Changing the Dynamics and Impact of Innovation Management

The following sections are included:

• Foreword
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors
• Contents

This chapter covers the purpose of this book, describes its structure and asks for a call to action for changing the impact and dynamics of innovation management. The urgent need for innovation in our organisations and societies is well recognised, yet why are we not making more progress in the field? The book’s purpose is to help those within and outside the innovation management community understand the why, what, and how of managing innovation activities and the benefits of a systems approach for greater impact. The book has three parts. Part I provides background about the international standard ISO 56002 for innovation management system guidance (ISO, 2019) and the development of innovation management research, with the aim for better integration of theory and practice via the common framework of the standard. Part II is the core of the book, featuring 16 case studies about how diverse organisations built their innovation capabilities. In Part III, the editorial team looks across the cases to capture common themes, prerequisites for success and insights about the relevance of the standard for the innovation management community and the future of the field of innovation management. Most importantly, the book is a call to action for the innovation management community and others to move beyond making the case for why we need innovation. It is now time to be clearer on what it is and how to make it work through a systems approach.

This chapter provides background for how the innovation management system standard was developed, including its link with other international standards work. It also makes the case for why a standard is important for innovation management and outlines what a management system is. Innovation management fundamentals are covered in terms of definitions and different types of innovation. Descriptions for the eight innovation management principles (International Organization for Standardisation, ISO 56000) and seven key innovation management system (IMS) elements (ISO 56002) are provided. Finally, the benefits, challenges and call to action related to the use of a guidance standard are highlighted.

In this chapter, we provide a background view and insight into the development of innovation management research, in particular, and discuss the outlook an application of an innovation management system may have, both for organisations and research. The chapter explains how innovation management research is well-developed, but often done so for a single phenomenon; and rarely analysed in research from a systems perspective. This can make the coupling between research and practice difficult (or at least misunderstood) because innovation practice happens in a system. The ISO 56002 brings about an opportunity to systematically discuss innovation research from a systems perspective and can act as a catalyst for better integration of theory and practice in innovation management.

Part II includes 16 case studies that all share insights addressing innovation capabilities from a systems perspective. The case studies provide descriptions and reflections from a diverse set of contexts and situations. The breadth of cases has enabled a display of several learnings related to how management systems for innovation may be designed and implemented. This introduction to Part II has the purpose to provide support for navigating among the case studies.

In 2019, ISO published a standard on innovation management system, ISO 56002:2019. The technical committee ISO TC 279 is chaired by one of the authors who was, during the development of ISO 56002:2019, also leading the innovation culture in a Defence and Space division of Airbus, the largest aeronautics and space company in Europe. The authors of this chapter have actively driven a culture shift in their organisation in animating company networks, upskilling employees, adapting the workspace and proposing new tools. After the presentation of the changes of the business challenges and their impacts on innovation strategy, the authors explain how the innovation culture has to evolve and how it has been implemented in relationships with the other divisions in the group, with different innovation strategies. This chapter focuses on the change of company culture to answer the needs to shift from a techno push culture to a customer-centric culture. It concludes in showing how company culture enables the innovation journey of an organisation based on a subset of the recommended innovation management system from ISO 56002:2019.

CIMC is a group of “Hidden Champions,” famed for its series of champion products from containers, vehicles to offshore segments and so on. The company’s effective and efficient development is driven by its innovation dynamics and Leanovation system, which is a typical case of an innovation management system in line with ISO 56002. CIMC’s innovation dynamics are coupled with the context and conditions of the evolution of the innovation management system, which could be divided into two main stages. The first stage is driven by external stimulation and market-central strategy. The second stage is driven by internal and resource-based strategy. Furthermore, we proposed a Leanovation framework that presents the remaining components and key factors for the system’s implementation. It consists of a commanding World-Class Champion Strategy, front and back ends of CIMC operational structure, coordinated by the coaching leadership that ensures the coherence and alignment between soft and hard factors. With the context element of globalisation, combined with more practical market strategies, so-called “glocalisation” is emphasised considering the trend of deglobalisation, and the more “VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity)” world after the pandemic.

This chapter describes and analyses the journey of the development of an innovation management system at Evonik Industries, one of the world’s leading companies in speciality chemicals. Evonik started a pilot for enhancing their innovation management system in 2013, focusing on the core area of augmenting the strategic innovation capability of the company. Through a series of intensive workshops and work with innovation opportunities carried out from September 2017 through February 2020, Evonik identified several specific, idiosyncratic areas related to business model option experimentation, business vision, stakeholder management and iterative learning from opportunities that were distinct from the incremental innovation project management. The case similarly aided understanding of how existing metrics and project evaluation systems within Evonik benefited from adjustments to secure a better fit with strategic innovation in the company. The case reveals and raises the question whether the innovation management system standard touches upon “one innovation management system” or comprises two subsystems, each optimised for incremental and strategic innovation, respectively.

