Innovation Management generally combines high costs with a high rate of failure. The resulting risk can be approached with an assessment of the organizational innovation capability. For this purpose, Innovation Capability Maturity Models (ICMMs) have been developed by recent research. This paper strives to make these models applicable for networks, by considering the differing requirements of a collaborative environment. The resulting level of network conformity adds another dimension to the assessment of maturity in innovation management and NPD processes.
The importance to do important things well can be considered a general principle that
hides behind many management tools, such as the Eisenhower Method, or the Pareto
principle. This approach however necessitates the recognition and differentiation of
important things from those that are less important. A typical domain to apply these
principles is research and development. According to R.G. Cooper, only one out of
seven new-products becomes a successful product [
One approach to rate and improve the organizational capability to innovate is the application of Innovation Capability Maturity Models (ICMM). The idea behind an ICMM is to check how well an organization develops new ideas. The achieved level of maturity determines this organization’s ability to achieve impact with its ideas, and thus creating innovations. While ICMMs have already been the subject of previous research, none of them considers the differing requirements of a collaborative environment.
With previous research in mind, this paper is not aiming to create yet another ICMM, but instead strives to refine existing models towards an application in enterprise collaborations. To achieve this task, the following section examines related work. 2
The idea of rating the maturity of ideas is inspired by research around the Capability Maturity Model (CMM), which is described in the following sub-section. 2.1
The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is a development model to support the
software-development processes. The CMM is the outcome of research that has been
conducted by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and funded by the U.S.
Department of Defense (DoD). The first version was published in 1991. To broaden the
field of application and to improve the integration of the model, it has been advanced
to the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) that has been released in 2002
[
The ICMM v2 of Essmann is the most cited transfer of the capability maturity
approach to innovation management [
Apart from the previously described ICMM v2, the attempt to rate the innovation
capability maturity has been made by other authors:
The model of Darell Mann differentiates between the five levels of: seeding,
championing, managing, strategizing, and venturing [
These models however share a similar structure and are explained in a comprehensive manner, but show less scientific elaboration. The structure of the CMM and the ICMM v2 is therefore the key input for the approach towards the collaborative ICMM, as described in the following section. 3
The maturity of a network’s innovation management can be rated in similar
dimensions to those of a single organization. The shared dimensions are (i) Change
Management, (ii) Communication, (iii) Human Resources, and (iv) Technology. An
additional dimension of (v) Cooperation has to be added in order to reflect the
requirements towards successful cooperation management to develop ideas by
collaboration. Currently, these dimensions represent a first approach towards a structured
model and may be altered during progress of the model’s development. They have
been selected due to their proven relevance to innovation management [
The first version of the collaborative ICMM has been constructed by extension of the CMM’s five level structure with an additional dimension to determine the degree to which the network acts as a homogenous organization. These four levels of network conformity are defined as: Single organization: The highest level of innovation capability maturity that has been gained by the best performing single organization within the network Network awareness: The highest level of innovation capability maturity within the network that all its relevant innovators are aware of Network consent: The level of innovation capability maturity within the network that all its relevant innovators have agreed to operate on Network dedication: The lowest level of innovation capability maturity that has been gained by all relevant innovators within the network
In combination with the five levels of the CMM, a graph can be created, as shown in Fig. 1. A maximal degree of network conformity will result in a horizontal line; a low degree will result in a step chart. 4
The level of network conformity resembles a simple, but effective extension to assess the maturity of a network’s capabilities in collaborative innovation management. Though, this short paper only resembles an initial approach to the topic. Further research will be based on a case study and elaborate on the two-dimensional model. The future aim is to refine a questionnaire to assess a networks current state and to provide guiding instructions for improvement, which are based on this state.
The challenges of collaborative innovation management stem from the diversities
in business objectives and policies within the network. Also inter-organizational
barriers that hinder communication between organizations and the options to cross these,
require additional research. A similar problem has been examined by the author
concerning the improvement of collaborative manufacturing process chains [
This work has been funded by the European Commission through ICT Project BIVEE: Business Innovation and Virtual Enterprise Environment (grant agreement: 285746). The author wishes to acknowledge the Commission for their support. He also wishes to acknowledge our gratitude and appreciation to all the contributors to the BIVEE Linked-In page and the BIVEE project partners for their contribution during the development of various ideas and concepts presented in this paper.