Knowledge and Continuous Innovation: The CIMA Supporting Methodology

Abstract

Competition today is forcing companies to increase their effectiveness exploiting synergy and learning in Product Innovation. Literature, however, is still mainly focused on how Product Development projects, seen as isolated efforts, are organised and managed. Basing on preliminary results from the Euro-Australian co-operation project CIMA (Euro-Australian co-operation centre for Continuous Improvement and innovation MAnagement), this paper proposes a model to explain how companies can gain a substantial competitive advantage by extending their innovation efforts to other phases of product life and by facilitating knowledge transfer and learning within the company and with other partner organisations