Does My Organization Need an Innovation Management Function?: Towards a Model for Evaluation

摘要

Many innovation management experts, especially those from academic institutions and management consulting firms, believe that innovation is a discipline in its own right (or developing towards one). From this point of view, it can be concluded that the management of innovation activities in organizations will be performed by a separate function within the structure of the organization. There are many examples of companies that manage innovation as a corporate function, headed by a VP Innovation, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer or the like. To the contrary, other companies that also underpin the key role of innovation, do not believe in functional structuring of the management of innovation. Their approach relies heavily on the innovative culture and open, unstructured interaction and idea sharing through all levels of the organization. Google is a good example that supports this approach. This paper aims to share insight into this contradictory issue. A literature based research approach is followed to identify possible factors that can help firms to characterize themselves. The common view is that innovation management consist out of dimensions like innovative leadership, innovation culture, the innovation process, knowledge management and others. This point of view supports the need to drive innovation with an integrative approach mainly by active management of innovation through a formal structure within the organization. Nevertheless, various points of view for, or against a formal structure are argued in terms of the contexts related to these dimensions. Conclusions are drawn, and a taxonomy suggested for the development of a model for firms to guide themselves when determining their need for an innovation management function and what the management priorities should be.