Fraunhofer-Institut für Produktionsanlagen und Konstruktionstechnik IPK

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European standardization of innovation management: The sufficiency of the CEN/TS 16555 in the 6th generation of innovation management

2019 , Cap, J.-P. , Hinzmann, F. , Kohl, H. , Orth, R.

Although being an innovator is an important role to play for significant growth and profitability of firms to gain competitive advantages, companies struggle to find and implement an efficient and effective innovation management system and innovation process for new product development (Salomo et al. 2007). The emerge of innovations is rarely incidentally, therefore, require a systematic approach. To enhance the innovation system, companies are constrained to develop and implement the necessary framework for all innovation activity. Contrary to regular management objectives, innovation management can constrain new barriers and unknown challenges and requires therefore a different approach compared to routine functions (Granig und Perusch 2012). The CEN/TS 16555 has the objective to prescribe technical requirements to be fulfilled for the development and implementation of a sustainable innovation management system into an organisation. The centre of this innovation management model is the innovation process which starts with an idea and ends with innovation results. As organisational aspects, such as innovation supportive leadership, strategy, factors and techniques are key elements of this model, the innovation process get enriched by assessment, improvement and planning of the process itself (Technical Specification 16555-1). This paper investigates the current European standardization activity regarding the implementation of innovation management approaches to tackle the abovementioned challenge of the implementation of innovation management in reference to the in DIN Spec CEN/TS 16555 introduced in 2016 by the European Committee for Standardization (CEN). This paper will analyse the CEN/TS 16555 for its sufficiency regarding the bigger picture of innovation management by linking it to main literature and best practices. For the comparison of the specification and the innovation management requirements and purposes, this paper will specifically focus on the innovation management framework in the 6 generation of innovation management.

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Fostering organisational innovation through intellectual capital management

2015 , Galeitzke, M. , Steinhöfel, E. , Orth, R. , Kohl, H.

Knowledge and innovation have always played a crucial role in economic and social development (Kefala, 2010). As enterprises are facing constantly transforming framework conditions knowledge and innovation continue to gain importance in research and practice as means to realise sound economic, social and ecologic development. As mere product or incremental process innovations are neither a guarantee for success nor sufficient to cope with the emerging information, knowledge and time-competition (Stern and Jaberg, 2010) and as business model innovation has received increasing attention in times of change (Chesbrough, 2010; Amit and Zott, 2010) the latter shall be investigated complementarily. Design/methodology/approach - Building up on the results of previous research (Kohl et al., 2014) derived measures to improve the enterprises' innovation capability are analysed on the basis of 38 Intellectual Capital Statements. Furthermore, the data gained from a large scale survey among more than 1000 enterprises is analysed with regard to product as well as process innovation and are matched with the results gained from the analysis of the 38 ICS. Originality/value - The significance of intangible resources with regard to business success in general has evidently increased and may in some cases already be assessed as higher than the impact of tangible resources (Mertins et al., 2011; Kohl et al., 2014). This paper aims to draw conclusions on a broad empirical basis with regard to internal drivers of innovation and related differences between manufacturing and service enterprises. Practical implications - The analysis of the direct and indirect correlations between intellectual capital and innovation capabilities and the empirical foundation of these correlations allows sound statements regarding those intellectual capital factors, that should be focused by service and manufacturing enterprises to foster innovation. The examination of literature on intellectual capital and business model innovation builds the theoretical basis for future research with regard to those aspects and may show possible avenues for integrating business model innovation and intellectual capital management.

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IC future check: Greater transparency within the credit process

2014 , Wuscher, S. , Kohl, H. , Orth, R.

Field reports and surveys have shown that complementing financial data with information on intangibles can sharpen the view on creditworthiness of an organisation. Especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) are facing the challenge that the intangibles which thus far have not been taken into account are to make transparent for their respective banks. At the same time banks adopt such qualitative information in their lending decisions to optimize their risk portfolio. This paper presents the tool box "IC Future Check" which has been developed and tested in cooperation with financial institutions and businesses within a project for the German Federal Ministry of Economy and Technology. In this context it shows how the "IC Future Check" systematically supports the communication between bank and business and increases the transparency of intangibles. In a case study of a German SME the practical use of the "IC Future Check" is demonstrated in the credit lending process. The presented tool "IC Future Check" can provide significant support to the communication between SMEs and banks and to reduce existing information asymmetries. This puts SMEs in position to present their future potential in a structured way and to show the transparency regarding their intangible success factors.

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Sustainability incubators

2013 , Kohl, H. , Orth, R. , Galeitzke, M.