The humanitarian sector is characterised by an extreme innovation challenge. Under disaster conditions there is an urgent need for problem solving and normal solution pathways may be blocked off; much depends on finding new ways to deal with the crisis. Yet, although innovation has been a core feature of the sector it is only recently that thinking has moved towards how it might be managed more systematically and in particular how learning about good practice might be exchanged across the sector. This case study explores the context for humanitarian innovation (HI) and looks at the emergence of a system level model for managing it in systematic fashion. Based on the experiences of humanitarian innovation, this reinforces that taking a more systemic and systematic approach would pay dividends in terms of more effective innovation processes. It highlights the specific issues in this context and the value of generic frameworks which might enable cross-sector learning around good innovation management practices. Finally, the discussion suggests that there are promising signs that a more strategic approach is being taken, informed by a well-developed understanding of innovation.

This chapter provides an overview of the process carried out at the Instituto Nacional de Tecnologìa Industrial — INTI — in order to implement an Innovation Management System (IMS) in a public R&D Institute. Implementing an IMS aligned with ISO 56002 was aimed to reinforce the role INTI plays to promote innovation through the industrial network of Argentina. The authors explain how the process was deployed and why the work was done in two tracks simultaneously: one addressing awareness and training, for managers and technical staff, and another track addressing the deployment of the strategic components of the IMS by top management. Three elements are highlighted and explained in detail showing the important role they played in the IMS implementation and how they were addressed, namely the innovation process itself, collaboration awareness, and project portfolio balance. The certification of INTI’s IMS under the Argentinean standard IRAM 50501:2016, in October 2019, positioned INTI as a pioneer in the innovation management field, it being the first public organisation in Argentina with a certified IMS.

This chapter describes and analyses the development of an Innovation Management System (IMS) at Kanthal — a world-leading brand for products and services in industrial heating technology and resistance materials, based in Sweden. The journey began with late-night thoughts and discussions by the coffee maker on leveraging the organisation’s potential regarding innovation capability. There was a feeling that an improvement could be made. In 2017, Process Industrial IT and Automation (PiiA), part of Sweden’s Strategic Innovation Program, launched a research project to understand the innovation capability within the Swedish process industry. Kanthal joined, and the journey started with the implementation of a programme for increased innovation capability. The assessment revealed a focus on incremental innovation, barriers in the climate for innovation, and an inability to take advantage of the expertise and competencies available in the organisation. While this journey started before releasing the ISO 56002 innovation management standard, these insights align well with this standard.

In 2019, Karolinska University Hospital, Sweden’s largest hospital delivering highly specialised care, decided to implement an innovation management system (IMS) in order to enhance the organisation’s innovation capabilities through systematic innovation. This chapter focuses on the efforts and effects related to this implementation, from the perspective of the support function Centre for Innovation, which had a key role in the design and implementation of the innovation management system at Karolinska. The guidance standard ISO 56002 Innovation Management System has been used as a reference model in the design of the Karolinska IMS, utilising all elements included in it. This systems approach has provided a useful terminology and a logic for connecting the elements. Further, this case reveals the importance of having a strategy as a basis for action; the need to address an innovative culture in this otherwise risk-averse context; the potential in building internal innovation networks; the key in combined educational and coaching activities; the strength using communication; as well as challenges in designing relevant measurement and evaluation systems for innovation. Finally, building innovation capabilities bottom-up has proved to be essential in a large and multi-faceted organisation such as Karolinska.

KTH Global Development Hub (KTH GDH) was formed in 2017 with the mission to develop and implement new education models and approaches addressing global sustainable development as expressed in the UN 2030 Agenda. KTH GDH is based on the idea that education activities can have a two-fold impact of developing students’ innovation competence, while also driving innovation through the solutions being developed by students. A challenge-driven educational concept developed by KTH GDH, CDE^GDH, therefore contains a purposely designed innovation management system (IMS). Challenge definitions, stakeholder engagement and leadership endorsement are key aspects of this IMS, which is based on interventions designed to develop consensus around the viability and relevance of challenges, and commitment to participate in the innovation process. KTH GDH works in partnership with four African universities. The IMS has a local component at each university and a global component, which creates a global IMS. The implementation has thus far focused on the capacity to implement the Challenge-Driven Education (CDE) model and IMS. This includes building a capacity to create and sustain innovation processes and developing networks and collaborations in local innovation ecosystems, something that offers specific challenges. We discuss how existing IMS frameworks can be developed to better support global sustainable innovation.

