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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Publication

Integrated evaluation system for the strategic management of innovation initiatives in manufacturing industries

2016 , Kohl, H. , Orth, R. , Riebartsch, O. , Hecklau, F.

The innovation capability of industrial organizations is an essential prerequisite to stay ahead of the global competition by adapting flexible to the rapidly changing customer requirements. However, the success of innovation initiatives is often at risk, due to short-sighted, unsystematic planning-, implementation- and evaluation activities. For this purpose an integrated evaluation approach has been developed by Fraunhofer IPK to manage the lifecycle of an innovation initiative in terms of implementation progress and operational performance in a sustainable way. The Evaluation System follows a multi-perspective approach that involves internal and external stakeholders by applying a combination of evaluation instruments including key performance indicators, self-assessment- and audit procedures as well as monitoring- and reporting tools. As a main output of the Evaluation System, specific improvement suggestions and action plans can be derived to react agile on potential challenges.

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Publication

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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Publication

Sustainable corporate development measured by intangible and tangible resources as well as targeted by safeguard subjects

2015 , Orth, R. , Scheumann, R. , Galeitzke, M. , Wolf, K. , Kohl, H. , Finkbeiner, M.

The needed shift towards sustainable development in existing business processes can be achieved through the combination of the capital based approach and the life cycle sustainability assessment. This contribution performs an analysis and selection of assessment tools and indicators regarding the resources used in organisational processes and the life cycle of the products or services to measure the potential impacts on the environment and society. The relevance of intangible capital to improve the organisational sustainability performance as well as the expansion of the traditional dimensions of sustainability with the target of the six safeguard subjects: human health, social justice, ecosystem quality, financial stability, resource availability and man-made environment are integrated into a conceptual framework. This approach allows the development and implementation of strategies towards sustainable corporate development through a recommendation-based framework.

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Publication

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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Publication

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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Publication

A practical approach to process-oriented knowledge management

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

Due to global competition and increasingly dynamic markets, the importance of intangible resources such as 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 ldquoFit fur den Wissenswettbewerbrdquo 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 ldquoProWis - Prozessorientiertes und integriertes Wissensmanagement in KMUrdquo. 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 summarised in the guideline ldquoPraxisleitfaden Wissensmanagementrdquo, 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 processoriented 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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Publication

Intellectual Capital-Driven Technology and Innovation Management

2017 , Galeitzke, M. , Steinhöfel, E. , Orth, R. , Kohl, H.

The significance of intangible resources with regard to business success in general has evidently increased. 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. Measures to improve the enterprises' innovation capability are studied on the basis of 38 intellectual capital statements. Furthermore, the data gained from a large scale survey among more than 1000 enterprises is analyzed with regard to product as well as process innovation. In subsequence, the results of both analyses are matched and compared.

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Publication

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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Publication

Strategic intellectual capital management as a driver of organisational innovation

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

The significance of intangible resources for business success has evidently increased. Analyses have indicated some intellectual capital factors as the most prominent and important, yet the impact on the intra- and inter-organisational innovation ecosystems has not been analysed thoroughly. This contribution seeks to close this gap and draw conclusions with regard to drivers of innovation and related differences between manufacturing and service enterprises. The analysis of the correlation between intellectual capital and innovation capabilities allows statements regarding those intellectual capital factors, onto which enterprises should focus to foster innovation. The qualitative content-related analysis of the 38 intellectual capital statements of German enterprises with regard to new and different types of innovation management methodologies allows the identification of existing gaps in intellectual capital management.

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