WHITE PAPER
Innovation
Management
Turning good ideas into successful products
Dr. Roland Drewinski, Michael Wendenburg
energizing great minds
2
All brand names, trademarks, product names, abbreviations thereof and logos are the property of their respective companies and
are protected as such. All third-party protected brand names and trademarks are subject in all respects to the regulations of the
relevant registration law and the rights of possession of the respective registered owner. The mere appearance of names without
designation as proprietary shall not be construed as meaning that trademarks are not protected by the rights of third parties.
© CONTACT Software GmbH. All rights reserved. Changes may have come into effect after copy deadline for this document. All
information supplied without guarantee.
Document ID D059473
3
Contents
1
Introduction 4
2
Innovation as a factor in competition
6
3
Innovation typology
8
4
What does innovation management mean?
10
5
The challenges facing companies
13
6
Innovation strategies
15
7
Establishing a culture of innovation
17
8
Knowledge management is a source of innovation
19
9
Systematic ideas management
21
10 End-to-End innovation process
24
11 Conclusion
27
12 References
29
4
Introduction
1
Introduction
An innovation is more than just an invention, which is
often the result of a single person‘s inspiration.
Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter described it
as the implementation of a new technical or organizational idea, which means that innovativeness is
more than just the creative ideas themselves. It is
equally important to realize these ideas in the form of
successful products. Creativity and a systematic
approach are the two sides of the coin that is innovation. Innovation is a team sport involving many
disciplines. Any outstanding idea is doomed to failure
if, at the end of the process, the price is wrong or the
wrong sales channels are chosen.
In the global marketplace, the time available for a
company to gain an edge with an innovation is
becoming ever shorter. To achieve sustained success,
the development of innovations must become an
ongoing process. This demands long-term planning,
because, unlike inventions, innovations can actually
be planned, provided that the right tools and methods are used. This white paper explains the significance of innovation management and describes the
contribution that PLM solutions can make to providing optimum support for the innovation process from
recording and assessing the ideas right through to
successful implementation.
„
Innovation happens when a new idea is
realized as a marketable product.”
Professor Hans-Jörg Bullinger, former President of the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Munich
5
6
Innovation as a factor in
competition
2
Innovation as a factor in competition
In high-wage countries, where wealth is based on
services rather than raw materials, it is innovation
that drives national economies. It is the crucial
element that allows companies to compete in global
markets. The OECD evaluates a wide range of statistical indicators in order to compare the innovative
capacity of different industrial nations. Important
indicators include expenditure for research and
development as a percentage of GDP and the number of researchers per thousand population[1].
The United States may lead the world in terms of
innovation, but a study from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) reveals significant
weaknesses[2]. Thus, many innovative ideas from
American startup companies never make it to series
production, because young companies are not
supported in the transition to mass production.
Another problem is that medium-sized US companies are unable to access external resources when
developing new products and opening up new
markets. But, as Elisabeth Reynolds, Executive
Director at MIT stresses in an interview with the
German trade magazine Produktion, high-performance, highly integrated supplier networks are
crucial for productivity, and the United States could
7
learn a lot from Germany, including how to support
and promote medium-sized companies.
Expenditure on innovation has recovered well in the
wake of the years of crisis. Companies in key sectors
such as the automotive industry, electrical and
mechanical engineering or the power supply industry
are again significantly boosting investment in product and process innovations. The reason is obvious.
They want to and have to improve their competitiveness in the global markets. Globalization has triggered what amounts to an innovation race. Innovation cycles are getting shorter and the pressure for
companies to innovate is increasing. Sectors such as
the electronics and computer industries in particular
are seeing the time between new products coming to
market dropping to as little as a few months. At the
same time, the risk of failure is high. Experts reckon
that despite extensive market research, 60 to 80
percent of all products launched on the market fail,
with most mistakes being made as early as the
concept phase. This means that, in order to minimize
risk, companies cannot rely on a single innovation;
rather, they need a complete portfolio of them, and
this requires systematic management.
