EXPLOIT AND EXPLORE: TWO WAYS OF CATEGORIZING INNOVATION PROJECTS

Innovation is vital to companies, but also difficult to perform since there are many ways to approach the subject. Typically, a balance between all issues related to innovation is suggested in literature. The empirical study presented in this paper elaborates on two strategies for innovation projects, namely to exploit existing solutions and to explore a market to develop breakthrough solutions. This is done for the purpose to discuss management implications, and thereby also make those transparent for innovation projects. The result indicates that managerial implications for radical innovation projects are to provide internal legitimacy for the projects intentions, to provide for a clear view of balancing aspects by using concepts that fit into opposite ends on a continuum, and to preserve a rich information base about users.

[1]  J. Dutton,et al.  The Adoption of Radical and Incremental Innovations: An Empirical Analysis , 1986 .

[2]  Ryan Jacoby,et al.  Innovation, Growth, and Getting to Where You Want to Go , 2010 .

[3]  John Cullen,et al.  Democratizing Innovation , 2020, Encyclopedia of Creativity, Invention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

[4]  M. Tushman,et al.  The ambidextrous organization. , 2004, Harvard business review.

[5]  Thomas Kelley,et al.  The ten faces of innovation : IDEO's strategies for beating the devil's advocate & driving creativity throughout your organization , 2005 .

[6]  Michael A Matos.  The Creative Enterprise: Managing Innovative Organizations and People , 2008 .

[7]  Edward Toomer,et al.  Qualitative Methods in Management Research , 1989 .

[8]  G. O'Connor,et al.  Managing radical innovation: an overview of emergent strategy issues , 2002 .

[9]  Karl T. Ulrich,et al.  Product Design and Development , 1995 .

[10]  H. Rittel,et al.  Dilemmas in a general theory of planning , 1973 .

[11]  D. Third.  OECD/Eurostat . Oslo Manual-Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Technological Innovation Paris, France: , 2005 .

[12]  Preston G. Smith,et al.  Developing products in half the time , 1995 .

[13]  H. Chesbrough,et al.  Beyond High Tech: Early Adopters of Open Innovation in Other Industries , 2006 .

[14]  P. Drucker.  The discipline of innovation. , 1998, Harvard business review.

[15]  D. Dougherty,et al.  Sustained product innovation in large, mature organizations: Overcoming innovation-to-organization problems. , 1996 .

[16]  Clayton M. Christensen,et al.  The Great Leap: Driving Innovation From the Base of the Pyramid , 2002 .

[17]  Chun Wei Choo,et al.  Innovation and knowledge creation: How are these concepts related? , 2006, Int. J. Inf. Manag..

[18]  Peter F. Drucker,et al.  The Discipline of Innovation : Harvard Business Review , 1987 .

[19]  Daniel A. Levinthal,et al.  Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning , 2007 .

[20]  A. Mitchell,et al.  Radical Innovation , 2001 .

[21]  Dev Patnaik,et al.  Needfinding: The Why and How of Uncovering People's Needs , 2010 .

[22]  Daniel Roos,et al.  The machine that changed the world : the story of lean production , 1991 .

[23]  Mark Rouncefield,et al.  Fieldwork for Design - Theory and Practice , 2007, Computer Supported Cooperative Work.

[24]  Tony Davila,et al.  The Creative Enterprise : Managing Innovative Organizations and People , 2006 .

[25]  Computer Staff,et al.  The Machine That Changed the World , 1992 .

[26]  P. Checkland,et al.  Action Research: Its Nature and Validity , 1998 .