Innovation Model Analysis

Considerations for Innovation Modelling

Rapid changes in technology infrastructure, the explosion of data, always-on-always-connected world, the emergence of “multiple internets” and escalating regulation and standards have and continue to offer fertile ground for the development of products and services to increase ACT, cyber and personal security.

Nonetheless, challenges of transitioning technology related research developments and outputs to real-world deployment are well documented: pursuing a narrow innovation process failing to incorporate the internal and external ecosystem or customer needs, an overemphasis on technology-driven bottom-up innovation, in addition to unsupportive deployment channels for research output/commercialization’s hamper the transitioning of technology.

While much information around innovation exists, the challenge of developing effective in-firm innovation practices, models and infrastructures underpins innovation endeavours:
• Understanding of innovation management and practice remains fragmented, misunderstood and untamed by practitioners and researchers (Tidd, 2006) .
• Innovators operate within complex and turbulent environments, and are increasingly confronted with escalating and rapid technology developments, competitive global market competition and shorter product life cycles meaning they must be reactive and flexible to organizational, technological and market shifts (Garud et. Al., 2006) .
• Innovation therefore, does not occur within a vacuum and is impacted upon by a range of internal considerations and external contextual factors (Rothwell, 1994 ; Cormican and O’Sullivan, 2004 )

Exploring innovation models is important because they assist management teams in framing, understanding, and acting on the issues which need managing. Such issues include, but are not limited to: the key phases in the innovation lifecycle and the activities, actors and their interrelationships. Moreover, the linkage of organisational contextual factors equally impacts upon the overarching innovation ecosystem. As such, the importance of developing the most optimal innovation processes and models is of paramount importance give than innovation is the means by which organisations execute in the present and adapt to the future challenges and opportunities.

While there is no one size fits all solution to designing and implementing a successful innovation process as innovation engagement and management is unique to its respective organisational context; nonetheless, there is an ever increasing general body of information around innovation practice and modelling which has direct relevance to informing firm-level innovation practice: the set of rules, models and stages involved (Tidd, 2006; Cormican and O’Sullivan, 2004); considerations for R&D, utilizing knowledge sources and responding to market forces (O’Raghallaigh, 2011 ), and the strengths and weaknesses of the various generations of innovation models (Rothwell, 1994; Eleveens, 2010 ).

Based on the foregoing, the contribution of the following series of sub-articles is centred upon demystifying the firm-level innovation process phenomenon through highlighting salient consideration factors transcending innovation models, innovation phases, components and contexts, process flows and innovation framework architectures to inform innovation thinking and practice.

INNOVATION MODELS
PHASES, COMPONENTS AND CONTEXTS OF INNOVATION PROCESS MODELS
INNOVATION MODEL PROCESS FLOWS
THE EVOLUTION OF INNOVATION FRAMEWORK MODELS

Sources : 

J. Tidd, "A review of innovation models discussion paper 1," Science and Technology Policy Research Unit, Tanaka Business School, University of Sussex, 2006.
Garud, R., A. Kumaraswamy and V. Sambamurthy, "Emergent by design: performance and transformation at infosys technologies," Organization Science, vol. 17, no. 2, p. 277–286, 2006.
R. Rothwell, "Towards the fifth-generation innovation process," International Marketing Review, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 7-31, 1994.
K. Cormican and D. O'Sullivan, "Auditing best practice for effective product innovation.," Technovation, vol. 24, no. 10, p. 819–829, 2004.
P. O'Raghallaigh, D. Sammon and C. Murphy, "A re-conceptualisation of innovation models to support decision design," Journal of Decision Systems, vol. 20, no. 4, p. 369, 2011.
C. Eleveens, "Innovation Management: A Literature Review of Innovation Process Models and their Implications," Nijmegen, NL, 2010.