Illustration 1
OECD member states:
Gross domestic
expenditure and employee
numbers in the field of
R&D (chart: German
federal report on research
and innovation 2014)
8
Innovation typologie
3
Let’s get digital
Innovation typology
Not all innovations are the same. Generally, a distinction is made between
product or service innovations and
process innovations, in other words
innovations that, for instance, allow the
products to be manufactured more cost
efficiently. Product innovations can apply
to any of the attributes of a product that
can be marketed successfully, from new
functions or the design of the product
right up to ergonomic or environmental
improvements. Process innovations
frequently accompany organizational
innovations within the company, for
instance a change to the way in which
work is organized. A fourth type of innovation relates to business models. Examples
of these include the IKEA sales model or
Apple‘s introduction of the iPod in conjunction with the Internet shop iTunes.
In many sectors, the potential for innovation is increasingly shifting away from the
product and towards services or a combination of both, a trend which is often
associated with new business models.
Companies are no longer selling products. Instead, they are selling services that
are supported by products. Unlike the
evolutionary development of products,
innovations triggered by technology are
often disruptive. They question established technologies and can lead to major
shakeups in seemingly established
markets. But the technical revolution also
devours its own children. A perfect example of this can be found in the photography pioneer Kodak, which completely
missed the shift to digital photography,
even though it was they who invented the
digital photograph.
Successful companies in particular tend
to adopt a strategy of innovating in small
steps, which runs the risk of losing touch
with new trends. When they cease to
enjoy the success they are used to, the
result is often a cycle that Accenture calls
the „innovation death spiral“[3]. Despite
their lack of success, the products soak
up considerable financial resources that
are then no longer available for truly
game-changing innovations. According to
Accenture, most companies underestimate the opportunity costs of the innovation spiral, i.e. the lost revenue that
results from relying on incremental
innovations and investing too little in
breakthrough innovations.
60–
80 %
of all newly launched
products fail.
9
10
What does innovation
management mean?
4
Let’s get digital
What does innovation management mean?
Innovation management also has a strategic dimension. In harmony with the corporate strategy and
corporate objectives, it aims to rapidly identify the
potential of new technologies, materials and processes as well as including their marketability, and to
give the company a competitive edge. This means
that all sections of an organization, from research
and development through organization, finance and
controlling, and right up to marketing are involved in
innovation management.
In other words, innovation management is concerned not only with strategic product planning, i.e.
with identifying potential and products, planning
business models and creating product concepts, but
also with the operational implementation of such
planning. On a strategic level, it is about deciding
which new products fit in with the company‘s longer-term perspective, and on an operational level, it
is about implementing these innovations as efficiently as possible. To a certain extent, portfolio planning
acts to bind these two levels together by identifying
the ideal blend of innovation projects while taking
into account strategic objectives and the available
resources. Systematic ideas management is a cornerstone of innovation management. Short innovation
cycles demand a stricter approach to recording,
assessing and prioritizing ideas and their implementation in successful products. This includes, for
example, not revisiting ideas that have already been
assessed and rejected for good reasons.
Strategy
Identify opportunities
and risks and adjust
company positioning:
What offerings for
what markets?
1
On an operational level, innovation management
supports a clearly structured innovation process that
can be roughly divided into four phases. The innovation objectives are defined on the basis of the strategy. The selection of ideas takes the wealth of ideas
that have been recorded and identifies those that
have the greatest potential for success in terms of the
innovation objectives. These are then implemented
and tested during the concept and development
phase. The marketing phase covers production and
market introduction or, in the case of process innovations, the transition to productive operation. In the
case of product innovations, the innovation process
and product engineering are so closely related that it
makes sense to use the same IT tools to support the
processes.
Although innovation management primarily impacts
on in-house innovation processes, it is increasingly
the case that it also takes account of aspects outside
the company. Open Innovation is a term used for
approaches that are intended to reinforce the
innovation potential within a company through the
use of external resources. This can be achieved by
working together with research organizations, but
also by incorporating external experts, customers
and suppliers in the innovation process. The objectives of Open Innovation initiatives are, on the one
hand, to increase a company‘s capacity to innovate
without an associated rise in costs and, on the other,
to involve good minds from other fields and
Doing things right
Roadmap
Portfolio
Implementation
Facilitate the strategy:
Plan the areas of innovation on the basis of
business cases, preconditions and
measures
2
Plan product program
and project portfolio
Implementation in
development projects;
ongoing controlling of
the innovation objectives
4
3
Ideas: Frontloading in the planning phases
Innovation culture and company organization
Customers and markets
Innovations = successful products
Doing the right things
11
Illustration 2
The elements of
innovation management
12
What does innovation management mean?
organizations who can contribute new ideas based
on an independent view from the outside. One of the
trailblazers in this field is the consumer goods company Procter & Gamble, which has doubled the
number of people involved in innovation by collaborating with suppliers and partners in the Connect+Develop initiative.
