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RESEARCH BRIEF: Contextual Innovation Management

Apr 17th, 2012
by admin.
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by Johanna Madrigal, jmadriga@vt.edu

Understanding how to manage innovation is vital when innovating is the strategy to growth and to remain competitive (Drucker, 1999), thus for a successful innovation management model some authors stated that the idea of a single mainstream approach is no longer useful for the fast changing environment in the market. Based on this (Ortt & Van der Duin, 2008) recommend two aspects to be considered when managing innovation. There are:

(http://www.innovationmanagement.se)

 1. Definition of the context Innovation management can take place internally and externally.

Internally, the strategy and the organizational structure are key aspects of the organization’s culture therefore they have a great impact on how innovation is managed. With the strategy, an organization can determine if in terms of innovation, the firm wants to be an imitator, a leader or a follower. Also, how an organization is structured, impacts how innovation processes are held (i.e. innovation process per division, centralized innovation process). In terms of external environment, organizations will have to consider terms such as copyright, local laws, type of governments (i.e. egalitarian, authoritative), and legal agreements with other countries (Chiesa, 2001). It is not an isolated process anymore. Just like the evolution of species, innovation management is facing the world approach.

2. Managerial decisions in different contexts

Being an innovation manager means that decisions will be taken constantly within different contexts, having two levels they impact: strategic level where decisions are made before any innovation process starts, and the operational level where decisions are made during the innovation process shaping the outcome on the run. By understanding these contexts, a firm must develop an exhaustive professional profile for the innovation managers. Managing innovation based on contexts brings many advantages since managers can separate for standard approaches which tend to be too rigid and include variations such as the latest scientific research or the adequate timing for product introduction. Also contextual innovation management will enable more flexible processes, including “trial and error” mode as something acceptable in the innovation process. However, as in every approach there are some disadvantages as well. Using contextual innovation management may result in having different approaches with the same organization, which will increase the level of difficulty making innovation happen.

References

Chiesa, V. (2001). R&D Strategy and Organization: Managing Technical Change in Dynamic Contexts. London: Imperial College Press.

Drucker, P. (1999, September 25). Innovate or die: Drucker on financial services. The Economist.

Ortt, J., & Van der Duin, P. (2008). The evolution of innovation management toeards contextual innovation. European Journal of Innovation Management, 11(4), 16.

Posted in: Organizational Management.

RESEARCH BRIEF: Origins of Supply Chain Management: First 20 Years of Research

Mar 21st, 2012
by quesada.
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by Edgar Arias, PhD Candidate, earias@vt.edu

Origins of Supply Chain Management: First 20 Years of Research The concept of Supply Chain Management ( SCM) is fairly new in the business literature; Giunipero et al. [1] and Mentzer [2] indicate that it was initially introduced in the 1960s by J.W. Forrester, in his book Industrial Dynamics, where the author established that success of industrial companies was intrinsically related to the “interactions between flows of information, materials, manpower and capital equipment” [1]. Nevertheless, after this initial effort to define the term, approximately 20 years passed before for the actual concept of “Supply Chain Management” to be addressed by scholars and practitioners in only a “handful” of articles between 1985 and 1987 [1, 3].

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Figure 1: Time distribution of SCM publications (adapted from Giunipero et al. [1

The end of the 1990s was characterized by an exponential growth in SCM research. Several literature reviews [1, 3] concur on the significant growth in the appearance of publications addressing the subject, particularly since 1999. In 2006, Burgess et al. [3] circulated a literature review where 100 peer-reviewed articles were randomly selected to study the nature of SCM publications available at the time. The group of researchers determined that out of the total sample chosen, only a small fraction were articles dated from 1985, and a total of 77 were published between 1999 and 2003. Figure 1 depicts the time distribution of publications based on Giunipero’s [1] research, which accounted for a sample size of 405 articles, covering the years between 1997 and 2006.

According to Mentzer [2], at least three factors may have contributed to the increase in interest of scholars and practitioners on the fundamentals behind the concepts of SCM in the early 2000s: trends on global sourcing, emphasis on time and quality-based competition, and their respective contribution to a greater environmental uncertainty. Globalization of suppliers and customers has brought an additional set of variables to consider in order to effectively managing business functions such as procurement, logistics, manufacturing, sales, marketing, etc.; which has posed a challenge on multinational firms to secure sustainability in highly competitive environments. Lead-time and quality, both understood as potential “market qualifiers”, are considered by Martin and Towill [4] as fundamental elements of a lean supply (chain) and therefore necessary to enable cost as a market winner , also identified by Kaplan and Norton [5] a as one of the key elements for any productivity-based financial strategy. The globalization of supply chains in combination with an increased emphasis on competition based on agility, summed to a fast pace on technology and economic condition changes, is what according to Meltzer’s perspective, it is creating the business intricacy that helped SCM become a popular area of study [2].

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Posted in: Process Improvement.

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