Harry Boer

Innovation, what innovation? : a comparison between product, process and organisational innovation

This article compares and contrasts three types of innovations, namely, product innovation, process innovation and organisational innovation. From similarities and differences between these three types, implications for the theory and practice of innovation management are inferred. Most of these implications seem to be generic, i.e. generally applicable whatever the type of innovation and organisation involved. Surprisingly few implications are contingent in that they are linked to the characteristics of the innovation involved.

Best manufacturing practices: What do the best‐performing companies do?

Purpose – Research on best practices suffers from some fundamental problems. The problem addressed in the article is that authors tend to postulate, rather than show, the practices they address to be best – whether these practices do indeed produce best performance is often not investigated.Design/methodology/approach – This article assumes that the best performing companies must be the ones deploying the best practices. In order to find out what are those practices, the highest performing companies in the 2002 International Manufacturing Strategy Survey database were identified, and the role 14 practices play in these companies was investigated.Findings – Process focus, pull production, equipment productivity and environmental compatibility appear to qualify as best practices. Quality management and ICT may have been best practice previously, but lost that status. E‐business, new product development (NPD), supplier strategy and outsourcing are relatively new, cannot yet be qualified as, but may develop i...

On the Way towards New Public Management? The Governance of University Systems in England, the Netherlands, Austria, and Germany

I. On the Way towards New Public Management? The Governance of University Systems in England, the Netherlands, Austria, and Germany 137 1. The governance equalizer 137 2. Governance changes in the four countries 140 2.1 England 141 2.2 The Netherlands 142 2.3 Austria 144 2.4 Germany 146 3. Comparative conclusions 148 References 151

From continuous improvement to continuous innovation: a (retro)(per)spective

The new name of the industrial game is continuous innovation. But what is continuous innovation? And how can we manage and organise for it? This article addresses these questions by, first of all, defining continuous innovation as the ability to combine operational effectiveness and strategic flexibility - exploitation and exploration - capabilities that have traditionally been regarded as antithetical. Next, an old debate between organisation theorists on the question of whether it is at all possible to combine the two capabilities in one system is summarised to conclude that the majority of scholars argue that it is difficult, perhaps even impossible, to achieve continuous innovation. However, some authors have challenged this stance and have provided some useful thoughts, though little empirical evidence, as to how operational effectiveness and strategic flexibility can be combined to produce continuous innovation. The question of how empirically supported knowledge could be developed is approached firstly by briefly discussing the bodies of theory underlying the current thinking about continuous innovation, namely organisational theories of innovation, learning, and continuous improvement. Then, the papers presented at the 1995, 1998 and 2000 (Euro)CINet conferences will be analysed to show how these fields are gradually converging into what would more appropriately be labelled continuous innovation (instead of improvement). The analysis also shows that the field has a couple of serious weaknesses that need to be addressed if the research community involved really wants to contribute to the art and science of continuous innovation. The paper concludes with a summary of this analysis, presented as an agenda for further research.

ERP implementation: an integrated process of radical change and continuous learning

This paper seeks to develop management theory that can be used to increase the likelihood of ERP implementation success. The paper argues and demonstrates that an ERP implementation can be understood as an intended radical change that can be managed to some extent. But during the use of the system, incremental changes are bound to take place, which are unintended and difficult to manage. Using, therefore, and combining positivist and constructivist viewpoints, six different propositions on ERP implementation are developed. The paper reasons that organizations that understand these propositions are more likely to implement and use ERP successfully. The findings of a longitudinal case study of the implementation and use of BaaN in a Danish company support the propositions put forward in the paper.

Jump‐starting continuous improvement through self‐assessment

The innumerable accounts of successful implementation of kaizen in Japan during more than 40 years has led to the expectation that continuous improvement (CI) might offer companies a means to gain and maintain a competitive advantage in the turbulent 1980s and 1990s. However, the majority of CI initiatives within the US and Europe died within a few years. While explanations as to why these efforts have not been successful can be found in the literature, methods for rejuvenating stagnant CI programs are still lacking. In this paper, experiences from a longitudinal action research project with a middle management group are presented to illustrate how a process of facilitated self‐assessment was used to identify and address barriers to CI implementation. Through this process, a better understanding of CI implementation issues was gained and CI implementation within the company revitalized.

Patterns of change in manufacturing strategy configurations

Purpose – The paper aims to address the question of how and how often companies change their manufacturing strategy in the medium and long run, thus addressing a lack of evidence in the literature.Design/methodology/approach – This paper explores the movements made by companies among four manufacturing strategy configurations drawn from the literature (market‐based, product‐based, capability‐based and price‐based configuration). Analyses are based on three longitudinal samples from the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS) database.Findings – Results show that while strategic configurations are rather stable, many companies do indeed change strategy and identifies which patterns of change prevail. Product‐based strategy is the most‐widely spread and most stable strategy. Capability‐based competition is the rising star. The market‐based strategy is struggling and price‐based competition is on its way out.Research limitations/implications – The main limitation is the small size of longitudinal ...

Knowledge and continuous innovation: The CIMA methodology

Competition today is forcing companies to increase their effectiveness through exploiting synergy and learning in product innovation. Literature, however, is still mainly focused on how product development projects, seen largely as isolated efforts, should be organised and managed. This article proposes a model to describe and explain how companies can gain a substantive competitive advantage by extending their innovation efforts to other phases of the product life cycle and by facilitating knowledge transfer and learning both within the company and with other partner organisations. The model is based on collaborative research by the authors, based on their involvement in the Euro-Australian co-operation project CIMA (Euro-Australian co-operation centre for Continuous Improvement and innovation MAnagement).

FMS Implementation Management: Promise and Performance

Although the demand for Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS) is still growing, only a few companies are reported to have operational experience with these systems over a long period. Consequently, the supposed benefits of this new technology have yet to be widely proved in practice. The research reported was carried out to evaluate the experiences of a sample of early adopters of FMS in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Belgium, by means of longitudinal case studies. The extent to which the companies managed to achieve their FMS implementation goals is described, and the influence of technical problems, market changes and organisational pressures on goal achievement is demonstrated. It is concluded that in order to introduce and operate FMS successfully, adopters should approach FMS implementation management in a more integrated manner.

Strategically flexible production: the multi‐focused manufacturing paradigm

Defines a new manufacturing paradigm and investigates its adoption and performances, within the assembly industry on a global basis. The definition of the paradigm is based on a set of basic principles to design and manage production systems which discard the traditional way of organizing manufacturing activities, and pool companies which pursue different manufacturing strategies and implement different innovative techniques. The paradigm is characterized by the simultaneous implementation of three principles: strategic multi‐focusedness, integration of business processes across functions, and process ownership. Starting from an operationalization based on fuzzy logic, explores the hypotheses about the adoption and the performance improvements of the multi‐focused manufacturing paradigm using a sample from the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS) database. The paradigm has been adopted widely across countries and industries involved in the IMSS survey. Shows that process ownership is poorly implemented by most of the companies at the moment, while multi‐focusedness and integration are more on hand. Companies which have adopted the paradigm are improving their performance significantly better and quicker than partial or non‐adopters. Highlights different possible patterns that the companies can follow to reach core adoption of the multi‐focused manufacturing paradigm.