Abstract:

To maintain their competitiveness in the global market, modern organizations need to be flexible and fast in their reaction to change and this depends on their ability to adapt quickly. To be able to adapt, organizations should, of course, be able to innovate, not just occasionally, but consistently and successfully. Mastering the process of innovation requires identifying the factors that support and hamper the achievement of innovations. However, the success of such process depends usually on the quality of the best opportunity identified, which is not enough. Otherwise, the divergence of study topics relating to the innovation concept highlights the need for a research and delivery framework that allows its systematic investigation, structuration, management and continuous improvement. Yet, what is not measurable cannot be neither managed nor improved. To achieve the sustainable success, organizations need to ensure a more systematic approach to innovation as it has the potential to complements market-based competition by achieving interoperability and agreeing on requirements and measures for economic, social and environmental performance. Accordingly, this paper identifies three complementary components underlying a systematic innovation performance framework: (1) Innovation Actor that aims to organize the innovation competencies and the related roles and activities into meaningful, exhaustive, and mutually-exclusive clusters; (2) Innovation Knowledge Unit that aims to shed lights on the noteworthy achievements of the innovation actions using a broad spectrum of key characteristics; (3) Innovation Context that aims to emphasize the contextual factors that impact the innovation performance and enhance the organizational continuous renewal ability.