Building an Innovative Enterprise Through the Creativity of its People

The recent economic crisis has further increased the gap between the group of innovative companies and the ones relying on an efficient exploitation of the traditional factors of production. Building a work environment where every employee is able to develop his/her creativity and his/her innovation potentials proves to be a growing competitive advantage. The book investigates the (systemic) factors of an effective and efficient idea management as a mechanism of creation of inventions and their transformation into innovations in the widest range of employees – “unprofessional inventors”.

Open innovation and business performance improvement in strategic business alliances

The purpose of the research was to investigate whether the companies involved in strategic business alliances (henceforth referred to as the SBA) have a higher level of open innovation and better business results in the metal industry in the EU country, namely Slovenia. The survey was carried out in 115 companies, where the aforementioned relations and their influence were studied applying appropriate statistical methods (e.g. the Mann-Whitney test, Chi-Square statistics, t-test, etc.). The sample encompassed four clusters and R&D centres from metal-processing industry. The results showed that SBA have a significantly strong impact on companies’ open innovation as well as more efficient cooperation with universities and research institutions. Among the companies involved in SBA, the portion of innovations generated in cooperation with their business partners accounted for 57.7%, while those, not involved in SBA, the same indicator amounts to 19%. In addition, the results showed that the majority of business results, in companies involved in SBA, were above average, compared to the industry sector average values. The value added per employee within companies involved in the SBA was significantly higher than the industry average, as well as the profits; difference was more than threefold. It may be concluded that SBA represent an important bridge in the transformation from a closed innovation model to a model of open innovation, resulting in better business performance. Important implication for companies is related to the message that cooperation with competitors may bring value added to all companies involved

Influencing Indicators Determination - Precondition for Successful Innovation Management in Mechanical Industry

The purpose of the study was to establish the most important influencing parameters concerning innovation processes aimed at achieving improved business performance in the machinery and equipment manufacturing industry in Slovenia. A five steps research methodology was applied. Initially, a group of variables among the statistical data was selected, and then some additional variables were defined. In the third step, the variables were dispersed among the following categories: input, process, indirect output and direct output variables. In the fourth step, reciprocal correlations among particular variables were calculated prior to the final selection of the most important correlations and their interpretation. The influential input and process variables were estimated, and these indicate not only the sequence of activities but also particular areas where additional effort needs to be invested in innovation. The research limitations are related to statistical methodology since the used correlation coefficient itself does not provide any information on the direction of the cause-effect relation. Further limitations are connected with statistical data failing to cover all the important topics related to the innovation performance within a company. There are also some misleading questions/definitions in the SURS/Eurostat which partially result in subjective results. The time delay factor also represents one of the limitations of the study. Namely, a change in certain influencing parameters (e.g. R&D expenditure) normally requires a certain period of time to actually come into effect. The findings also represent a set of suggested guidelines in which enterprises, national policy leaders and also supporting environment organisations should put their efforts. The way of analysing and interpreting the data deriving from the mechanical industry are new. Besides, the results and conclusion are also original and may be applied by the aforementioned target groups