Computer aided innovation—State of the art from a new product development perspective
Introduction
That innovation is fundamental to the development of society, business rejuvenation and growth and critical to company survival in the long run is conventional wisdom that is hardly challenged by anyone in academia, politics or the business world. It is also acknowledged that innovation is more than invention or new products but a complex and multi-dimensional concept, which should be seen from different perspectives in its specific context [1], [2], [3]. Innovation can therefore arise in connection with any object, such as technologies, structures, markets, culture, strategies, systems, products, services or anything else man-made, and needs to be perceived as a difference concerning the qualitative newness [3]. The process of innovation is typically iterative, interactive, context-specific, multi-tasking, uncertain, path-dependent and the result of a new combination of ends and means. However, the key question remains how to accomplish this complex and at times chaotic process from ideation to market diffusion successfully. This was and is the starting point where practitioners and scholars from different disciplines like management, engineering and information systems work to improve the likelihood of success, efficiency and time to market of the new product development (NPD) process. With new or improved tools (e.g. CAD, CAE, CAM, etc.), methods (e.g. TRIZ, QFD, FMEA, etc.), process models (stage-gate systems, concurrent engineering, etc.) and other organizational or technological innovations, much progress has been made to improve the innovation capabilities of firms and to reduce the development times of new products significantly [4], [5], [6], [7], [8].
In this paper we highlight the role of information technologies in NPD, since increased attention has been given to the use of ICT support in this context [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [5], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [7], [27]. Since ICT support has led to significant improvement in other business processes, there has been increasing interest in software support for the NPD process. Computer-aided tools like CAD became generally accepted as efficiency enhancing in the development process and their utilization is expected to become a commodity among the majority of the large companies in the developed world. Therefore, specific software and tools to support the other innovation activities are seen as supportive to streamline the NPD process further and guide the project teams through the different information-generating and disseminating activities [19], [20]. Nevertheless, to many firms software support in the innovation process is still mainly focused on the technological activities with specific technically oriented CAx technologies or generic, simple and ubiquitous productivity and communication tools such as e-mail, Microsoft Office, and Excel/Access databases rather than more sophisticated and more complex tools [9], [28], [19], [20].
In the early creative phases and in the business activities of the NPD process, standard office tools are often used as the sole software support [29], [9], [30]. This gap in the ICT support is the application area of the growing field of computer aided innovation (CAI), which is the emerging term for software support in the innovation process that does not focus solely on the subsequent construction and design oriented, technological NPD activities [20], [21], [31]. CAI is also seen as a young domain in the array of CAx technologies from an engineering perspective [31].
Although arising from the invention stage in the front end of the NPD process, a comprehensive vision conceives CAI systems that integrate the full innovation process holistically. The final goal of CAI is therefore to support firms throughout the entire innovation process and integrate other ICT systems and firm processes. Yet there is an ongoing discussion of the theoretical and empirical conceptualisation of the CAI term [20]. This discussion will be highlighted in the next section, followed by a summary of the potential benefits of CAI and major trends in the CAI supply identified so far. In this paper we also provide an overview of emerging issues in the CAI field such as CAI usage and implementation, and of the co-evolution of CAI and NPD systems in maturity models. We complete the paper with conclusions and implications for future research in CAI from a NPD perspective.
Section snippets
Emergence, development trajectories and concepts of CAI
Overall, limited understanding about what kind of IT systems fall under the term CAI and what kind of benefits they can provide means that transparency and communication in the market for CAI products and the further development of more sophisticated tools still suffers. Historically speaking, CAI emerged from software tools which supported the use of Altschuller's TRIZ method [32], [33]. TRIZ, the Soviet-Initiated Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (“Теория решения изобретательских задач”),
Categories and elements of potential benefits of CAI
This section provides an overview of the most significant potential benefits of CAI which are described in the academic literature so far. With a better understanding of the benefits and categories of CAI products the communication with potential users can be improved and directions for future development supported. If all necessary requirements are considered, the potential benefits of CAI products can be categorized as follows: efficiency, effectiveness, competence and creativity enhancing
Major trends in the CAI supply
There has been explosive growth in the development of ICT for NPD activities as technology has advanced and the importance of a formal NPD process has been recognized [9], [55], [19], [20], [22], [23], [56]. The most comprehensive surveys on the CAI supply available in the market were provided by Kohn and Hüsig [19], [20] and Spath et al. [56]. Therefore, most of the existing knowledge presented here is based on these empirical studies. Using the categorization scheme of Kohn and Hüsig [20] a
Maturity models of CAI and NPD systems
Scholars in process management and information systems have developed a long tradition of analysing the development of IT usage or process capabilities by what are called maturity models [57], [58]. Maturity models typically consist of a structured collection of elements that describe certain aspects of maturity in an organization. A maturity model can be used as a benchmark for assessing different organizations for comparison and is frequently organized in hierarchical stages or levels. One
CAI usage and determinants of adoption
In spite of the efforts vendors have made to develop high-quality CAI tools, research suggests that companies are fairly immature in their use of IT for NPD [9], [29], [19], [30]. The recent Comparative Performance Assessment Study (CPAS) by the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), for example, found that less than 20% of the “best” firms used web-based market research tools and product portfolio management software, and less than 40% used groupware software to support their
Conclusions and further research directions
Summing up the state of the art in the field of CAI from an NPD perspective, it can be concluded that many of the presented research areas lack integration and still need to be developed further in various directions. First, based on a holistic understanding of the innovation process and its support by ICT, CAI needs to be understood more holistically than it has been in the past, especially from an engineering perspective, which used to be focused on the inventive stage [31]. The research on
Stefan Hüsig has a PhD in Business Administration and holds the position of Assistant Professor at the Chair of Innovation and Technology Management at the University of Regensburg, Germany. In addition, he works as a consultant in the area of Innovation Management, where he has worked with Vodafone R&D, deep innovation, Mannesman Pilotentwicklung, Fraunhofer Technology Development Group and other firms. His research interests are the areas of predevelopment, radical/disruptive innovations,
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Stefan Hüsig has a PhD in Business Administration and holds the position of Assistant Professor at the Chair of Innovation and Technology Management at the University of Regensburg, Germany. In addition, he works as a consultant in the area of Innovation Management, where he has worked with Vodafone R&D, deep innovation, Mannesman Pilotentwicklung, Fraunhofer Technology Development Group and other firms. His research interests are the areas of predevelopment, radical/disruptive innovations, corporate entrepreneurship and Computer-Aided Innovation (CAI).
Stefan Kohn is head of innovation management at FUJIFILM Europe GmbH. Before that he was head of the department for “Innovation and IP Management” for the Fraunhofer Technology Development Group. He is a board member of PDMA e.V., certified New Product Development Professional, and has several years’ experience in the field of innovation management. He has a degree in Mechanical Engineering and Business Administration from the Darmstadt University of Technology. Besides his work he is a part-time PhD student at the Otto Beisheim Graduate School of Management in Vallendar. His research focuses on the front end of innovation.