Over the past decades, firms from emerging economies like China have sprung up and reshaped the economic map of the world. This chapter focuses on a miniature of these firms: Midea Group, a global leader in household appliance sector. We give a glimpse of how firms, in a developing China, implement an innovation management system to motivate and integrate the creativity of each innovation element. The story is also an excellent example of the promotion of the ISO 56002. We find that Midea has applied the total innovation management philosophy, developed a future-oriented innovation vision and strategy, leveraged indigenous innovation competence and external resources to support innovation activities, which are followed by the four-level technology roadmap as an action plan. It has also organised the R&D centres as a global collaboration network for the internal and external innovation activities and resources. As a result, Midea established a portfolio of innovation competence that consists of technological and managerial core competencies. Midea’s experience in innovation management and development brings important insights to other companies that are on the track of catching-up as well as becoming global innovators.

This chapter describes and analyses the development of an innovation management system at Moen, between 2007 and 2017. Moen is a consumer products company in the plumbing business, headquartered in the United States. The journey began with asking, “How does a plumbing company chart new paths for growth and sustain an ability to do this over time?” In 2007, an innovation assessment was conducted by breakthrough innovation experts. The conclusions were that Moen lacked an innovation strategy and clarity about how to handle different types of innovation. Further, there was no clear appetite for major (category and breakthrough) innovations that would stretch the company beyond incremental improvements and lead to increasing levels of uncertainty. After much debate, the Executive Team agreed to make the right level of investment in major innovations to successfully pursue Moen’s grow ambitions. This is the story of Moen’s 10-year journey to build its innovation management system, guided by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s (RPI’s) pioneering research on breakthrough innovation. While Moen’s path to build a sustainable innovation capability predates the release of the ISO 56002 innovation management system standard, RPI’s research was a key input to the development of this standard. Therefore, this case parallels closely this standard and is an excellent testament as to its guidance value.

Naturvårdsverket, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, conducts assignments on behalf of the Swedish Government relating to the environment in Sweden, the European Union and internationally. Naturvårdsverket works with complex-system challenges that our society faces, and innovation is designated as a tool for achieving the environmental objectives. In 2016, Naturvårdsverket decided to implement an internal platform for innovation. In 2018, Naturvårdsverket participated in a 1-year knowledge-exchange programme aimed at supporting government authorities in developing systemic and systematic innovation capability. Insights from a Swedish benchmark study of innovation capabilities of 112 government authorities formed the programme’s base. The organisational platform for innovation, that comprises building blocks such as innovation strategy, organisation, value networks, innovation projects and results is described. The components capture the key elements of the “ISO 56002:2019 Innovation management — Innovation management system — Guidance.” One important outcome from the described design process of the innovation management system is a change in management culture towards innovation and innovative thinking. Both incremental and more transformative innovation work took place, resulting in updated routines, working practices and customer interaction and service.

Norconsult takes a shot at implementing ISO 56002 Innovation Management System in their complex engineering consulting business corporation. Initial work reveals that fundamental understandings of innovation differ enough that questions of systems management cannot be addressed before a more precise and shared understanding of the fundamental concepts can be reached. Working in parallel to reimagine the internal story about innovation while developing definitions to capture the essence of concepts relating to innovation management, the profession slowly but surely finds a new place in the company. The effects of rebranding innovation and innovation management lay the foundations for a future broader system implementation. This chapter outlines the context and the company, the planning and implementation, and offers reflections on how to adapt the ISO 56002 to a complex consulting corporation. One important insight proves to be the importance of shared definitions and a common understanding of innovation for deciding on how to manage innovation systemically. In planning for the way forward, experimentation to maintain momentum when complexity exceeds capacity is proposed as a feasible approach for Norconsult.

Oki Electric Industry Company, OKI, a Japanese company with more than 140 years’ history and proud traditions, decided to introduce Yume Pro, an innovation management system (IMS) directly corresponding to ISO 56002. Motives for this effort were both radical changes in the business context, and an identified need to enhance the entrepreneurial orientation of the employees. OKI works with all elements identified in the IMS. OKI has developed an innovation strategy with a strong emphasis on addressing the Sustainable Developments Goals, as defined by the United Nations, which supports in creating related value propositions. Key activities for building an innovation culture include awareness building, training and support. OKI has also embarked upon an ambitious plan to train many employees within a few years. Further, a strong management commitment is expressed in several ways, such as a clear strategic direction for innovation, reviews of innovation activities, as well as an involvement of the president in innovation promotion activities. OKI has implemented key performance indicators to capture the elements in the system as well as the system itself. The introduction of Yume Pro is led by the company’s Chief Innovation Officer (CINO) and the Innovation Promotion Centre (IPC).

