International Journal of Software Engineering and Its Applications
Vol. 7, No. 1, January, 2013
A Comprehensive Innovation Management Model for Malaysians
Public Higher Learning Institutions
M Nordin A Rahman, Fauziah A Wahab, Rohana Ismail and Norlina Udin
Faculty of Informatics, Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, Gong Badak Campus
21300 Kuala Terengganu, MALAYSIA
mohdnabd@unisza.edu.my, fauziah@unisza.edu.my, rohana@unisza.edu.my,
norlina@unisza.edu.my
Abstract
The government of Malaysian has declared that in the next couple of the years, the
Malaysian Economy Structure will be based on creativity and innovation. Many of the
innovation products will be “manufactured” by the universities and research agencies.
Innovation production becomes a most important mission in the Public Institution of Higher
Learning in Malaysia (IHLs). The vast volume of innovation products in IHLs requires for a
systematic innovation management model (IMM). The IMM provides a platform for
innovators to manage the development of innovation products effectively. It also helps for
sharing, promoting and re-use of innovations between IHLs-IHLs and IHLs-other
organizations. This paper discusses the preliminary study of framework and strategy for
effective IMM framework that can be implemented in IHLs. Three important elements in IMM
are suggested: innovation management process cycle, the organization of innovation
stakeholders and the functions of innovation management portal. Hopefully with this
proposed IMM could transform the innovation activity environment in IHLs into more
manageable, productively and systematically.
Keywords: innovation-based economy, innovation management, innovation process cycle
1. Introduction
Innovation is the foundation activity in the current era of global competition for economic.
In general, the innovation process is not only focuses for the development of new science and
technology products. It also considers for the process of improvement of the existing products
by applying new technique or technology in order to achieve more benefit for consumer. In
fact, innovation can be just an idea or knowledge from innovators that can be used for people
to improve their quality of life. A new economy model that introduced by Malaysian’s
government is based on the innovations. Many forums have been carried out where the aims
are to deliver the latest efforts and thoughts in order to shape the trend and future innovative
and creative thinking approach. As agreed by many practitioners and scientists, technology
and innovation must be managed in a proper procedure [7].
Some efforts must be executed to ensure that the Malaysians could capitalize on the
innovation-based economy. For instance, the public sectors such as institution of higher
learning (IHLs) as well as research and innovations firms need to assist the government to
achieve the innovation based economy objective. IHLs can promote the innovation activities
and therefore a new innovation environment and paradigm can be created all around the
country. Large volumes of incentives are also been given to the private sectors to realize the
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mission. Besides that, Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation of Malaysia (MOSTI)
have planned specific programs such as the MyIDEAS portal to encourage the public to
generate and contribute their creative and innovative ideas. Furthermore, some various
innovative competitions are executed nationwide to get the nation’s engagement and ideas on
higher ground.
The innovations can be categorized into three; technology, product and services [7].
However, high quality product and services are developed based on new technology. A
successful innovation product is one that can give profit to the innovators, and therefore a
good management of innovation process is highly required [11]. A major concern for many
organizations is the need to prove that innovation management actually adds more value to
development process. The organizations especially corporate sectors expect that with a
proper standard for innovation management can increase the profit gained, market network
and a step a head from their competitors.
Innovation is the most important element in entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs have to do
research in order to get the new resources and then develop a new high quality product
innovation. The agency that highly related to research activity is IHLs. Therefore,
entrepreneurs and industry that involve in innovation activity should collaborate actively with
IHLs. In 2009, Malaysia has more than 60 IHLs that are involved in research and
development activities [8]. There are 20 IHLs are owned by government (public university)
and others are owned by private organizations.
To encourage the successful of innovation activities, five (5) government universities are
chosen as a research university; Universiti Malaya, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Universiti
Putra Malaysia, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. The
characteristics for the research university are: quantity and quality of researchers, quantity
and quality of research project, the number of postgraduate students, the quality of
postgraduate students, the number of innovation activities, professional services,
collaborations/networks and supporting facilities [8]. Normally, IHLs produced two types of
innovations: tangible (e.g. electronic devices, health kits etc.) and intangible (e.g. software,
education modules etc.) products. As recorded at Ministry of Higher Education of Malaysia,
until June 2009, there are 12,523 research projects are implemented in all public universities
[8]. From that number, 4.4% (543 product innovation) have been commercialized and another
313 are highly potential to be commercialized. However, to have a smooth collaboration
process between entrepreneurs, IHLs and industries, a systematic framework of innovation
