Development of the Operations Innovation Lab at Axis Communications

Abstract: Innovation plays an increasingly important role in many sectors, and receives growing interest from companies, researchers and nations. Increasing attention has been paid to the Front-End of Innovation (FEI), the initial part of the innovation process, where prociency has been shown to have the greatest impact on future innovation success. Research is however centered around product innovation in dedicated innovation teams. While such innovation remains a core driver of sustainable competitive advantage in companies, enabling other functions to innovate could allow them to scale more eciently and further contribute to competitive advantage, if managed well. In this single case study, a FEI process for Axis Communications' operations department (Operations) is proposed. Furthermore, key activities to conduct during FEI and Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for managing FEI at Operations are also identied. The study showed that a Stage-Gate process is well suited for Operations, and that both key activities and CSFs for Operations show large similarities with extant literature, as only minor modications had to be made. Implementing the process is expected to (1) increase innovative output, (2) enable and improve the progression from opportunity to evaluable concepts, (3) enable the development of radical innovation and (4) engage and enable coworkers in innovative work. The results could serve as inspiration for future research into how FEI could be managed in broader settings, and in operations departments more specically.