Modeling the Innovation-Pipeline

摘要

To generate innovative products regularely is a key success factor in established industries.Major companies frequently outpace each other with innovations and productoffensives. But what are the effects of such initiatives? And how can companiesorganize their innovation pipelines in order to successfully manage such ventures?The process in which innovations are developed and integrated into marketable products ishighly complex and can be organized in various ways. An important distinction introducedby this paper is to separate between product development processes and processes forinnovation generation. In established industries the first ones regularly initiate productdevelopment projects and strive to meet certain launch periods. The latter are problemsolutionoriented and driven by the search for new, innovative concepts. They arecharacterized by risk and a high degree of uncertainty regarding success und completiontime.Both processes connect and interact in various ways. Nevertheless there are two generaland contrasting alternatives. They can either be organized as processes which are tightlycoupled and integrated by associating innovative ideas early with new product projects, orrather independently, integrating innovative components into product concepts in laterphases of the product development process. In this paper we refer to these alternatives asIntegrated Innovation Pipeline1 and Shelf-System Innovation Pipeline. Both show distinctcharacteristics and requirements.