Creative Control : How to Manage Innovation and New Product Development

Abstract: The topic of this research is to explore to what extent innovation and new product development (NPD) are managed with formal and informal control mechanisms respectively and in combination in five international food industry companies. The topic deals with finding an understanding of controlling innovation processes which require freedom to some extent but at the same time are to be managed in order to keep track of the resources. Cases’ selection was designed to bring variation and catch the complexity of the phenomenon by studying one prime case and validating the results with four minor case companies’ results. The findings of the study indicate that first of all formal and informal control mechanisms coexist and interact and secondly that a more informal and personalized take is beneficial in R&D settings.