process management is required.
Innovation based economy is believed to help the Malaysian government to overcome
global economy crisis. The government has to shift the productivity paradigm in order to
ensure that the country economy can be survived and sustained. In the globalization
environment, the previous economy model could not give a momentum to increase the
competitiveness level between Malaysia and other develop countries such as Japan, South
Korea, US and China as well. Obviously, all sectors of economy including government,
industry, academic, NGOs etc have to collaborate and must use the information and
communication technology to facilitate their daily operations.
The paper discusses the fundamental framework for IHLs to develop an effective
innovation management model (IMM) that can be adapted in respectively organizations. The
IMM then should be supported by information technology systems. The rest of the paper is
organized as follows: next section discusses some related works in innovation management.
The detail of the proposed innovation management model is discussed in Section 3.
Conclusions and future works are placed in Section 4.
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2. Related Works
In 21th century, the economy that based on intellectual capital has become very popular in
many developed countries. Many models have been introduced in order to assist the process
of innovation in hope that a high quality innovation product can be produced and
commercialized. The country that hopes to enter the innovation based economy should have
adequate numbers of knowledge discoverers, application designers and innovation drivers [4].
The organization that intends to produce high quality of innovation product should be
composed of employees at many levels such as degree, master, PhD or professional
certificates.
To achieve the successful of collaboration between external bodies such as commercial
sectors, IHLs should have a Center for Innovation and Knowledge Management [6]. The
center also should focus on research and develop of new standard and practice code that could
be used by innovators in IHLs. Furthermore, the center can deploy and promote the experts
from IHL as well as their innovation products to others around the world.
The IHLs need to establish the Chief Information Officer (CIO) [5]. The CIO will organize
all aspects of innovation and knowledge management planning. This includes university
policy about innovation, entire plan of information systems development and strategy to
promote the innovation products for commercialization. Besides that, the universities that
rapidly involve in research and innovation activities should encourage their innovators to
improve their knowledge in information and communication technology [3]. No doubt that,
this technology would help the innovation teams to increase the effectiveness of innovation
process and management.
[1] has developed a tool for innovation management known as Product Service Systems
(PSS). The tool is tested with a case study titled “Simulation Product Service of Material and
Energy Flow in Production Facilities”. PSS is developed with three major characteristics: to
reduct and optimize the use of resources, customers oriented and sustainable, economic and
environmental friendly. Determination innovativeness level is very important for government
to analyze the performance impact of innovation-based economy. Therefore a specific tool is
required to determine this value. [2] has developed a tool that can be used for evaluating the
level of innovativeness in an organization or country. They used fuzzy systems characteristics
that are applied in decision making processes. There are three main inference modules that
are used for evaluating the level of innovativeness: rules database, inference mechanism and
output membership function of the model. The tool has been experimented to the enterprises
of the 16 regions of Poland.
A synthesis model for innovation management (SMIM) has been developed by [12]. The model
is based on the integration of innovation management model of Creative Problem-Solving (CPS)
Model and Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). This model can be used in organizational contexts
but also wider regional innovation and planning process. The model can be applied in individual
and group creativity processes. One important aspects of the model is that almost all creative
solving techniques can be integrated to the use of the model. Another attractive aspect of the
SMIM model is that it includes also the application of foresight methodology. In many design
and planning processes this aspect is missing. The SMIM have seven (7) work phases and can be
categorized as: introduction to design camp workshop and framework, problem analysis and
challenges, assumptions and requirements analysis, foresight and planning phase, choice and
strategy phase, implementation and new SMIM analysis round possible.
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International Journal of Software Engineering and Its Applications
Vol. 7, No. 1, January, 2013
3. The Malaysian IHLs Innovation Management Model
Clearly that all management processes would have their own fundamental elements
framework to be considered. Innovation management is not one single discipline, and it is an
integration of numerous fields of study such as computer science, management, business and
engineering. It is also can be an integrated part of the business framework. Idea management
and technology management are the parts in innovation management and they will generate
the activity of product strategy and planning, technology strategy and planning and
manufacturing strategy and planning. In the business context, innovation management can
also involve the activity of investment, commercialization, marketing, incubation etc. A good
IMM framework should be more focused on a set of main roots such as process model,
