Kathryn Cormican

Auditing best practice for effective product innovation management

Abstract Over the past number of years, researchers and industrialists have recognised the need for and the importance of developing approaches to enhance competitive advantage in new product development. However, the product innovation process is extremely complex and involves the effective management of many different activities. Despite the fact that many tools and techniques have been developed in an attempt to make this process more effective, product development projects are still prone to failure. The authors surveyed senior research and development managers in an attempt to identify the critical success factors for effective product innovation management (PIM). From this, a best practice model and scorecard were developed. The scorecard enables managers to measure their performance in terms of product innovation management against best practice. It provides an overview of a company’s strengths and areas for improvement with regard to product innovation management, highlighting those areas that require attention. The product innovation model and scorecard are presented, discussed and validated using case study analysis.

A collaborative knowledge management tool for product innovation management

Contemporary business systems are becoming increasingly competitive. Faster and smarter technology, although imperative, is not enough to survive in dynamic environments. Modern enterprises must adopt a deliberate and systematic approach to managing the drivers of innovation in order to create and deliver innovative new products and services and thus maintain competitive advantage. Managing the enterprises knowledge base and converting intellectual capital into useful products and services is fast becoming the critical executive skill of the age. With this in mind, our research focuses on adopting a knowledge management approach to product innovation management. This paper reports on the findings of a case based research investigation. It introduces the concept of knowledge management for product innovation and presents a collaborative knowledge management tool specifically designed to help manage a portfolio of product innovation projects in a distributed environment.

Virtual team environment for collaborative research projects

Large amounts of money are spent all over the world on R&D, in order to ensure future sustainability. However, much of this research fails to meet its full potential. These R&D projects are often costly and inefficient due to problems associated with working in a team environment, involving members from different geographical regions. One of the main limiting factors that reduce the potential output of this type of project is the poor communication, knowledge sharing and learning between members of the virtual team. In this context, collaboration and virtual team management are key issues that need to be addressed by todays innovation projects. This paper presents a literature review developed on the concept of collaboration between individuals working in a team and the advantages and requirements of virtual teams. It also presents a possible solution for the development of a virtual team environment that fosters better learning and innovation and ensures a good collaboration between individuals working in an innovation project.

Supplier performance evaluation: lessons from a large multinational organisation

Purpose – Progressive organisations are developing proactive supplier‐based strategies in order to integrate key suppliers into their processes and systems. The purpose of this paper is to present an approach that helps to identify best performing suppliers and eliminate those that do not add value in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the materials supply chain.Design/methodology/approach – This case study focuses on the development of a supplier performance rating tool for a large multinational organisation. The paper presents a profile of the organisation, the problems encountered, the development and implementation of the supplier rating tool and the lessons learned.Findings – The implementation of the tool resulted in a 2.9 fold reduction in the number of suppliers from 23,225 to 8,024 and a 2.6 fold reduction in the value of inventory held from

A Scorecard for Supporting Enterprise Knowledge Management

15.24 million to just over

Knowledge Sharing in a Collaborative Networked Environment

5.86 million.Practical implications – Reducing the number and improving the quality of suppliers resulted in i...

Groupware architecture for R&D managers

Enterprise knowledge management is becoming a critical component of competitive success. Managers must ensure that they can successfully generate, leverage and reuse knowledge assets in their organisations. In this view, they must seek to develop an environment that promotes effective knowledge management initiatives. Self-assessment scorecards can help managers and decision-makers ascertain whether they are incorporating best practices in terms of knowledge management initiatives. This paper presents findings from an exploratory case study analysis. Specifically, it presents a knowledge management scorecard expressly designed to help managers measure their performance in terms of knowledge management against best practice. It helps to provide an overview of a companys strengths and areas for improvement with regard to knowledge management, highlighting those areas that require attention. In this view, it serves as a checklist for effective knowledge management.

Shared Leadership and Team Creativity: A Social Network Analysis in Engineering Design Teams

Knowledge is a key resource that must be managed within organisations and across collaborative enterprise networks. In particular, the two major challenges that such organisations face are ensuring that they have the appropriate knowledge to support their operations and ensuring that they optimise these knowledge resources available to them. In recent years, researchers, consultants and industrialists have developed approaches in an attempt to address these requirements. Most of these approaches have been technology oriented. In other words, the implementation of information technology systems is seen as the solution to enterprise knowledge management problems. However, research indicates that organisations are still failing to convert individual skills and competencies into tangible products and services. Knowledge management is an emerging discipline and it is still not very well understood or managed in industry. Consequently, new knowledge initiatives are not exploited to their full potential. In other words, companies are not reaping the full benefits of knowledge management projects. This paper explores the key constituents to managing knowledge and examines the main problems with sharing knowledge across teams and organisational boundaries. Findings from a qualitative study suggest that the key problems to managing knowledge across a collaborative network are person centric and consequently managers should focus their efforts on improving critical areas such as motivation and trust as well as people oriented methods and tools.

Support ambient intelligence solutions for small to medium size enterprises: Typologies and taxonomies for developers

The business environment is changing at an accelerated pace. Contemporary business systems are becoming more knowledge intensive. Consequently, progressive organisations are collaborating with others in order to develop the linkages they require to access and leverage new knowledge and skills for successful product innovation. In this paper, the authors surveyed senior R&D managers from Irish organisations in an attempt to ascertain what the key implications of this new knowledge focused networked environment are for their organisations. The findings revealed that effective communication, collaboration and coordination structures are imperative for success. A groupware architecture was then developed to support the coordination of members in a networked R&D environment. Critical elements of the architecture were identified and codified into a web enabled prototype. This was implemented in a number of industrial sites to help validate the architecture in terms of its functionality and effectiveness. Findings from this investigation are presented.

An Analysis of Virtual Team Characteristics: A Model for Virtual Project Managers

This research explores the relationship between shared leadership and creativity in engineering design teams. To do this, a social network perspective was adopted using four measures to assess key elements of shared leadership networks. These are (a) network density, (b) centralization, (c) efficiency and (d) strength. Data was collected from a sample of 22 engineering design teams who adopt a shared leadership approach. Our results support previous findings that the density of a shared leadership network is positively related to team creativity. In contrast, we learned that centralization exerts a negative influence on it. Moreover, while we found that there is no evidence to support a positive correlation between efficiency and team creativity, we demonstrate an inverted U-shaped relationship between strength and team creativity in a shared leadership network. These findings are important because they add to the academic debate in the shared leadership area and provide valuable insights for managers.