Innovation

Innovation is a central determinant of the competitiveness of a company. The discovery, development and realization of innovative ideas are, however, bound up with challenges and risks. Against this backdrop, new paths and resources must be demonstrated, particularly for small and mid-sized enterprises (SME). This article is concerned with the open-innovation approach in the pharmaceutical industry and describes the interaction between research and practice to open the existing innovation processes in three SME.

The purpose of this paper is to show how corporate strategy can be aligned with the production system of an enterprise to derive an operations strategy. Consequently, the operations strategy is employed to define prospective needs of agility. The research methodology builds upon action research that is realized in a long-term approach with two joint manufacturing companies. Both can be classified as small and medium sized enterprises (SME). The preliminary findings underline the importance of a holistic view towards agility emphasizing organization and people as major drivers of agility. These drivers are addressed by means of a playful intervention with LEGO-bricks.

What makes Austria sufficiently interesting as a manufacturing location so that companies continue to invest, while other locations in the world offer more advantageous conditions which are relevant to manufacturing? It will always be possible to find regions offering cheaper labor, lax rules of operation in terms of environmental criteria or fewer regulatory stipulations. Yet, highly successful enterprises continue to count firmly on sites here. It must surely be down to the driving spirit of change as so aptly defined in the Economist „...to take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress...“. As clear and as simple as this may seem, the difficulty lies in translating this into everyday corporate life. It takes courage to look beyond the boundaries of one’s own experience, while we are always immersed in a framework defined by people of different characters. Only by seeking and accepting what ...

Planning and control are fundamental goals that firms pursue at considerable expense. Illustrative examples include ISO 9001, Six Sigma and ERP systems. The exploration of radical control reduction has been left to communities of loosely connected amateurs. The success of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has shown that production models with low levels of control can be competitive. Commercial applications of these models promise competitive advantages to those who overcome the challenges of surrendering control and finding matching business models. This article outlines opportunities and risks associated with this phenomenon.

The concept enterprise 2.0 stands for the enabling of new forms of know-ledge management by utilizing internet technology. While web 2.0 focuses on tools for communication, relationship management and learning, i.e. weblogs, wikis, and social networking platforms, enterprise 2.0 also covers the strategy, structure, and culture of knowledge management, and thus encompasses the entire enterprise. The authors argue that the vision of a blended enterprise is superior to existing non-hybrid enterprise 2.0-visions in terms of both feasibility and performance.

Process innovation became more and more important for producing enterprises. Under these circumstances effective planning procedures for implementation of innovations are indispensable. The article shows possibilities of acting in this management field. The approach is atuned also for the needs and conditions of SMEs.

Today, the increasing pace of development makes the task of Business Intelligence urgent and difficult at the same time. However, companies being pressurized by their day to day affairs do not feel up to facing this task themselves. Especially in small and medium enterprises an effective solution is needed to make sure that they see changes approaching before they are overtaken by them, so that they can react quickly and competently. With this need in mind, the present paper focuses on changes brought about by technological innovations and offers a solution which has been developed in a project involving a company engaged in medical engineering. The core element of the developed proposal is the decentralization of foresight. Therefore information is being gathered, passed upwards and thereby evaluated by a hierarchy of managers, called “radar groups”. Such perspective allows essential feedback to the capabilities of a company on all levels. In sum this leads to a new thesis ...

Outsourcing has become an important and even ordinary tool for enterprises to concentrate on their core competences: external know-how can be implemented into research, development and production by leaving out internal services to business partners. But in the past the most interesting partner for outsourcing has not been recognized yet. Creating space for the customer to participate in configuration and even development is the aim of Embedded Open Toolkits for User Innovation (EMOTIO), advanced by the Laboratory for Machine Tools WZL of RWTH Aachen University. Therefore the customer is offered room to modify actual configurations and even implement own creative solutions during the practical use of a product. These changes will be evaluated and leaded back into the production process to improve the product successively.

A lot of attention has been spent to the front-end of product innovation during the past decades. Different approaches to support the front-end were carried out from industry as well as in research. In parallel, the technological options in managing information and knowledge have been tremendously increased. This paper examines the question if - and how - the front-end of product-innovation can yet be supported by information technology: an overview on information objects in the early phases is given, standard software is evaluated and prototype - overcoming the shortcomings of existing software - presented.

The research project “Open Innovation in Life Sciences” (project duration May 2008-April 2011) aims at the development and implementation of new innovation strategies and concepts for SMEs in the life sciences segment. In particular inside-out and outside-in processes in joint innovation projects beyond firm boundaries are analyzed. The life sciences segment is known as being highly research intense and interdisciplinary. As a result of the growing complexity of innovation processes, the development of cooperative, i.e. open innovation strategies for SMEs has become more important. SMEs can gain the capability to tap crucial innovation potentials by bundling distributed complementary knowledge. The article describes the development of a method which might help to evaluate opportunities and risks of different innovation concepts. This may serve as basis for decision-making regarding the implementation of a predefined innovation process. Project outcomes are expected to be an ...