International Journal of Innovation Management

Analysis of potential risks is fundamental to technology development, but the definition and control of such risks are often problematic. This paper examines the issues concerned, aiming for an improved understanding of how the evaluation of risk shapes the emergence of new technology. The paper highlights different firm strategies taken towards evaluating risky technology, working from the micro-level of project management, and drawing on relevant qualitative case studies. Some contributors call for a meshing of analysis of macro-level technology policy objectives with an understanding of the micro-level activity of project planning. However, it is concluded that this can only be facilitated by first improving our understanding of theoretical perspectives and risk assessment practices at the firm level, since the firm remains critical to the generation and evaluation of new technology.

This research investigates three major hypotheses important to new product market success in the heavy construction equipment industry which are as follows: the greater the degree of organisational integration during the development of new products, the greater will be the market success of new products; the greater the degree of organisational integration during the development of new products, the greater will be the proficiency with which new product development activities are performed; and the greater the proficiency with which new product development activities are performed, the greater will be the new product's success in the marketplace. Information was obtained concerning the most and least successful new products of U.S. firms in the heavy construction equipment industry. "Organisational integration" is defined as the degree of cooperation and communication between internal and external new product development (NPD) "support" groups and NPD teams. "NPD process proficiency" is defined as how well new product development stages and the NPD process as a whole are performed. "New product market success" is represented by four measures that encompass profit expectations, sales expectations, success entering new markets and entering existing markets with new products successfully. The survey approach was utilised to obtain data. Questionnaires were mailed to recipients such as New Product Development Managers who had already been designated by executives of the sample firms. A number of important findings were uncovered during this research. The integration between an organisation's customers and an NPD team is important to the success of newly developed heavy construction equipment products. However, the integration between organisations that supply material, components, assemblies and fabrications to new heavy construction equipment developers was found to hinder the market success of newly developed heavy construction equipment. These and other findings suggest several important implications for product development managers and scholars.

The ongoing initiative of business process re-engineering in organisations has largely been attributed to innovations in information technologies that have enabled firms to increase productivity in their operations. The following paper addresses essential concepts in supply chain networks and describes the systems approach the U.S. automotive industry has implemented to augment their supply chain management initiatives. The focus of re-engineering the supply chain is enhanced data capture and analysis of activities in various segments of the chain which augments organisational information flow and knowledge generation resulting in communication of proactive decision making throughout the supply network to maintain operational efficiency.

Research on the innovation process and its effective management has consistently highlighted a set of themes constituting "good practice". The limitation of such "good practice" is that it relates to what might be termed "steady state" innovation — essentially innovative activity in product and process terms which is about "doing what we do, but better". The prescription works well under these conditions of (relative) stability in terms of products and markets but is not a good guide when elements of discontinuity come into the equation. Discontinuity arises from shifts along technological, market, political and other frontiers and requires new or at least significantly adapted approaches to their effective management. This paper highlights empirical findings from a selection of companies involved in a project sponsored by the U.K. Department of Trade and Industry. The results indicate a number of key routines that organisations could implement to enable discontinuous innovation.

Some scholars have recognized the important role of publicly funded basic research (Salter, AJ and BR Martin (2001). Research Policy, 30(3), 509–532; Szulanski, G (2000). Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 82(1), 9–27) for the production of knowledge. Among the identified benefits is an increase in "the stock of useful knowledge" available to society, which could be used for innovation and in this way contribute to economic growth (Szulanski, G (2000). Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 82(1), 9–27). Thus, it is important to support scientific activities. We claim that a way to support them is to use quality management complemented by knowledge management as a way of improving the process followed when carrying out research activities. Consequently, we studied the methods used while implementing a quality management system within various research organisations. This lead us to propose an approach which integrates quality management and knowledge management as a way to support the scientific activity.