Alexander Gromoff, Valery Chebotarev, Kristin Evina and Yulia Stavenko National Research University “Higher School of Economics”, Russia.

An Approach to Agility in

Enterprise InnovationAlexander Gromoff, Valery Chebotarev, Kristin Evina and Yulia

StavenkoNational Research University “Higher School of Economics”,

Russia

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. ECM covers the management of information within the entire scope of an enterprise whether that information is in the form of a paper document, an electronic file, a database print stream, or even an email.

• The term "enterprise content management" refers both to a strategy to deal with all types of enterprise content and a set of software products for managing the entire life cycle of that content ("What is Enterprise Content Management (ECM)?".  AIIM. Association for Information and Image Management. Retrieved September 20, 2010).

Enterprise Content Management

Improving efficiency and optimizing business processes are currently the biggest drivers for ECM in most organizations - by a factor of 2:1 over compliance, whereas 3 years ago they were equal («State of the ECM Industry 2010» AIIM Market Intelligence).

The amount of unstructured information exceeds 80% of the meaningful the entire enterprise content. “Content Chaos” is the strongest driver («State of the ECM Industry 2010» AIIM Market Intelligence).

From more than 900 CEOs surveyed, less than half are satisfied with the financial returns or (ROI) on their investments in innovation (BCG).

Certain trends

ERP is oriented on operational (repeated and reproduced) activities.

Innovations are unique. Information about innovation is necessary for its appearance and development (unstructured and unformulated) => ERP – ‘high fence’ for innovations, and ‘thinking is for dummies’ –Bissmark “Art of war”

ECM allows to accelerate and strengthen innovation processes.

Business value of ECM

It must maintain and support the innovation process as macro-process throughout its life-cycle.

It should depend on the goals of innovation development organization.

It should be based on methodology used for its realization and social meaningful factors.

Innovation-Oriented ECM platform

GenerationNovation - new

idea or concept, developed by knowledge worker as a result of the

creative thinking and broadcasting by the

communication channels.

IdentificationAccepted novation  recognized as

useful. Latent novation without major system reaction. Rejected novation

recognized as deviation.

ApprovalConceptual innovation with

large-scale distribution,forced to reconsider

processes. Local innovation "takes itsniche "is of limited effect.

RoutineInnovation becomes

tradition withinthe system.

Innovation lifecycle in social system

Information about the external environment

Organization as an open system

external

environment

1. Formulate requirements for developing innovation support in the context of an ECM system.

2. Define the meaning of innovation.3. Find how to set up an ECM system in order to

support the innovation management process.4. Look at innovation management process from

the subject-oriented point of view.5. Summarize the benefits of S-BPM approach with

relation to the socio-psychological view on specific roles of subjects participating in innovation processes.

Plan of the study

Innovation Innovation is a process of converting implicit

knowledge into value and competitive advantage for better ways of doing business.

It improves efficiency and effectiveness of a product, process, or service.

Innovation is fundamentally a continuous macro-process over the business processes.

The goal is to embed innovation in business processes execution and gain new level of profit.

Linear model of innovation Fundamental

study -> Applied research-> Prototype -

> Marketing -> Design -> Production -> Sale

(1950-1960)

Innovation appears as a dynamic process with

the feedback from the society and the

market and the level of technology (1960 -

1980)

Creative thinking of workers

are considered as the driving force

behind innovation. Learning Organizations.

(1980 - now)

Innovation as a subject of research in management theories

Traditional organizational approachLinear innovation creativity

process

• Predetermined sequence of actions:

• integration of intellectual investments,

• innovation development, • innovation implementation and

improvement,• justification for the innovation.• Disadvantages: limitation of links

between participants of the process and neglect of all good wills.

Newer approachNonlinear iterative innovation

process

• multiple interdependent intellectual resources are involved at all stages of innovation lifecycle;

• parallel, iterative and quickly-modified process can be executed to meet rapidly changing business requirements;

• takes into account the diversity of intellectual resources and creates conditions for their creative networking.

Approaches to the innovation process management

Innovation activities support

Paradigm 1: Innovation Support

focuses on the abstract subject and predicted

situation, clearly regulated objectives and

standards, normative model employment

domain knowledge, skills for the regulatory

methods utilization and given scheme of the innovative process

Paradigm 2: Intellectual

Resources Support (Subjects of

Innovation Activities)

focuses on specific subjects, poorly

regulated work, non-standard situations and

descriptive models usage

procedural knowledge, skills for creating

innovation in network structures, conditions for

the subjects reflection

Features:

Attitude to subjects:

Self-organized nature, including networked structures, social networks and thus creating conditions for the diffusion of intellectual outputs;

High-level management has to be decentralized as a consequence of the self-organizing structure;

The system has to offer its intellectual resources and their competences - ‘fresh stream’ of the ideas, approaches, and solutions to the internal competences;

The system must operate on “natural selection” mechanisms.

Innovation Process Management

Paradigm 2: Intellectual Resources Support

(Subjects of Innovation Activities)

Typical scenario of an innovation process

1. employee creates a novation

2. employee brings the novation to his manager

3. employee’s manager likes or dislikes the novation

4. He asks for more research and expert estimation

5. needs to identify the right experts within the company to find what research may have already been conducted on the same topic

6. need to socialize their idea with the entire company

7. will not receive no rewards or incentives for the contribution and idea submission

The value of getting things right time can induce a fear of mistakes and experimentation

Managers who are not as secure as they should be can resist or block ideas that are not their own or which they see as threatening.

It takes to long to communicate and have feedback. Limited number of experts can be involved. No structured processes in place to drive such cross

functional collaboration. A significant amount of work is required by employees

to refine their ideas. No method to socialize the idea with a wide audience

and no incentive to contribute.

Problems

Innovation Process Management

4. experts review the novation and have their feedback. High-rated novations are approved or rejected.

2. searches for experts

3. exposes the novation to a created community of experts identified by using expert search mechanism

1. employee creates a novation

5. Innovation accepted and implemented by Innovation Management Office

Innovation Process Management from S-BPM point of view

Knowledge Community Creation

Initiator Experts

Corporate culture changes

Expert search

Novation Generation

Unified communications

Innovation development policy

Develop a culture of innovation: enable more people to participate in the innovation process, and provide the mechanism for generating valuable novations.

Include in the network of innovation communities only those employees who want to be and can be engaged in innovation development.

Each employee who wishes to be engaged in the innovation process has to study and undertake certain common rules for all participants. Rezak's "Links decide all, Rules for positive networking" provides proven rules for the creation of these types of networks. Rezak D., Links decide all, Rules for positive networking, 2009, p. 208

Results of Knowledge Community Creation Stage

ExpertsInitiator

Innovation Identification and Approval

Increase visibility to the innovation process: clear process for developing, evaluating innovations.

Take into account a variety of intellectual investment sources, interdependence and parallelism of development cycles of an innovation.

Increase speed of the innovation process: resolve problems faster.

Creation of expert competence centers, where knowledge can be accumulated, stored and distributed enterprise-wide. Experts in such centers should be linked cross-functionally, thus elaborating solutions for complex interdisciplinary problems.

Results of Innovation Identification and Approval Stage

High-grade innovation-focused ECM system can be (and must be) designed on a platform of subject-oriented innovation process management.

The S-BPM implementation as part of an innovation ECM system gives enterprises a powerful tool for independent management of business processes and ECM system services and speeding up innovation’s profit appears.

Conclusions

Questions?

Thanks for the attention!