Innovation Management and the Fuzzy Front End: How to Integrate Sustainable Front End Strategies within the Innovation Process
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower, Steve Jobs once said. And every company which wants to be a leader needs excellent ideas for successful innovations. Hence, the so called early stage or fuzzy front end plays an important role in order to gather innovative and successful ideas: on the one hand to receive as much as possible good suggestions from inside and outside the company, on the other hand to identify the best ideas with the best potential for commercialization. Especially the certain strategies and tools to encourage creativity play a vital role in this context. Examples like Procter and Gamble, Philips, SAP are already showing how such processes can look like successfully. In this paper, an overview of recent front end innovation theories will be given. Within the framework of this paper, the challenges, problems and threats within the front end and creativity activities are considered. In order to get a deeper insight of the front end actions, a case study will be introduced. The selected study focuses on one of Germanys biggest and most successful Software Development and Information Technology Service Provider. Based on documentations and qualitative guided interviews, its sustainable integration of the creative front end elements within the innovation strategy will be introduced.
(Fuzzy) Front End of Innovation Innovation Process Idea- and Innovation Management Creativity
Kai-Ingo VOIGT Alexander BREM
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg Nuremberg, Germany
国际会议
The Fifth InternationalSymposium on Management of Technology(ISMOT07)(第五届技术与创新管理国际研讨会)
杭州
英文
354-358
2007-06-01（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）