Combining the strength of small and medium-sized enterprises to operate and innovate in networks and the guidance of a sustainability incubator is an application-oriented solution to the described mission to progress the sustainable development from the private sector. The beneficial framework conditions for the enterprise network and the direction predetermined by the objective of the sustainability incubator are an initial step towards this imperative. Supporting the small and medium-sized enterprises of the manufacturing sector is an essential economic policy to underline the sustainable development of almost any economy. The provision of education, employment and economic added value are substantial contributions of these enterprises. The knowledge of the enterprises and thereby the capabilities of the personnel within the network are utilized to create services and products in an effective and efficient way enabling the increase of sustainability performance of the individual enterprises. The strong and innovative network that is coordinated by the sustainability incubator benefits of the systematic management of the success factors and their utilization and gains potential to increase its innovation activities in regard to environmental and social determination factors. The division corporate management of the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology (IPK) has gathered experience in both the provision of knowledge management solutions as well as the research regarding knowledge management in networks to increase sustainability. Furthermore the development of new methodologies for the measurement and evaluation of the sustainability performance of SME is an essential aspect of its research and development activities. As part of the future research, a case study with a network of collaborating SMEs is intended that utilizes the learning about small scale enterprises and incubators, the strategic and implementation planning of science and technology parks as well as the comprehensive understanding of national innovation systems.

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Comparative analysis of German and Brazilian innovation systems to improve binational cooperation

2017 , Melo, G. , Haunschild, J. , Orth, R. , Will, M. , Kohl, H.

Brazil is the core economy of Latin America, and Germany plays that role for the EU. Bilateral relations between Brazil and Germany are long-standing and comprehensive. For more than 140 years, Brazil and Germany have been connected by active bilateral diplomatic relations. Based on this solid relation and their economic positions, it is interesting to find means of collaboration, especially in long-term strategies as innovation. Based on broadly literature review, this study attempts to identify strength and weaknesses of each National Innovation System through a framework that comprises six different functions and three types of interactions between the actors in the system. They are policy formulation, performing R&D, financing R&D, promotion of human resource development, technology bridging, promotion of technological entrepreneurship; R&D collaboration, technology diffusion, labour mobility. This research contributes to a new perspective that is particularly interested in the differences in these structures in developing countries and countries at the frontier. Besides, the outcome of this study guides insights on how two leading economies, which have historical great relations, could better cooperate in innovation, science and technology field. This study attempts to examine, by means of a SWOT analysis, the Brazilian and German Innovation System in order to suggest improvements on each system and the binational cooperation concerning science, technology and innovation. The first step of the paper is the identification of the strengths and weakness in each National Innovation System based on library resources, articles, reports and other secondary data. In a second step, through interviews with relevant experts, the study tries to clarify the opportunities and threats on the binational cooperation.

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Building up National Intellectual Capital Center as a national innovation strategy

2015 , Wuscher, S. , Kohl, H. , Orth, R.

Purpose of this paper is, to show the experiences from the German and European pilot projects where the developments in Germany let into a national Intellectual Capital (IC) System with different stakeholder groups. The paper shows how the German IC Center has been built up and how the different stakeholder groups spread the idea of using Intellectual Capital Statements (ICS) as a continuous management instrument to improve innovation and the future development of organizations. The paper includes how the crucial functions "qualification & training", "implementation", "quality assurance" and "dissemination" regarding IC are organized in Germany and what results have been achieved since the movement started in 2008. Approach: The definition of IC and the methodology of proceeding ICS in small and medium - sized enterprises as well as in larger companies and organizational networks have been adequately researched in the last years. Originally started as a pilot project "Intellectual Capital Statement - Made in Germany" in the "Fit fur den Wissenswettbewerb" (Fit for the Knowledge Competition) initiative, and funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, the concept of ICS is now established across Germany as a national movement of IC training, implementation and quality assurance. Furthermore the German researchers collected experiences on the European level in the European pilot - project "Intellectual Capital Statement Made in Europe (InCaS)". The concept of Intellectual Capital has thus far been researched and tested specifically with regard to enterprises and as a concept of establishing national IC Center. The experiences from Germany are the basis for the adaptation of establishing national IC Center worldwide. Value and practical implications: The paper will practically show how a national IC Center in Germany is working and how this concept is transferable to other countries which could benefit from developments and results on the practical and theoretical side "made in Germany". The paper will also outline actual research activities on defining a regional concept of IC to close the gap between the well investigated concept of IC on the company level (micro) and the concept of national IC (macro).

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Strategic intellectual capital management as a driver of organisational innovation

2014 , Kohl, H. , Galeitzke, M. , Steinhöfel, E. , Orth, R.

Enterprises are facing transforming framework conditions that are manifesting on several levels. Increased competition from emerging markets, limited availability of resources as well as political and societal requirements with regard to the sustainability of enterprises' operations are only an extract of changing factors of influence. The capability to innovate has proven to be a strong competitive advantage and is to be assessed as a major success factor to limit the exposure to the intensified competitive (Schmeisser et. al. 2010), normative or even legal pressure especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. Design/methodology/approach - In order to identify and describe the interdependences between intangible resources, their management and innovation capabilities the principal terms are put into focus at first. Building up on the theoretical explanations and taking the management method "Intellectual Capital Statement - Made in Germany" as a starting point the interdependencies between intellectual capital and product innovation as well as process optimisation and innovation are analysed. Within this article the interdependences between the standard intellectual capital factors are investigated with regard to product and process innovation on the basis of 38 Intellectual Capital Statements of German enterprises. Originality/value - The significance of intangible resources for business success has evidently increased and may in some cases already be assessed as higher than the impact of tangible resources. Analyses have indicated some intellectual capital factors as the most prominent and important, yet the impact on the intra- and inter-organizational innovation ecosystems has not been analysed thoroughly. Although the most important factors of intellectual capital are identified, the specific drivers for innovation have not been investigated. This paper seeks to close this gap and draw meaningful conclusions with regard to drivers of innovation and related differences between manufacturing and service enterprises. Practical implications - The analysis of the correlation between intellectual capital and innovation capabilities allows statements regarding the intellectual capital factors, onto which enterprises should be focused in order to foster innovation. The qualitative content-related analysis of the 38 intellectual capital statements with regard to the consideration of new and different types of innovation management methodologies allows the identification of existing gaps in intellectual capital management. The close examination of the framework of new types of innovation and cross-reference to practical interdependences shall establish the theoretical basis for future case studies with enterprises that have the objective of establishing new types of innovation to continue this very research.

