Key factors of successful innovation management

Today, hardly anyone still denies the enormous importance of technological innovations for both national economics and business administration. Their influence on the development of the general economic objectives of economic growth, employment, productivity, and international competitiveness has been thoroughly analyzed and confirmed empirically. Likewise, it is crucial for a firm to protect and consolidate its competitiveness for the long term by improving its production technologies as well as opening up new markets and producing new products and processes. Certainly, nobody disputes the paradigm according to which innovations take place within a contextual frame. Innovation management can adapt to contextual influences reactively, or try to shape them actively according to its own objectives. Therefore, it is imperative for innovation management to know the context-related key factors, because only if they are known the management activities can be oriented appropriately. The aim of this paper is to systematically work out key factors of innovation management from empirical studies. Expanding from this basis, an empirical analysis will show whether the large number of key factors, which are certainly not free from overlap, can be condensed to a small number of independent main influencing factors. Finally, the relevance of the extracted key factors of innovation management to success will be examined. The aim is to find out in which key spheres, above all, successful innovation management must be active. For this purpose, we refer to an empirical study in which we examined 88 firms whose innovation projects were subsidized by the Federal Ministry of Economics within the frame of its "First Innovations Program". The sample of firms interviewed is dominated by medium-sized mechanical and electrical engineering firms

Erfolgreiches Innovationsmanagement

Daß sich auch die Betriebswirtschaft mit dem Management von technologischen Neuerungen im Bereich von Forschung und Entwicklung beschäftigt, erscheint aus zwei Gründen sinnvoll: zum einen berichten eine Vielzahl von empirischen Studien, daß sich nur zwischen 3 % und 25 % der innovativen Ideen auch später in ein marktfähiges Produkt transformieren lassen und zu anderen geben deutsche Unternehmen für Forschung und Entwicklung eine ähnlich hohe Summe aus wie für Werbung. Man wird sich damit auch im Bereich von F&E fragen dürfen, wie knappe Ressourcen möglichst effizient verwendet werden. Vor diesem Hintergrund ergibt sich auch für einen Betriebswirt ein reichhaltiges Aufgabenfeld im Bereich des Managements von Forschung und Entwicklung. Im wesentlichen sind hier 3 Bereiche zu beachten, deren ganzheitliches Management erst den Innovationserfolg garantiert..

How to be successful in imitation management?

There is often a clash between the necessity to innovate and the high economic risks involved in the introduction of novelties. The technology-strategies developed in reaction to this situation aim at profiting from the technological leader's or the innovator's experience: the technological follower or imitator enters a market in which the main features have already been developed. An empirical investigation of 66 firms shows that imitation projects are only successful if one succeeds in realizing a high imitation degree and in impeding the market entry of further imitators. Further development or an improvement of the innovation (a low imitation degree) does not affect the imitation success in a positive way. Furthermore, an imitator should be anxious to deteriorate the conditions of market entry for strong late-comers and prevent further imitators from market entry. Further more the results show that successful imitation management has at its disposal technology, intelligence, marketing and production potentials for overcoming existing imitation barriers in which a differential control and coordination of the individual potentials is strictly necessary

Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers! Learning orientation as the decisive factor for translating social capital into organisational innovativeness and performance in Turkey

The Turkish economy has been growing fast and Turkish organisations increasingly rival their Western competitors in terms of innovativeness. While strategy scholars primarily focus on internal capabilities such as learning orientation, network scholars typically consider external network ties as determinants of organisational success. Building on both research streams, our study develops and empirically tests an integrative framework that incorporates the specific cultural context of Turkey. Based on empirical data from 178 organisations, we demonstrate that in Turkey organisational innovativeness results from learning orientation mediating the effect of network ties on innovativeness. Thus, our study links external and internal explanations of what drives innovativeness and suggests that organisations in Turkey need to develop a network-enabled orientation towards learning. We make important recommendations for managers of Turkish organisations and those wishing to enter the Turkish market

Imitation, Ausweg aus der technologischen Krise?

Ohne Zweifel hat das Experiment der quasi stichtagsbezogenen Umstellung einer gesamten Volkswirtschaft von planwirtschaftliche auf marktwirtschaftliche Regelmechanismen zu Krisenerscheinungen mit gigantischem Ausmaß geführt. Die industrielle Produktion in den neuen Bundesländern war 1990 um fast 30 % niedriger als ein Jahr zuvor. Für 1991 wird ein weiterer Rückgang bis zum Jahresende prognostiziert. Über Jahre zurückgestaute Probleme äußern sich für viele Unternehmen in einer Krisensituation. Die endogenen Krisenursachen sind vielfältig, doch spielt der technologische Rückstand in vielen Bereichen ganz offensichtlich eine große Rolle. Ein Ausweg aus der Krise erfordert insbesondere bei technologieorientierten Unternehmen eine intensive Ausrichtung der verfolgten Technologiestrategie an den wettbewerblichen Gegebenheiten

An agent-based concept to analyze elite-athletes' doping behavior

A seemingly endless series of scandals has focused increasing public attention on the issue of doping among elite athletes. But we still do not know how many elite athletes really make use of banned drugs. In addition, we recognize the literature suffers a lack of appropriate game theory models for complex social interactions related to doping. Therefore, we think that an agent-based approach may allow doping behavior patterns in professional sports to be explored and elucidated. We conceptualize an agent-based model on three interacting objectives, namely (i) elite athletes, (ii) anti-doping laboratory and (iii) anti-doping agency. The latter agency announces antidoping rules and imposes penalties; the anti-doping laboratory executes doping controls and elite athletes compete for income. In particular, we focus on presenting an agent-based concept to analyze elite athletes' doping behavior. Using such an agentbased framework and computational simulations may lead in the future to policy recommendations for the fight against doping