In sectors that produce goods directly for consumers,
even the end users nowadays play an important role
as innovators, for instance in the development of
apps for smartphones. One specific form of user
innovation of this kind is known as „crowd innovation“, where new (software) products are developed
collaboratively over the Internet. There are many
open source programs that prove that this approach
works. But the commercial exploitation of approaches such as these throws up the question of who
shares in the collective intellectual property and how
a company‘s own expertise can be protected during
such collaboration.
Let’s get digital
13
The challenges facing
companies
5
14
The callenges facing companies
There are a number of reasons why companies are
realizing that they must adopt a more systematic
approach to managing their innovations. Global
competition is putting companies under considerable pressure to innovate, and even manufacturers of
custom products are not immune from this pressure.
They no longer rely solely on responding to new
requirements from their clients, but observe the
market and their competitors and develop their own
innovative proposals in consultation with their
customers.
One important driver of innovation management is
the complexity of the products and the growing role
of electronics and software. The majority of innovations in the automotive sector are nowadays to be
found in mechatronic systems with a high proportion
of electronics and increasing amounts of embedded
software. And this trend is also observed in other
sectors, albeit with a certain time lag. This means
that electronic engineers and software developers
are more closely involved in the innovation process
than they have been in the past – and these actors
introduce their own ideas, which have to be assessed. Much the same applies to fields such as after
sales and service, because in many sectors service is
an integral part of the product innovations and needs
to be managed as such.
Another reason why more efficient innovation management is needed is that the innovative capacity of
companies is regulated and, to a certain extent,
restricted by ever more stringent environmental
stipulations, safety regulations and other national
and international legislation. Instead of generating
and implementing creative ideas, engineers in
sectors such as medical engineering spend a large
part of their working hours documenting compliance.
But the positive side of all this is that statutory
requirements have themselves driven many innovations, for instance in powertrain engineering or
power engineering. The earlier compliance is taken
into account during the innovation process, the
easier it is to ensure that the innovations are
compliant.
Let’s get digital
15
Innovation strategies
6
16
Innovation strategies
The innovation process will usually start with a
formulation of the innovation strategy that lays down
the innovation objectives and serves as a framework
for allocating budgets and resources to the objectives. This innovation strategy is derived from the
overarching corporate strategy, but must also take
into account other factors such as market trends, the
market environment and megatrends in technology.
When analyzing (alternative) future trends in the
context of strategic planning, methods such as
scenario methodology are usually used, although we
will not be discussing them in detail here. Such
techniques are used to identify future opportunities
and risks and derive strategic decisions from the
insights. Depending on how the company is aligned,
it is possible to distinguish between a number of
different innovation strategies, which can be combined with each other:
■ Market-oriented strategies focus on what types of
products or services are needed and what level of
innovation they must contain in order to be successful in specific markets.
■ Competition-oriented strategies first ask what
innovations will differentiate a company from its
competitors in order to lead these markets with
regard to quality and/or cost.
■ Time-oriented strategies supplement competition-oriented strategies by asking when and how
often innovations need to be launched on the
market in order to achieve a competitive advantage.
■ Technology-oriented strategies rely on differentiation on the basis of certain key technologies and
determine those technological fields that a company needs to occupy in order to implement innovations.
■ Cooperation-oriented strategies focus on the
complementary skills and resources that are
needed in order to carry out the activities associated with innovations.
Let’s get digital
17
Establishing a culture of
innovation
7
18
„
Establishing a culture of innovation
Innovation is 1% ideation, 9% consolidation and 90% implementation.”
Kumar Sachidanandam, Cognizant
A survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)
revealed that most companies adopt business
strategies in which innovation plays a key role in their
business success. Despite this, they are not satisfied
with the extent to which they exploit their innovation
potential and the speed with which they innovate.
The EIU survey comes to the conclusion that it is not
sufficient to develop the vision of a culture of innovation, but that there must be a clearly defined owner
with budget responsibility for implementing the
innovations. Put simply, companies who have a
person responsible for innovation in top management are more successful than those in which this
responsibility is shouldered by many people.