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Intellectual capital statements as a driver for regional development

2015 , Kohl, H. , Wuscher, S. , Orth, R. , Steinhöfel, E.

The definition of Intellectual Capital (IC) and the methodology of creating Intellectual Capital Statements (ICS) in small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) as well as in larger companies and organizational networks have been adequately researched over the last years. The experience gained from more than 1.000 implementations of ICS in European companies has been utilized to derive a standard set of 15 IC factors according to the common categorization into Human Capital, Structural Capital and Relational Capital, which is stable and mainly applicable on the company-level. Since the concept of IC on the company level has been established, first investigations have started to come up with different concepts of IC and ICS on the regional level. These concepts show that both, the definition of IC and the procedure for implementing ICS on the regional level, are not adequately investigated yet though. Therefore, the requirement is to develop and test a stable regional IC concept, meaning a suitable definition of IC and an adjusted procedure for implementing ICS on the regional level. Against this background, the paper at hand seeks to illustrate a conceptual framework for determining and measuring IC on different actor levels (micro, meso and macro level). The illustration of the conceptual framework is based on a literature review of four different regional IC concepts from Germany and of further existing Intellectual Capital concepts on regional and national level. The findings indicate that the definition of IC and the procedure of implementing ICS on the regional level are not adequately investigated yet and an adapted procedure with a balanced combination of quantitative measurement and qualitative assessment of IC is required. The paper introduces a preliminary set of harmonized IC success factors for regions based on a recent survey and workshop with more than 65 representatives from the local and regional level in Germany carried out in September 2014. Furthermore, the paper discusses possible approaches of procedures for implementing Intellectual Capital Statements on the regional level, which is and will be investigated further on in current and planned research projects.

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Process-oriented knowledge management in SMEs

2014 , Kohl, H. , Orth, R. , Steinhöfel, E.

Against the background of global competition and increasingly dynamic markets, the importance of knowledge has been growing dramatically, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). SMEs have to be more innovative, flexible, and efficient to successfully cope with typical challenges such as growing competition and rapidly changing demand patterns. In the past, knowledge management has been successfully implemented and developed by large enterprises in particular. In contrast, knowledge management for SME is not a matter of course yet. However, current survey results affirm that activities in the area of knowledge management depend less on the size of an enterprise or its industry, but rather on an enterprise's business strategy and core competencies. In the light of these results, SMEs seem not to have disadvantages regarding the implementation of knowledge management because of their size or industry, but rather because they need to take strategic decisions to implement such solutions and have difficulties in doing so. Against this background, the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology started the initiative "Fit fur den Wissenswettberb" to support especially SMEs on the way to the knowledge society. In the course of the initiative, the research institutes Fraunhofer IPK and Fraunhofer IFF initiated the project " ProWis - Prozessorientiertes und integriertes Wissensmanagement in KMU". Within this project, researchers designed methods meeting the specific needs of SMEs allowing the implementation of process-oriented knowledge management at reasonable efforts. Building up on the developed methods, both institutes accompanied 15 SMEs during the implementation of knowledge management and used the findings from these implementations to refine the methods. The results of the project are summarized in the guideline " Praxisleitfaden Wissensmanagement", which is freely accessible to interested parties and enables SMEs to systematically and autonomously implement knowledge management. Based on the aforementioned results, this article illustrates the process-oriented implementation of knowledge management according to the ProWis approach and, by means of a case study, leads the reader through the single steps of the implementation process towards a business process-oriented knowledge management.

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Sustainability analysis for indicator-based benchmarking solutions

2013 , Kohl, H. , Orth, R. , Riebartsch, O.

In times of scarce resources, the concept of sustainability management has become tremendously important within today's business environment. The integration of a sustainable perspective into corporate management structures does not only satisfy the involved stakeholders, but rather prepares a company to cope with the continuously increasing challenges on the markets. The Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology (IPK) offers the BenchmarkIndex-Analysis that allows especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) to measure their business performance based on selected indicators of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC). Since the methodology and the broad dissemination of the BenchmarkIndex represent a promising opportunity for a wide application of sustainability management solutions, an analysis of existing and potential sustainability indicators was carried out to identify how an adaption of the BenchmarkIndex can consider the long-term economic, but in particular the environmental and social aspects of sustainability.

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