organizational structure and information technology based tool in order the innovation
management body in IHLs can manage the related task effectively. Figure 1 exhibits the
interaction between these elements that should be considered in IMM framework for IHLs
environment.
Figure 1. The IMM Framework
Another important aspect to be considered in all critical projects is to embed the concept
of case based reasoning (CBR). This technique combines the knowledge based support
philosophy with a simulation of human reasoning, where past experiences are used [10]. The
simple process of CBR used in this proposed model is depicted in Figure 2. Based on this
process, the innovation cases are designed in structured format and stored in a case database.
The new problem is matched against historical cases in database using heuristically cased
indexed retrieval technique. The similar case(s) of innovation product are retrieved and used
for reference or comparison purposes. In order to achieve the successful innovation in a
university, five steps suggested by [9] can be adopted and implemented:
 Behavior – to achieve the innovative agenda, all parties in the university must transform
their behavior such as reading behavior, thinking behavior, curiosity behavior and
reasoning behavior;
 Excellence – all lecturers and researchers in university should have the culture of
excellence and therefore, the successful of innovation products can be produced;
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 Strategy – the universities should have a great strategy such as collaboration with as many
sectors as possible. These sectors are included government and private agencies;
 Understanding – all the functions of the ideas and innovation products should be clearly
understand and realize to all audiences;
 Translation – all plans and ideas must be translated into actions and products. The people
outside university can make the benefit from all the innovations product produced.
Figure 2. A CBR Cycle Used in the Proposed Model
3.1. Innovation Management Process Cycle
Normally, innovation activities involved the process, documentations, practices and
standard. In IHLs, innovation process can be in a cyclic as depicted in Figure 3. There are
four (4) common activities of innovation process, named as innovation development,
innovation storage, innovation distribution and innovation commercialization. Those
activities/stages must be executed based on the objective and policy of the IHLs innovation
management. Innovation management is started with development process; consists of
creation, construction, design and implementation activities. The researchers/developers in
related interest group in IHLs will execute these sub-activities. Sometimes the innovation
projects are involved with different concern groups. In this stage, brainstorming or detailed
discussion about innovation object is carried out. The development process is the result of
creative process that is very difficult to plan. Therefore, this stage is very critical and
innovator team should give more focus.
Figure 3. Innovation Management Process Cycle
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Innovation artifacts come in two forms tangible and intangible products. The examples of
tangible product are new innovation of medical kit, a mobile phone, documents hardcopy etc.
Meanwhile, the examples of intangible products are documents softcopy, computer program
codes or modules, emails, datasets etc. All of these artifacts must be stored appropriately.
Innovation storage is accomplished when the development activity is finished. The innovation
artifacts are being stored in a proper ‘warehouse’ and therefore they could be accessed,
mining and organized. Furthermore, the information of the innovation products must be
recorded in the information system that can be accessed online. The management of
innovation center needs to provide the special information system for this purpose.
Innovation distribution is the dynamic exchange of innovation product between the
innovators and the consumers/industries. Among of the sub-activities involve in this stage are
share, transfer, apply and disseminate. Nowadays, the innovation market is very broad;
therefore the process of innovation product distribution emerges as one of the most important
task. Innovation distribution can be executed in conventional way or electronically with
collaborative environment that facilitated by ICT technology.
The last stage in the proposed IMM process cycle is commercialization and can be
considered as a benchmark of the successful for innovation process. This stage includes
promotion, selling, evaluation and profit management. Commercialization will successful
when a process of technological entrepreneurship is established. Technological
entrepreneurship involves the activities that create new combination of resources to make
innovation possible, bringing together the technical and commercial worlds in profitable way
[7].
3.2. Innovation Management Stakeholders
Another element that is considered in innovation management process is stakeholders. In
general, the stakeholders provide culture, leaderships and measurement to the management
process. The stakeholders create the environment for team works, sharing characteristic and
paradigm shift in order to gain benefit of all. A clearly defined of stakeholders also could
produce a leadership platform to communicate efficiently with the top management level in
IHLs. To evaluate or audit the process of innovation management effectively, the organized
stakeholders must be established. The proposed innovation management stakeholders in IHLs
can be categorized as (Figure 4):
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
Innovators – innovators can be lecturers, research officers and postgraduate students
that are attached under faculties, institutes or centers in the university. Innovators are
formed under a group with a specialize research interest;