According to the survey, the greatest challenges in
the context of innovation lie in changing the corporate culture, accelerating the time-to-market for
innovations and realizing ideas in the form of products and services that are mature enough for the
market. Most companies shy away from risk when it
comes to implementing new ideas. They miss out on
the opportunity to exploit the potential of new lines
of business because nobody is willing to take responsibility. They prefer to follow tired business strategies
rather than develop new business models.
In an article on the innovation culture, management
consultants Unity point out that even companies
who have implemented methods and processes for
innovation management are faced with the challenges posed by change. The time it takes to establish
such an approach is greater than when tools are
introduced, because people need to change their
behavior and attitudes. Because standards and
values differ, there is no single ideal way of establishing a culture of innovation. Alongside the encouragement and promotion of team spirit and leadership,
the selection of suitable staff for managing innovation and embedding it as a conscious part of the
or-ganization are important measures for effecting
long-term change to the corporate culture.
Innovative organizations are characterized by an
ability to learn and adapt and are in a constant state
of flux. Important aspects of a culture of innovation
include trust in the employees on the part of management, personal responsibility, a willingness to
learn, the courage to take risks, decisiveness and
tolerance of mistakes. Staff must have the space to
be creative and must be allowed to make mistakes.
At 3M, one of the most innovative companies in the
world, developers can, for instance, spend 15% of
their time on projects of their choice, which regularly
lead to innovations.
According to Unity, a culture of innovation requires
open communication and the possibility for people
to network and exchange knowledge. And, of course,
this also applies to interactions with customers and
partners in the context of open innovation. In a
business context, the interactive Web 2.0 technologies used by social media provide the tools for
identifying employees with specific knowledge,
irrespective of the department, unit or location they
belong to within the organization, and to make use of
that knowledge. They thus represent an important
tool for establishing an open culture of innovation.
Let’s get digital
19
Knowledge management is a
source of innovation
8
Knowledge management is a source of innovation
20
Exploiting the knowledge pool available in a company efficiently is equally as important for the innovative capacity of a company as incorporating external
sources in the innovation process. The difficulty lies
in the fact that the bulk of this knowledge is implicit;
it resides in the heads of experienced employees.
Interactive Web 2.0 technologies such as forums,
blogs or wikis are thus important tools to complement database-driven information sources such as
ERP or PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) systems
and make available this implicit knowledge. At the
same time, increasing staff mobility means that it
makes sense to record critical business knowledge
possessed by expert specialists in a structured form
in order to prevent it from being lost if they leave the
company.
For manufacturing companies, information from
development and manufacturing operations is their
most valuable asset, and deserves to be handled
with great care. As a rule, they will use PLM solutions
to manage and disseminate their product and project data in a structured form. Consequently, these
solutions represent an important source of information in the innovation process, particularly in the
context of incremental development steps where it is
not necessary to completely reinvent the wheel. At
the same time, they provide a wide range of tools and
functions to support innovation management on the
operational level, for instance powerful project
management facilities for monitoring schedules,
costs and progress in innovation projects.
Outcome:
Business Benefit
Innovation
Reuse of existing knowledge makes a major contribution to reducing lead times in development and
manufacturing and avoiding errors. In order for this
to happen, however, the information must be easy to
find and available in a form and format that allows it
to be used by as many different employees as possible. But despite the use of PLM, this is not always the
case, as was shown in a survey by the Fraunhofer IPK
in collaboration with CONTACT Software and the
German engineers’ association (VDI) entitled “Collaborative product development and digital tools” [4].
According to this survey, engineers continue to regard
obtaining information as a considerable burden.
Many complained that the results and empirical
knowledge gained from previous projects are difficult
to access. They would like to see search functions
such as those available with Google in order to
retrieve information more easily in the growing pool
of digital data.
Innovators
=
Ideation
Executors
*
Implementation
Illustration 3
Value creation in the innovation process takes place primarily through systematic evaluation, concretization and ultimately implementation of ideas.
Let’s get digital
21
Systematic ideas management
9
22
Systematic ideas management
Ideas are the germs of innovation, but not every idea
comes to fruition. The more ideas you have, the
greater the chance of success. The challenge facing
innovation management is thus twofold. On the one
hand, to provide an open culture of innovation that
ensures an abundant and constant stream of ideas
and, on the other, to use efficient tools and methods
to extract from this plethora of ideas those which
have the greatest potential. Systematic recording of
ideas and assessment with regard to feasibility and
marketability form the foundation of successful
innovation management [5].
