase. The sooner all the stages of Stage-Gate will be completed, the sooner the benefits of
innovation will be present. Due to the uniqueness of the innovation process, differences in the tasks
should be expected, comparing to the planed tasks. This, in turn forces continuous decision-making.
Stage-Gate phase should be implemented for a chosen option of innovation project. Stages included
in its scope are highly cost-intensive and should be completed as soon as possible. This excludes the
parallel execution of several options of innovation within the stages of Stage-Gate.
Innovation processes comparing to the processes of current business activities is distinguished by
several important features. They cause, that the development of implementation plans and evaluation
of expected benefits is associated with making decisions based on the number of variables:
� The uniqueness. Innovation processes are not repeatable. Each one is a separate project, in
which there are different tasks to perform. Different sets of resources are also used, they require
the involvement of different groups of implementers and have different realization times.
� Uncertainty and risk. The Innovations that affect the application of new solutions, never used in
the company in its business activities, due to its originality are bounded with the uncertainty of
success. Lack of patterns, incomplete knowledge and lack of experience does not allow for a
guarantee that the implemented innovation will give assumed benefits. Prepared plans for the
innovation processes are associated in turn with a high degree of risk for the implementation of
planned activities and the occurrence of unforeseen events. Under such conditions it is necessary
to constantly make decisions in situations of disturbance during the implementation of
innovations.
� Assumed process. Innovation processes contain many stages of different nature. Each of these
stages has other priorities. Front-End stage requires creativity in creating the concept of
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