Faculties/Centers/Institutes – these entities are cost center that are establish in the
university. Normally, the cost center have its own budget to manage their day-to-day
operations;

Research Management Center – all operations that relate to research and innovation
in university are managed by this center.
International Journal of Software Engineering and Its Applications
Vol. 7, No. 1, January, 2013

University Management – University Management is an executive body that manages
all aspects in operation and development of university. The members of University
Management are including Vice Chancellor, all Deputy Vice Chancellor, Registrar
and Bursary;

Commercialization Center – liaison with industry and performing for collaboration
with other external agencies.
Figure 4. Innovation Stakeholders in IHLs
Figure 5 illustrates that there are two objects of classes Research Item and Product Criteria
involved in interaction activities among stakeholders. Therefore when the innovator submits
an innovation product, the operation is enacted on Research Item. The Faculty will review the
application based on Product Criteria. If it is fulfill the criteria of the product that to be
introduced into the market, then the faculty will make a decision and give a recommendation
(feedback) to the innovator. For successful applicant, Faculty will forward innovator
application to Research Management Center. By using the commercialization guidelines,
Research Management Center will review the product in order to make a decision for
commercialization purpose. If the product is appropriate for commercializing, Research
Management Center will suggest to Commercialization Center to take further action.
Generally, Commercialization Center will carry out for official market survey, marketing
engagement, memorandum of understanding signing and make suggestion to the innovator to
apply for intellectual property protection or copyright. For each potential innovation product,
Commercialization Center will propose a suitable business plan. Finally, the University
Management will endorse the business plan suggested by Commercialization Center.
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Figure 5. Sequence Diagram for Innovation Management Process between
Stakeholders
3.3. Innovation Systems Functions
A good framework of any information management process is to have a systematic
communication infrastructure and info-structure between stakeholders. In the proposed IMM
framework, an innovation management portal should be developed, and could be used by the
stakeholders in order to share or disseminate the information regarding to innovation
developed. Furthermore, the portal can be operated as the information management system
for innovation product process.
This portal should have the database system and also could be used (log-in) by other users
from industry or agencies that collaborate with internal stakeholders. The main objects that
can be considered in the implementation of innovation management systems are: stakeholders,
innovation products, development process, storage process, distribution process,
commercialization process and partners. These objects are the real entity with crisply defined
boundaries that merged and construct the problem domain. They are also encapsulated along
with their attributes and behavior that make the understanding of the problem functions.
Figure 6 shows the context of innovation information management systems.
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Figure 6. The Context of Innovation Information Management Systems
The modules or functions of innovation management portal/systems should facilitate all
the operations involve in the innovation management process cycle. Therefore, for each stage
in the cycle, the general functions that could be included are as follows:

Development stage – the module for updating the information related to innovation
product process development;

Storage stage – the module that comprise all tasks related to procedure of innovation
product storing and the algorithms for mining and organizing of product information;

Distribution stage – all related functions that could facilitate the operations of product
information sharing, transferring or disseminating to other parties in stakeholders. The
module also could be used by other parties such as industrial people or experts from
other institutions;

Commercial stage – the module in this stage should assist the stakeholders for enforcing
the process of commercialization. The module will provide all aspect operations
regarding to commercialization such as promoting process, before and after sales services
and financial management systems.
4. Conclusions
The people in an organization need to transform their mindset and ways of doing things
before that organization can attain the status of Innovation Organization. Innovation
management in IHLs is emergent persistently in the right direction, although more actions
and needs to be done. The standard framework for innovation management process advocates
that developing innovation product will be better informed and thus bring about more
effective and sustainable development. Furthermore, the developed of innovation
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management framework would help the government to enhance the innovation and creativity
based economy. Since innovation activity will become the key driver of the new economic
model, the university should play a vital role in promoting creativity and innovation among
the Malaysians including civil servants, scientist, corporate leaders, entrepreneurs and
industry.
This paper proposed a new practical model for innovation management model that can be
used in Malaysian IHLs. We have defined a comprehensive cyclic innovation management
process model that consists of four (4) main activities; innovation development, innovation
storage, innovation distribution and innovation commercialization. The stakeholders in
innovation management are also identified and therefore it could help the management
process can be executed in more properly. The study shows that the innovation management
should be fully facilitated by the information technology systems. Currently, we are designing
a web based application tools to support all activities involved in the proposed IMM.
Innovation involves not only the innovative organization, but also a system of interactions
between one organization and others. Therefore, the study of innovation management in
public university sector is not the end of this research, but the works must be included to all
parties that involve actively in research and development activity.
References
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[4] E. L. Babco, “Skills for the Innovation Economy: What the 21st Century Workforce Needs and How to
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[9] Minister of Science, Technology & Innovation of Malaysia (Special Address), 1Malaysia Inovatif 2010:
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Authors
Mohd Nordin Abdul Rahman
M Nordin A Rahman received Bachelor of Computer Science in 1995
and Master of Computer Science in 2000 from Universiti Kebangsaan
Malaysia. He finished PhD degree in Computer Science in 2008 at
Universiti Malaysia Terengganu. Currently he is an Associate Professor
in Faculty of Informatics, Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin. His research
interests include software engineering, computational biology,
parallel computing, distributed computing, collaborative works and
temporal database.
Fauziah A Wahab
Fauziah A Wahab received her BS degree in Information Technology
in 1998 from Universiti Utara Malaysia and Master in Computer Science
in 2004 from Universiti Putra Malaysia. Currently she is an IT lecturer in
Faculty of Informatiss, Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin. Her research
interests include computer networks and security.
Rohana Ismail
Rohana Ismail graduated in Bachelor Computer Science in 1998 and
Master Computer Science in 2003, both from Universiti Putra Malaysia.
Currently she is an IT lecturer in Faculty of Informatics, Universiti
Sultan Zainal Abidin. Her research interests include database,
programming and distributed computing.
Norlina Udin
Norlina Udin graduated in Bachelor Information Technology in 1997
and Master Information Technology in 2004 from Universiti Kebangsaan
Malaysia. Currently she is an IT lecturer in Faculty of Informatics,
Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin. Her research interests include software
project management and software process.
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