Preface

This book is based on a framework of innovation management – the Innovation
Pentathlon – which was developed from our research and has been used extensively in our work with companies. Our research showed that senior managers felt the need for an overall framework to help them understand the innovation performance of their companies, as well as tools and techniques to improve it. For example, the director of one company in the engineering sector said he needed a ‘systematic way to encourage and manage innovation’. At a meeting in 2000, where over 20 European universities presented the results of their research to industrialists, a senior manager from the Glaxo-SmithKline pharmaceutical company commented forcibly. He said that, as a manager, he needed integrative tools for innovation management, not the ad hoc collection of ‘snippets of best practice’, which he felt he was given by university researchers. In discussions with other managers, it emerged that they recognized that there were many facets to managing innovation: it involves strategy (for example, whether to be first-to-market, or to be a fast-follower); people management (for example, organizing and motivating teams); and good project management (for example, in striving to meet challenging time-to-market goals). Integrating the many facets of innovation management is the challenge, if the needs of the real world are to be matched with academic rigour.

Researchers have looked at innovation in many ways. Economists have studied how innovations affect industries and also the contribution innovation makes to economic performance. Organizational theorists have looked at how a company culture supports creativity and innovation and at the role of teamwork in this. Similarly, operations management researchers have investigated which practices can be used to speed new product development (NPD) and drawn parallels with theories of production management. Each type of research gives pointers on specific aspects of innovation, but practitioners must also deal with the ‘bigger picture’ – how to choose the combination of individual approaches which will increase the overall performance of an organization.

This book was primarily written to meet the needs of MBA students following courses on the strategic management of innovation, or conducting in-company projects related to innovation management. However, the contents will also be very relevant to managers in either the service or manufacturing sectors, who want to boost the innovation performance of their organizations. Specifically, the book addresses how to develop and successfully implement an innovation strategy and it borrows ideas and concepts from a range of disciplines, from economics, to organizational behaviour, and change management. Throughout the book we have tried to provide pertinent examples of innovation management and there are four or more half-page ‘box cases’ and one multi-page case study per chapter. In writing these cases we have deliberately sought to achieve parity between the manufacturing and service sectors – too often the service
sector is not done justice in writings about innovation management. In addition, we have tried to provide a truly international mix of cases. There are no ‘quick fixes’ in a complex field such as innovation management. Therefore, the challenge for managers is not just to adopt the ideas in this book but to adapt and blend them to fit the context their organizations face. We wish them every success in meeting that challenge.

KEITH GOFFIN
RICK MITCHELL