Public research universities in the United States (US) and many around the world face rising challenges associated with escalating costs, shifting demographics, changing public perceptions of the value of college degrees, growing student loan debt and eroding public sector support, among other things. Arguably, the scale and pace of change universities must execute to address those challenges are rising. Yet, as highly decentralised organisations with strong traditions of shared governance, advancing institutional innovation within universities can be difficult. Many universities need to increase their rate of institutional innovation in order to protect and strengthen delivery of their research, teaching and engagement missions. Moreover, universities need to innovate faster and more effectively to capitalise on opportunities that emerge and are pursued rapidly by others in an increasingly competitive higher education sector. In 2018, Oregon State University established a function and set of associated practices — called Impact Studio — that are designed to expand the institution’s internal innovation system and capability. The aim is to strengthen Oregon State’s ability to identify or create new value and respond creatively and nimbly to fast-changing trends in higher education, while still respecting shared governance norms and the locus of expertise naturally resident at different levels of the organisation (departments, schools, colleges, and administrative divisions and units). Since its genesis, Impact Studio has stewarded the development and launch of eight adjacent growth initiatives. In the process, Oregon State has learned a number of lessons about institutional innovation that may inform other universities’ efforts.

Based in Malaysia and operating in 16 countries, Sime Darby Plantation (SDP) is the world’s largest oil palm plantation company. Its drivers to innovate include the sustainability focus and reducing dependency on foreign labour. As a 100-year-old large company, SDP operates in a hierarchical manner, relying on top-down decisions in their day-to-day operations. The study explores the challenges it faced in implementing a systematic innovation management process while drawing parallels to the ISO 56002 components to highlight how these were vital in ensuring the company’s success in innovation. SDP’s innovation journey begins from the inception of its Group Innovation Strategy Department in 2016, followed by new initiatives after its de-merger from the Sime Darby Group and its new innovation efforts in response to the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Several successful top-down initiatives are highlighted in this study, including the Innovation and Productivity Charter to create the urgency of achieving its goals, the Review Panel to oversee all innovation activities and the Value Creation process aimed at commercialising new ideas.

This chapter describes and analyses the development of innovation management capabilities at Södra, a large forestry group based in the southern part of Sweden, between 2014 and 2020. Applying the framework of “ISO 56002:2019 Innovation management — Innovation management system — Guidance,” on the different aspects of innovation management at Södra reveals that most of the critical elements of the system have been addressed to various degrees. Driven by both necessity and opportunity, the new innovation strategy and process from 2014 paved the way for focused strategic innovation arenas and roadmaps that were instrumental for the innovation achievements during the period of this case study. With even more significant innovation challenges ahead, foremost related to the transition to a circular and bio-based economy, Södra has identified the next iteration of improvements to its innovation management system that can include an even more focused strategic direction for innovation, stronger top management commitment, clarified roles and responsibilities and improved communication efforts.

In this chapter, the editorial team reflects upon common themes from the cases, how the standard was used, prerequisites for success and practical guidance it can offer for a successful journey. Organisations embarked on their innovation management system (IMS) journeys for different reasons. For some, it was about external triggers, e.g., positioning with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or responding to industry shifts and technology disruptions. For others, it was about internal triggers, e.g., as an enabler for organisational restructuring or building innovation capabilities. Three cases (INTI, Karolinska, OKI) explicitly used the ISO 56002 guidance standard to fully implement their innovation management systems. Three cases used it to implement selected elements of the standard (Airbus, Norconsult, Södra). Four cases (CIMC, Evonik, Midea, Moen) implemented a systems approach before the standard was published. Others (HIF, Kanthal, KTH GDH, Naturvårdsverket, Oregon State, SDP) used ISO 56002 as a lens to reflect on their innovation capabilities and to reinforce and validate steps already taken. Regardless of the standard’s use, organisations have been able to move from ad hoc or process-driven activities to a systems orientation, create a common language to collaborate, clarify their innovation ambitions and start their journeys via a bottom-up, top-down or combination of both approaches.

In this chapter, the editorial team looks across the cases and the emerging themes to offer insights about the standard and its implications for the innovation management community and the future of the innovation management discipline. For practitioners, the case is made for a call to action to rally around the benefits of the standard as a foundation for dynamic innovation capability and innovation community building that will stand the test of time. For academic educators and researchers, it is teaching about open, connected innovation models that go beyond internally focused ones and understanding through research the system element interdependencies and how these elements can be adapted in different organisational contexts. For standard developers, a key issue is to ensure that a core innovation management system can handle the variations and complexities of different organisations and types of innovations. For professional associations, it is about continuing to build the identity of the profession and supporting professionals to strengthen the innovation management discipline in organisations. For policymakers, it starts with understanding where the standard could have policy relevance and broadening the range of innovation policy instruments available. Finally, it is about imagining a future where in 10 years innovation management is a well-recognised discipline and profession, with systemic and systematic approaches that accelerate learning to realise value more quickly for a better world.

The following section is included:

• Index