Success within Front End of Innovation- Recommendations for enabling creation anddevelopment of ideas at Atlas Copco,Construction Tools
Abstract: Several researchers talk about how the greatest source of competitive advantage is a firm's capability to be innovative, and it is a fact that economic growth is built upon innovations and ideas. Ideas belong to the early activities of innovation processes, which can be defined as he front end of innovation (FEI). FEI has clearly been stated to be crucial for the innovative performance of firms, but yet an area which many companies often lack of handling in a structured way. What need to be considered for a successful FEI has laid the foundation of this thesis. The aim with the thesis is to investigate what are key success factors and common pitfalls for processes and activities within the FEI, and how these can be handled by management. The thesis is also investigating how ideas and innovations can be measured in order to take the right decisions for different types of ideas by a suitable level of decision-makers. The thesis was carried out as a case study at Construction Tools division at Atlas Copco who had expressed the same demand as many companies appear to struggle with: a structured FEI. The goal with the thesis is therefore to propose recommendations towards a successful FEI, including structures, methods, and tools for the case company. In order to do so, twelve semistructured qualitative interviews with internal employees followed by ten semi-structured qualitative interviews with external companies in different industries and sizes were conducted. Along with the case study, a literature study was also performed. The collected data were analyzed and benchmarked towards the literature and the research questions, which resulted in several conclusions which are both general as well as organizational specific for the case company. These are amongst others: a structured innovation portfolio management including clear budget allocation and innovation strategy; enabling a creative culture; separating staff for conducting work regarding disruptive ideas; involvement by top management in the development of ideas.
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