abstract
Most research on innovation management at the organizational level has typically been focused on one specific innovation project phase or innovation management concept. This has resulted in many valuable insights, though scattered in different (innovation) research fields and studies. With the development of the Organizational Innovation System (OIS), we bring together important insights from the Innovation Systems, Open Innovation and other related fields into a guiding concept useful for both innovation managers developing (radical) innovations and innovation scholars. In this paper, we define the OIS and its key structural components, and discuss the identified functions and categories of potential imperfections. With the OIS, we provide a holistic, hands-on concept currently lacking in the open innovation approach. From the conceptualization, a framework for analysis is put forward which provides structure to the study of ongoing and finished innovation processes. Additionally, the development of the OIS is a first step in the development of a currently underdeveloped micro-level within the innovation systems perspective. The insights in OISs and the future insights derived from analytical efforts, will not only be beneficial for the performance of innovating organizations and organizational innovation systems but also for the performance of the higher, interconnected system levels.
7. Discussion
Changes in environmental conditions occur ever faster and product life cycles continue to shorten (Drechsler and Natter, 2012), making innovation efforts crucial to the survival of organizations. However, given the multidisciplinary nature of innovation (Kroon et al., 2008), the increasing complexity of technology (Holl and Rama, 2012; Ritter and Gemünden, 2004) and the tendency of firms and other organizations to focus on their core competences (Gulati et al., 2012), organizations are and will increasingly continue to open up their innovation processes to external stakeholders (Chesbrough, 2012). Therefore, in this paper, we developed the organizational innovation system concept to facilitate the execution and study of such open, collective innovation processes. An organizational innovation system contains a dynamic, layered innovation network of diverse relevant stakeholders, shaped by a set of formal and informal institutions. Through an iterative innovation process, it aids the focal innovating organization in generating, developing and commercializing innovations by providing the required supporting functions. However, diverse system imperfection can cause a suboptimal innovation process or even failure. Based on the structural components and functions of the OIS, ten categories of these potential imperfections are put forward. Furthermore, the elaborate conceptualization of the OIS concept allowed for the development of a framework for analysis of organizational innovation systems. With the development of the OIS concept, we contribute to the innovation management theory, in particular the Open Innovation and Innovation Systems perspective, in several important ways.
