Supporting Systems Innovation

Many researchers and practitioners contend that organisations should respond to changing market need and create competitive advantage through innovation and creativity. Each year, organisations expend significant resources developing new products and processes and yet research shows that more than half of these initiatives fail. Successful organisations are not innovative by accident; they deliberately manage their innovation process. In order to effectively manage the innovation process, organisations must utilise proven approaches to "lever" innovation within the organisation. This paper proposes an approach to managing systems innovation that centres on the process of organisational innovation and good management practice. This approach aims to provide a more integrated approach to systems innovation that will make it more systemic and improve its likelihood of success. This paper's main objective is to present a Systems Innovation Self-Assessment (SISA) tool. This tool is derived from the Systems Innovation Management approach, together with the findings of a series of case studies undertaken of the Irish manufacturing industry. This tool allows organisations to assess their progress towards developing an environment supportive of systems innovation. A number of observations obtained from these case studies are also presented.