The thesis research innovation projects in temporary teams. The differences between stationary organization and temporary project teams lead the distinctions of their performances. Especially in innovation projects, many problems exist and are difficult to manage. Many innovation projects are operated by temporary teams; very few of them are successfully completed on time with good quality and cost as planned. The purpose with this study is to find out how innovation projects in temporary teams can be successfully managed.The research approach used is case study of one innovation project in a temporary team and additional data collection has been done with a survey. The case study describes an innovation project in a temporary team in China and the survey covers 43 persons with experience of innovation projects in temporary teams. An innovation process model by Bessant and Tidd (2007) is used as reference model but is found not suitable for temporary teams because of its specific mission with short life cycle and weak relations and uncertainty. With the combination of theoretical and practical knowledge, and to fulfil the requirements of temporary project teams, some changes are made on the original innovation process model. A new model named TT (Temporary Team) Innovation Process Model is proposed to support the innovation project management and operation process of temporary teams. Hopefully this model could be supportive for temporary teams who work with innovation projects.

Zugl.: München, Univ. der Bundeswehr, Diss., 2008

The Thai automotive industry was the third largest industry in the country and contributed nearly 12% of Thai GDP in 2010. Thailand is projected to be in the world’s top ten vehicle production countries by 2015. In 2011, the country produced 1.8 million vehicles and 600,000 units were for domestic consumption. The luxury car industry in Thailand represents roughly 5% of the total automotive market in 2011. Luxury car consumption in Thailand reached its peak in 1995 with the domestic consumption of 23,265 units. In 1997, Thailand triggered the world economic meltdown by devaluing the Thai currency. Consequently, luxury car sale volume then dropped to 3,383 units in 1998. Since then Thailand’s automotive industry has gone through a series of changes through political unrest (military coup – 2007, red shirt protest - 2010), global economy (US sub-prime crisis - 2008), and natural disaster (Japan’s tsunami – 2011, Thailand’s mega flood – 2011). For the past decade, luxury car sales volume has stagnated at around 10,000 units, despite Thailand’s GDP averaging growth of 7%. The study of the Thai luxury car industry provides a unique opportunity to probe the industry led by international firms entering fierce competition to win local consumers. This study looks through consumers’ buying criteria and reasons why Thai consumers purchase highly priced luxury cars. The study explores the roles of innovations in the Thai luxury car industry. When services are packaged with core products, this package attempt is classified as ‘service encapsulation’. The study explores the role of service encapsulation in Thailand and the key players who deliver values of service encapsulation. A mixed research methodology approach was used, starting with 30 face-to-face interviews with executives who run Thai luxury car companies and other key stakeholders. Findings and outcomes are used to design the questionnaire of ‘Service Encapsulation in Thailand Luxury Car Industry’. The survey includes 206 survey participants. Outcomes from the qualitative and quantitative parts are integrated with the literature on innovation and service innovation to come up with a Service Encapsulation Commercialization Framework. The framework aims to provide insight on the interplay among four key elements: internal parties, external parties, social factors and service encapsulation enablers, based on the original work of Sundbo and Gallouj (2000). The study provides insights on how organizations can maximize returns on innovation through service encapsulation, by using the Thai luxury car market as a case study.

This thesis describes how Innovation Management Consultants (IMCs) can promote changes in R&D/marketing relationships. The research was motivated by the scarce number of studies about the impact of IMCs on organisational relationships in general, and particularly on R&D and marketing relationships. This thesis contributes to knowledge in four strands of literature: technology management, organisational change, management consulting and conflict studies. Firstly, its main contribution is to technology management literature. Empirical evidence indicates that IMCs can modify the relationship between R&D and marketing functions, even though they are not hired explicitly for that purpose. Nonetheless, the main impact on the relationship is perceived at the personal level and it is dependent on the format of the intervention process. Additionally, the changes in the R&D/marketing relationship and its continuity seem to be conditional upon contextual factors such as specific company and consultant characteristics, as well as the nature of the consultant-client relationship. Secondly, this study has added to scholarly knowledge in organisational change by providing empirical evidence that IMCs advocate for the same dynamics used by Organisational Development (OD) consultants. The results highlight the importance of a facilitative-participative approach and organisational learning to generate change. The results suggest that certain OD theories such as sociotechnical systems theories and Lewin’s model can be used to explain the effect of IMCs on intra-organisational relationships. Thirdly, this research also augments knowledge about IMCs in management consulting literature because it provides evidence about the activities conducted by IMCs and their unexpected effects within client organisations. This addresses a gap identified in the literature, since the contributions of this type of Management Consultant (MC) have not been significantly investigated and the focus of previous studies has been on expected results. Finally, this research contributes to the area of conflict studies, particularly to the intersection between R&D/marketing integration and conflict, since it provides certain evidence about some IMCs’ mediation techniques that can be used to diminish conflict between different areas within an organisation. The research followed an inductive approach to understanding the changes that IMCs can promote in R&D/marketing relationships in large firms. The research is based on empirical evidence gathered through twelve case studies, feedback interviews and a small-scale survey. A framework describing the possible changes that IMCs can promote in the R&D/Marketing relationship was then built from grounded, within-case, and cross-case analysis. Lastly, in order to verify the observations obtained during the case studies, as well as the pertinence of the proposed framework, a set of eight feedback interviews with company participants and IMCs were carried out, as well as a small-scale survey. The results of these verification activities indicate that the proposed framework is reasonably complete and its elements are coherent.

