A Proposal for a Standard With Innovation Management System

Ladislav Ludvík and Jindra Peterková
Europe, one of the three largest companies worldwide. The company was established in 1990, in
1992 Linet made its first major contracts and in 1994 built its own development department. By
extending the production hall in 1998 the firm was able to produce 10,000 pieces of products. In 1999
the company developed a new system lifting system for hospital beds, which was already applied
during the production of new types of beds ELEGANZA and Multicare in 2000. In twenty years of its
existence, the firm managed to multiply the invested capital 6,000 times in terms of cumulative profit
after taxation, multiply 15,000 times the invested capital in terms of current market value (current
market value is CZK 6 billion) and 200 times increase revenues to 2000 billion CZK (the revenues
reached the level of CZK 10 million in 1991). The company owns more than 50 patent solutions. It
produces
annually 43 000 beds and exports to 93 countries. The export share of the sales is 88%.
The company carries out an offensive innovation strategy focused on the clinical added value. It takes
into account aspects related to the nature of the industry. The hospital beds are designed so that they
prevent patients from bedsores and nosocomial infections. They Improve operation function for
nurses and increase self-service
function for patients. This also saves time and reduces costs for
operators
of health care.
To demonstrate the life cycle of innovation activities of Linet, we focused our attention on the hospital
bed Eleganza series, which production currently accounts for almost 50% of the volume of the entire
company. To compare it, we included total sales of the enterprise (see Figure 3). Given the fact that
the firm is constantly innovating its production, we chose to illustrate the product innovation cycle
Eleganza ICU. This product belongs to the most important product lines of ELEGANZA. Despite the
low share of production volume (only 2% of the total production of the Eleganza range), this product
contributes 32% of sales from the product line of Eleganza.) Launching the product took place in the
same year as the introduction of the whole
line of ELEGANZA products). As the chart shows, the
development
of sales increased to 2007.
In 2001, the development of ELEGANZA XC was completed, which is an improved line of the product
Eleganza ICU. Therefore, the production of the original product was completed in 2009. Currently, an
innovative variant ELEGANZA XC is delivered to the market. 23,000 types of such products were
manufactured
in 2010.Their share in the production is more than 46%.
The sales curve we can see on the life cycle chart of product innovations illustrates the various
procedural steps in improving the product segments ELEGANZA. During the first entry on the market
(1999), product innovations of Linet were based primarily on basic research findings, later the firm ran
into the knowledge limit concerning the lifting system (2007). Qualitatively, a new research solution
resulted in shifting the product line to the improved product ELEGENZA XC (2009 - present).
Figure 3: Life curve of product innovations of Linet - sales development, Adapted from the publication
(Peterková and Gruberová, 2012)
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