There is a wide range of creativity techniques for
generating ideas: brain-storming, mind mapping,
morphological analysis, workshops, ideas competitions and questionnaires right up to the incorporation of external sources of ideas using social media
technology. These serve to generate ideas aimed at
solving a specific problem. Alongside such approaches, many companies have set up internal suggestion
systems with financial incentives to encourage
Recording
Concretization
Notwithstanding the significance of ideas as “raw
materials” for innovation, a systematic approach to
ideas management is not yet firmly established in
many companies. One aspect that is missing is the
integration of the appropriate tools and methods in
the IT landscape within which the innovation process
takes place, i.e. in the PLM solutions. Generally,
companies manage their ideas in Excel sheets or
separate ideas management applications without
any direct reference to the innovation projects. This
makes it extremely difficult to reconstruct the lifecycle of the ideas from generation through to successful
implementation. PLM-assisted ideas management is
thus the first step on the path towards a systematic
innovation process.
Evaluation
Decision
Record idea
Check idea is concrete
Decision committee
Expert
Idea manager
Author of idea
Identification of
potential
creativity among their staff. Thus, for example,
BASF paid three employees a record bonus of
170,000 euros for an improvement to the cooling
system in a plant producing solvents. This improvement led to increased revenues of 2.5 million euros
for the company.
Illustration 4
IT-supported workflow of the idea process
Concret?
Initiate project
Yes
No
concretize and
specify idea
Further concretization
Analyze idea
(evaluate)
Decide on
idea
Feasable?
No
Yes
PEP
Systematic ideas management
23
Formal drafting /
documentation
Selection
Concretization
Decision
Idea
profile
Rough
evaluation
Detailed
evaluation
Cost-effectiveness
Scope, do's and don'ts
Positioning
Success and risk factors
Market/customer research
Comparative studies
Implementation studies
Strategic fit:
opportunities/risks
C
R
Illustration 5
Systematic idea process: The Innovation Funnel
In practice, strategic project planning is usually only
loosely coupled to the innovation process. In the field
of research and development, a lot remains to be
done in this respect. The Heinz Nixdorf Institute
(HNI) in Paderborn is therefore coordinating a joint
project with the goal of developing an adaptable
toolbox for strategic project planning, comprising
methods, a reference process and associated IT tools.
It is based on the PLM solution CIM Database, specially extended for the project by CONTACT to incorporate key innovation management modules. These
help companies, for instance, to visualize what
functions are delivered by what technologies in order
to drive innovations not only on the basis of requirements, but also on the basis of technology.
Market potential
Outlay
Technology/skills
Sustainability
24
End-to-End innovation
process
10
Let’s get digital
End-to-End innovation process
PLM solutions such as CIM Database provide a wide
range of functions offering optimum support for the
operational aspect of innovation management. To
start with, and it is no mean thing, they contain all
the im-portant information about past innovation
projects, and thus represent an invaluable pool of
knowledge for incremental innovations, i.e. the
further development of the existing product portfolio.
On top of that, they make it possible to set up an
end-to-end innovation process from ideation through
to implementation in concrete development projects
and to support this process with electronic workflows. Integration of ideas management in the PLM
solution makes it possible to record ideas within a
uni-form system, to analyze them and gradually
refine them. Ideas can be linked and references can
be established to problems or technological solutions. The potential, costs and risks of the ideas can
be assessed over a number of steps (stage gates),
Company,
crowd sourcing
taking account of factors such as market volumes,
market growth, entry barriers, competition, customer
benefits, etc. Ideas which cannot be implemented
immediately can be revisited at any time and possibly be reassessed in the light of technological developments. To ensure that those who generate the
ideas remain motivated, it is important that they can
understand what has happened to their ideas.
If the assessment comes to a positive conclusion,
gradual refinement of the ideas will lead to a development project. This means that ideas that were
initially unrelated to particular products give rise to
concrete requirements that can be assigned to
specific product features and functions as part of
concrete development projects. If the entire process
from ideation through to implementation is to be
seamless, ideas management and requirements
management must be tightly integrated.
