A Proposal for a Standard With Innovation Management System

2. Innovation
Luísa Carvalho, Teresa Costa and Simone Galina
The process of innovation management depends on the perspectives of innovation. The definition of
innovations varies across sub-fields of innovation research. The importance of innovation is
imperative (Tidd et al, 2005) or could means as Coopers refers, “It’s war: Innovate or die” (Cooper,
2005, p. 4). In literature we can identify several definitions of innovation, Drucker (1985) consider
innovation as a specific tool of entrepreneurs, whereby entrepreneurs exploit opportunities to the
development of different products or services. Other definition of innovation proposed by OECD
(1991) are the technological innovation, mainly applied to manufacturing sector define innovation as
an iterative process initiated by the perception of a new market and/or new service opportunity for a
technology-based invention which leads to development, production, and marketing tasks striving for
the commercial success of the invention. Attending to Garcia and Calantone (2002) this definition
addresses two important distinctions: [1] the ‘innovation’ process comprises the technological
development of an invention combined with the market introduction of that invention to end-users
through adoption and diffusion, and [2] the innovation process is iterative in nature and thus,
automatically includes the first introduction of a new innovation and the reintroduction of an improved
innovation.
Additionally, it is important to highlight that an invention does not become an innovation until it has
processed through production and marketing tasks and is diffused into the marketplace (Freeman,
1991; Layton, 1977; Song and Montoya-Weiss, 1998).
Another perspective of innovation provided by Albury (2005) consider that successful innovation is the
creation and implementation of new processes, products, services and methods of delivery which
result in significant improvements in outcomes, efficiency, effectiveness or quality. Innovations vary
along different dimensions; type of innovation, degree of novelty of the innovation and type and size
of the organization in which the innovation project took place and fifth, the environment/sector in
which the innovation was developed. The first, dimension is type of innovation; we can found in the
literature authors that’s distinguish, for instance, product, process and service innovations (Albury,
2005). However, Joseph Schumpeter (1942) was the first author to propose a classification of
innovation according typologies. Schumpeter identified five typologies of innovation associated with
entrepreneurial act: (1) Product: the introduction of a new good; (2) Process: the introduction of a new
method of production; (3) Business model: the opening of a new market, that is a market (4) Source
of supply: the conquest of a new source of supply of raw materials of semi manufactured goods, and
(5) Mergers and divestments: the carrying out of the new organization of any industry, like the
creation of a monopoly position (for example through trustification) or the breaking up of a monopoly
position. The second dimension refers to the degrees of innovation novelty and it is possible classified
innovation according different criteria’s. According with the novelty we can point out radical versus
incremental innovations. Radical innovation is really a new product or service and is discontinuous
with the past. Incremental innovation refers to an improvement in an existing product or service.
While the majority of research takes a firm’s perspective toward novelty, others look at new to the
world (Song and Montoya-Weiss, 1998) new to the adopting unit (Ettlie and Rubenstein, 1987), new
to the industry (Colarelli, 1998) new to the market (Kleinschmidt and Cooper, 1991; Meyers and
Tucker, 1989), and new to the consumer (Atuahene-Gima, 1995). The third dimension respects a
distinction between innovations private firms and in public organizations. Finally the size of
organization is considered, because, management techniques are different in small organizations
compared to large ones.
3. Innovation management
Tidd (1997) argued that the research on the innovation management has been highly fragmented,
and to a large extent non-cumulative. The reason is related to the three different perspectives of
research: management of R&D and technology; new product development and marketing; and
organizational development and change. The innovation process is inherently complex, and implies
the characterization of the technological market and organizational contingencies that affect the
opportunity for innovation. The conceptual model of innovation process used here (figure 1) was firstly
proposed by Tidd et al (2005) and then improved by Tidd and Bessant (2009). Depending of the
companies’ innovation strategy the effort inside each phase is different. A short summary of the
phases is presented bellow:
58