The thesis deals with the management of Czech companies operating in the market areas where frequent innovations are crucial for long term success. The theoretical part of the thesis focuses on the techniques available for strategic management and the management of innovations. On this theoretical background the research part is based. It contains the results of own survey carried out in the selected Czech companies, presented in the context of strategic management and innovation management theory. The method of structured interview with owners or top management members was chosen for research. The interview deals mostly with the areas of strategic management and the management of innovations. The information derived from the structured interview is combined with the economic results of company. Consequently, the relations between techniques and results are found. The thesis also contains the list of five recommendations that, based on research, can be useful for managers.

Middle managers operate in an environment close to activities of their firm and in interaction with this environment identify opportunities, challenges, and subsequently generate innovation alternatives. While doing so they - among other - utilize also weak ties within their social network, which permeate internal and external environment of the firm and enable entry of new and divergent information in the innovation process. Middle managers communicate selected information to senior management levels, and the communication exchange between the middle and top management facilitates compliance with the firms innovation strategy, ensures resources as well as high level support for the implementation of innovation; middle managements information inputs at the same time influence senior management in defining the firms innovation strategy. In contact with ordinary employees (and lower levels of management), middle management compensates for differences between strategy and current activities of the firm, promotes innovation and overcomes resistance. To ensure support for innovation within the organization, middle managers draw, inter alia, on their internal networks of strong ties, including their informal components. Middle management acts as a communication bridge, which helps to balance the tensions originating from the differences between environments of the senior management and employees. From this perspective, the communication interfaces between the different levels of management, or the companys hierarchy, seem to play a critical role; my research at the same time indicates there are significant differences in perception between middle and senior management of intracompany processes enabling innovation.

Nutzer bei der Entwicklung und Gestaltung neuer Produkte oder Dienstleistungen zu integrieren, wird seit einigen Jahren unter dem Begriff „Open Innovation“ diskutiert und ist für viele Unternehmen heutzutage selbstverständlich. Ob und wie diese offenen Innovationsprozesse in wissenschaftlichen Organisationen einsetzbar sind, ist bisher wenig erforscht. Dieser Beitrag erläutert am Fallbeispiel eines Lehrstuhls, wie Open Innovation im Rahmen einer strategischen Neuaufstellung eingesetzt werden kann. In vier Phasen erarbeiten die Mitarbeiter auf einer offenen Innovationsplattform die zukünftige Ausrichtung des Lehrstuhls.

China has continued the economic reform and open door policy over 30 years with many great achievements, such as the second largest GDP, the largest import and export economy with the largest infrastructural investment in the world. On the other hand, the conflicts and risks the firms especially for small and medium sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) have faced are extremely serious and more acute due to the economy growth and increasing social wealth, especially in Yangtze River Delta, in the general context of ever increasing cost such as labour, land and higher customers’ expectations such as the quality of product. These serious problems are challenges for the competitiveness of SMEs in Yangtze River Delta. This research aims to investigate and improve the competitiveness of SMEs by the main variables such as enterprise’s resources, product’s competitive issues and innovation activities related barriers. To achieve the aim, the research employed a mixed method of quantitative and qualitative approaches to build the competitiveness’s belief network model by Bayesian Belief Networks and analyze the factors of the most important variables by the SPSS software. Secondly, 36 entrepreneurs of small and medium sized manufacturing enterprises in Yangtze River Delta have been carefully selected to participate in the questionnaire survey and face to face interviews. All participants are entrepreneurs who have run enterprise for at least three years. Five kinds of resources, competitive issues and innovation have been identified as the variables of competitiveness. The findings of research are mainly related to the three aspects which are general view of variables; barriers to innovation activity and importance of variables for improving the competitiveness; and the factor analysis of quality management practices. Firstly, the general condition of financial resource is the worst in resource sector of SMEs; Dependability is the best performance in competitive issues of SMEs; Lack of finance is generally identified the biggest barrier to innovation of SMEs. Secondly, the Physical resource in resource sector and Quality in competitive issues sector are the most important variables for improving the competitiveness of SMEs after BBN assessment; Lack of technical experts is the most serious barrier when the SMEs are really focusing on the innovation according to the BBN assessments. Thirdly, the factor analyses have identified the key independent factors explaining the quality management practices in these SMEs. Finally, these findings can help the SMEs build variables’ impact tables based on the outputs from the conditional assessment of BBNs to make more efficient and effective decisions when they try to improve the enterprise competitiveness, with detailed recommendations. At the same time, the importance and factors of good quality management practices have also been argued to help the entrepreneurs improve the quality performance and their enterprise competitiveness.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the phases of change process of integrating a quality development model into an information technology company in Turkey. While the transformation phases were being examined by a qualitative study, the factors that affect the change process also were investigated. This study explores the process of traveling through the way to CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) level 3 certification by a company that gives information technologies service to banking sector. Since circulation of staff prevents us from obtaining what an exact number of workers, the company has about 450 employees. At the beginning, the company had no quality standards and most of the work processes were not documented, even documented processes were not consistent. After the commencement of the quality development project, work flows of processes were defined and documented. The company changed its organization according to the new process improvement model, called CMMI. In this case study, interviews performed with ten experts from inside of the company and three experts from outside of the company, observation diaries and assets of the company were data sources. Participant observation, questionnaire and document analysis were used as data gathering methods. Collected data were interpreted by descriptive analysis. As a result of the research, while resistance to change came out naturally, it is determined that transformation has four stages such as: &ldquo / motivation and adoption&rdquo / , &ldquo / adaptation&rdquo / , &ldquo / acceptance and implementation&rdquo / and finally &ldquo / use and improvement&rdquo / .

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