Innovation

Innovation is important for the competitiveness of an enterprise. Patents protect innovations and enable companies to exploit the fruits of their R&D. This article focuses on the effects of product piracy upon our Western patent system. It shows that in the future there will be only two alternatives for the strategic IP-management in sectors exposed to piracy threats: to patent the inventions in all relevant markets or to maintain them as trade secrets. This paper highlights the parameters as well as results.

The development of value propositions is key for leverage technological intelligence. Meaningful and sustaining attributes for differentiation are able to contribute significantly to long term growth if they are based on a value oriented business model. Well known from Service Industries, customer integration could be applied to other industries for product development, too. Associated risks can be detected and subsequently managed.

Strategic product planning and strategic technology planning is more important than ever. This planning is based upon the anticipation of market and technology developments. The article shows how new technologies are taken up and how they can be combined to coherent technology strategies. These help the companies to further develop the product range and to position themselves advantageously in the competition of tomorrow. A consistent example from the automotive lighting engineering underlines the high feasibility of the methodology.

Change Management and transformability of factories are usually not planned in an integrated way today. While Change Management focuses solely on the change process itself, this process is mostly ignored in the planning process of a transformable factory. The synthesis of these two approaches allows a holistic support of change processes, in order to promote innovations for example, upgrade employee competencies and use the planned technological, spatial and organisational transformability thoroughly.

This article tries to answer the question what implications innovation management will have on the future performance of companies. For this purpose a new approach has been developed that considers the time factor to be the determining element for the success of an innovation which also includes an invention. The developed model analyses the entire innovation process on several levels as well as the innovation performance and innovation capability of a company. This model permits to highlight critical elements within the company and the specific project, on the basis of existing data. This allows to give recommendations for optimisation and to evaluate modifications.

With regard to the current competitive environment companies, and especially small and medium sized companies, ought to combine their competencies through the formation of strategic networks. This bundling permits the organizations to realize economies of scale, offer combined services and generate innovations. But especially innovation networks make great demands on network management. Based on the framework taken out of the manual “Managing Innovation Networks” by the VDI this article therefore outlines the particular management functions for innovation networks and reviews related literature. The purpose of this analysis is to point out suggestions for the management of innovation networks and to give an overview of research findings.

A wide definition of weak spots does not only allow analysing the possibilities for technical or technological improvements and innovations, but it is the basis for innovations in the companies’ organization. If a weak spot exists due to disrespect of the normative organizational structure, the management has to enforce the acceptance of the given structure. If there is a weak spot due to any mistake in the organizational structure itself, the analysis of weak spots in the organizational system provides a basis for process optimizations.

The theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) supports the innovation management process as a whole. It enriches the finding of new ideas, generating and evaluating alternatives as well as the transformation of ideas. TRIZ provides a comprehensive set of tools to support the various steps inside an effective innovation management. Contradiction thinking is one key finding of TRIZ. Contradictions may occur in a one- or two parametric form and represent the core aspects of a problem. TRIZ-tools help to resolve these contradictions. A comparison of the tools (i) inventive principles and (ii) separation principles, demonstrate the imposing use in the innovation management.

An innovation process based on the principles of Total Technology Development involves the systematic use of available know-how and employment of the technology potential. The thus generated innovations focus on actual needs and requirements. There is a new definition for measurement of innovation: The increase of “System Ideality”. This principle forms the base for the strategic direction of the company. An essential part of this approach is the functional view of the system with an analytical valuation. This article describes the theorem of the new management method.

To place new products successfully on the market, companies have to manage their innovation activities efficiently and to adapt their organisation and structures to changing demands continuously. Therefore the Fraunhofer IAO develops a procedure which allows the analysis of the ability to innovate as well as the evaluation and controlling of the innovation activities.