Managing Innovation: Integrating Technological, Market and Organizational Change, 5th Edition

PART III

Search

In this section we move on to the first of the core elements in our process model – the ‘search’ question. Chapter 5 explores the issues around the question of what triggers the innovation process – the multiple sources which we need to be aware of and the challenges involved in searching for and picking up signals from them. And it looks at the complementary question – how do we carry out this search activity? Which structures, tools and techniques are appropriate under what conditions? How do we balance search around exploration of completely new territory with exploiting what we already know in new forms? In Chapter 6 we look at the major challenge of building and sustaining rich networks to enable what has become labelled ‘open innovation’.