A Proposal for a Standard With Innovation Management System

Piotr Chwastyk
companies having their own R & D departments with a strong potential can afford the generation of
radical innovations.
Usually there are many variants of innovative solutions. Carrying out their evaluation in order to select
promising solutions to grant the greatest benefit is the problem, especially when the solutions from
different categories of innovation are evaluated. Often it is impossible to establish common criteria for
evaluating such a set of innovations, among which are the proposals of product , process,
organizational, or market innovations. It is therefore necessary to limit the number of proposed
solutions to those that will be connected to only one area. To determine the area of innovation is
proposed to apply the Theory of Constraints (Goldratt 1986), which has already been noticed as a
method of supporting innovation processes (Dalton 2009). This method is tested in the management
of production processes and allows to identify the bottlenecks that limit the development potential of
the company. It can therefore also be an excellent tool for identifying areas for improvement in the
way of innovation. Focus on what constitutes a restriction of the companies development also allows
to narrow the proposed innovations to a single genus. If the limitation is, for example, one of the
positions, the ideas will involve different versions of process innovation, in turn if the constraints are
structural defects occurring in the product, innovation of the product will be the solution. It can not be
ruled out that despite using the Theory of Constraints, innovation concepts of a different nature will
arise. Above mentioned product defects can be eliminated by a change of product's design or by
changes in the manufacturing process. But even in this case, will be easier to compare these
solutions considering common benefits from these innovations to be achieved. The fact can not be
excluded, that innovation directed to the designated area will not differ in time horizon. In this case,
the common comparison of these solutions would also not give clear-cut results. Due to the large
differences, which clearly distinguish innovations from different horizons, can be at the stage of
generating the concept of innovation reduced to a single horizon. The criterion of implementation time
of innovation and the expected level of the budget explicitly confine the set of concepts at the stage of
pre-selection of solutions. Its the company's management, knowing its potential, should decide which
of the types of innovations to prefer. If, however, the concepts of innovations are considered,
belonging to all time horizons, there should be made a division to mentioned three groups, leading the
evaluation process of innovations separately for each of them.
5. Method of assessing innovation solutions
Variants of the proposed solutions of innovations are evaluated on the basis of criteria that can be
divided into two groups. The first concerns the benefits to be achieved after the implementation of
innovation. They concern the extent to which an intended purpose will be achieved. The benefits can
be divided into those that can be defined in a measurable way. They will be concern improving the
performance of performed processes, increase of sales revenue, number of processed information,
etc. The nature of these criteria will therefore be deterministic, because their values will be possible to
calculate on the basis of changes, which are brought by the innovation. For example: the proposed
innovative solution should lead to changes in machine operating parameters on the workstation. It is
also known what levels of these parameters will be achieved after the implementation of this solution.
Therefore it is possible, on the basis of the known dependencies, to accurately calculate eg
processing time, which may be one of the criteria. Another type of criteria is present in the case of
benefits that can be evaluated only in a subjective manner. They may be limited to: improving working
conditions, improving the quality of products or services or to improve the company's image. At the
evaluation stage of concepts, the approximate assessments by such criteria can not even be
determined. These will be the criteria of a blur nature, in relation to which the knowledge and
experience of the people who will evaluate should be trusted.
The second group of criteria should include evaluation of the implementation process which should be
carried out for the innovation to be implemented successfully. Due to the individual nature of each of
the processes of innovation, this group of criteria will be only blurred.
Because of the criteria of blurred nature in the process of evaluating solutions, should be involved
individuals who have experience in the field of innovation processes. If the company lacks such
persons, the expertise of external experts should be used. The importance of this stage is huge. The
right choice will reflect on the success of the entire project.
The process of evaluating innovative solutions requires a method that will allow taking into account
the specificities of innovation processes, the possibility of using various criteria and would allow for
93