Process
owner
Decision
committee
Illustration 6
Roles and tasks in the
innovation process
Development
project
Idea
Product
Discuss and
collect ideas
Draft formally /
consolidate ideas
Concretize and
evaluate ideas
Plan and realize
implementation
25
26
End-to-End innovation process
CIM Database not only provides support for recording
requirements, but also ensures that they are completely and correctly implemented. Linking ideas,
requirements and other objects helps to ensure that
a greater number of ideas flow into the innovation
process.
Efficient innovation management always presupposes a clearly structured innovation process, which may
be based on one of a number of different process
models, some of which derive from the agile methods used in software development [6]. One of the
more traditional approaches is Cooper’s Stage Gate
Model, which divides the innovation and development process into a number of stages. At the end of
each stage, a decision is taken whether to pursue the
innovation on the basis of previously agreed deliverables. A process model such as this can easily be
mapped in the PLM solution and serves as a framework to guide the innovation projects.
The aim is to represent the ideas in the downstream
processes and monitor their implementation:
■
■
■
■
■
Map ideas to requirements and specifications
Map the business case to the target costing
Plan, monitor and control the project
Wherever it makes sense to do so, establish
Empirical indicators for the product and its
components (wait, consumption, etc.)
In other words, interaction between innovation
management and product development is crucial!
In the context of PLM, multi-project management
plays an important role in allowing multiple innovation projects to be controlled without causing resource bottlenecks. It not only supports the monitoring of costs and schedules, but also facilitates
evaluation of the progress of the project thanks to
integrated work deliverables management. Stage
gates can, for instance, be defined with clearly specified deliverables which can be verified using appropriate checklists. The next stage in the project is only
initiated when all the deliverables are present. CIM
Database provides powerful portfolio management
facilities that make it possible to evaluate different
combinations of projects, taking into account sched-
ules and resources, in order to define the ideal blend
of innovation projects to be implemented following
the task of identifying suitable products for development.
Let’s get digital
Conclusion
11
27
28
Conclusion
Companies must deliver a constant stream of innovations in order to become and remain competitive in
global markets. The fast pace of innovation, coupled
with ever shorter innovation cycles, demands a
systematic approach that lays down clear innovation
objectives on the strategic level and ensures that
these objectives are realized on the operational level.
The aim is to integrate the methods and tools used in
product planning tightly with those used in design
and development, from analyzing potential, identifying products and business planning right up to the
seamless transition to product development. In this
way, new ideas reliably give rise to development
projects which, in turn, deliver products ready for
rapid market release.
from recording and assessing ideas right up to implementation in the form of successful products and
services. Integration of ideas management in PLM
resolves the apparent conflict between creativity
when developing ideas and the systematic approach
needed when recording, assessing and refining those
ideas. The key advantage is that the ideas can be
linked to other objects, such as concrete product
requirements, thus permitting enhanced lifecycle
traceability. Greater transparency in the project
portfolio helps avoid expensive abortive developments and redundant developments and reduces the
time-to-market of innovations, one of the major
challenges faced by companies today.
Integration of innovation management instruments
in the PLM environment permits more efficient
monitoring and control of the innovation process,
Product
management
CAD
integration
Portfolio
management
Innovation
management
...
Project
management
Requirements
management
Let’s get digital
References
12
29
30
References
[1] OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboards 2013
http://www.oecd.org/sti/scoreboard.htm
[2] Suzanne Berger, Making in America: From Innovations to Market
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/making-america
R. M. Locke, R. L. Wellhausen, Production in the Innovation Economy
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/production-innovation-economy
[3] The Innovation Death Spiral: How companies get stuck throwing good money after bad ideas – and what
that mistake is costing them
http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture_The_Innovation_Death_Spiral.pdf
[4] Collaborative Product Development and Digital Tools. Today’s shortcomings – Tomorrow’s potential (In
German with a summary in English) Editors: Prof. Dr. Rainer Stark, Dr. Roland Drewinski, Dr. Haygazun Hayka,
Dr. Heinz Bedenbender. Year of Publication 2013, ISBN 978-3-00-039111-8
[5] Businessweek: 3M’s Seven Pillars of Innovation
http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-05-09/3ms-seven-pillars-of-innovation.html
[6] The Innovation Process: An Introduction to Process Models
http://www.tuhh.de/tim/downloads/arbeitspapiere/Working_Paper_12.pdf
www.contact-software.com