INTRODUCTION

Innovation is on the mind of most executives and is part of almost every company's strategic plan (Lengnick-Hall, 1992; Govindarajan & Trimble, 2005; Kim & Mauborgne, 2005). The need to innovate, and to do so effectively and efficiently, is essential to one's ability to endure and thrive in a fiercely competitive marketplace.

In today's hyper-competitive marketplace, organizations that have robust processes for innovation will lead their industries. Newly emerging companies, such as Google and Amazon, have been successful at innovating at rates faster than their traditional counterparts. We can also find successful innovation programs at traditional organizations. These organizations adapt to changing market conditions and execute innovative strategies in a range of effective ways:

These aforementioned traditional companies have found a recipe for successful innovation. Moreover, they have found a recipe for sustainable innovation programs rather than mere spurts of innovation. The question then becomes: what is their recipe?

Many organizations continue to fare poorly when it comes to development of sustainable innovation programs (Tushman & O'Reilly, 2002). One reason for this is poor understanding of the process of innovation (Christensen & Raynor, 2003). The process of innovation may seem complex and difficult to control or orchestrate. Many organizations continue to take a black box approach--only by chance or by happenstance might some ideas catch fire, and only those lucky ideas are investigated, developed, and commercialized. Innovation may seem disruptive to normal business operations because there are no standard procedures, rulebooks or guidelines. Consider the following quotes:

'Innovation is a must to survive in our environment.... All of my [executive] colleagues understand the need for innovation and are 100% supportive of employees who innovate.... Yet, I cannot say that we have an organizational process for innovation ... innovation happens, but I cannot outline the process to you because I do not think we have one.'--CEO, Information Technology Organization

'A process for innovation is missing in this organization.... One reason why I have been harping on setting up a process, or at least a template, is the need to measure our efforts ... we spend money on [R&D] workshops, brainstorming retreats, experimentation, and a million other things; some of these work and some don't.... I could not tell you where are the strengths and weaknesses of our innovation capacities.... I can guess that we are very good at getting ideas from our employees, and not so good at the ways we commercialize the ideas ... but these are my guesses.... It is difficult to manage with guesswork.'--VP of Research, Information Technology Organization

In too many organizations, innovation occurs by serendipity rather than by deliberate management. Without a process to understand, stimulate, and analyze innovation and an organization's strengths and weaknesses around innovation, most companies rely upon serendipity. Waiting for inspiration to strike is not a sustainable method of securing competitive advantage (Von Oetinger, 2005).

Having a well-defined innovation process is important. However, we found following that simple rule difficult to implement. We posit that this difficulty is caused by the inherent and complex nature of innovation, which demands organizational robustness and flexibility. In this paper, we use the concept of robustness to designate organizations that are successful in repeated instances of innovation. We define 'robust organizations' as the ones with well defined innovation processes and clear-cut protocols for the evaluation and screening of ideas. Robust organizations use an established innovation process to create a common framework for the management of ideas, from their inception to commercialization. Moreover, they constantly seek to refine and optimize their innovation processes. On the contrary, 'brittle organizations' are defined as the ones without well-defined and vigorous innovation processes. In brittle organizations, innovation steps are laden with confusion and indecision. These organizations miss good innovation opportunities, and they are not able to swiftly recover from the mistakes and failures in their innovation efforts. As a result, these brittle organizations are exposed to more risk. They may have spurts of innovation. They may even be good at one or more stages of innovation, but may fare poorly in other stages (e.g., commercialization).

This paper seeks to outline a framework of organizational innovation practice. Such a framework will help to introduce and manage timely organizational actions, and will make the voyage from idea generation to product commercialization both efficient and effective. We will use industry examples to illustrate organized and systematic approaches that managers can follow in each stage of innovation. Our aim is to explore how organizations with less effective innovation processes can improve their practices and become robust organizations. Moreover, by making this complex process transparent, managers are able to advance each of the stages by infusing them with knowledge-based activities. In light of that view, this paper focuses on the following questions: What are the stages of the innovation process? What are the various issues that organizations face as they move through the innovation process? What are the differences between organizations with successful and vigorous innovation processes and those without such innovation guidelines? And, what can managers do in order to make their innovation efforts successful?

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

We draw on several case studies gathered from the large-scale research project, Ideas for Innovation. (1) We found that organizations with a defined and robust process for innovation normally fare better at developing sustainable innovation programs. Researching various innovation issues in an exploratory-type study allowed for a rich qualitative understanding of contemporary business practices.

We first reviewed relevant streams of existing research. From existing literature, relevant characteristics of successful innovation processes and issues surrounding them were derived. Exploratory multiple case study research design was chosen, as case studies are particularly useful for problems where the context of action is critical (Benbasat, Goldstein & Mead, 1987), and the research and theory are at formative stages or call for a revision of understanding (Lee, 1991). Using this approach, researchers can gain a rich understanding of the context of the research.

We chose multiple sources of evidence, as this facilitates a deeper understanding of the research phenomenon. Our sample of over 30 diverse American and European companies ranged from financial services to information technology, federal research and development laboratories, advertising agencies, non-profits, manufacturers, retailers, and pharmaceutical organizations. Data collection involved semi-structured interviews with senior executives from R&D, marketing, and product management areas. The interview data were complemented by analysis of corporate and annual reports, company presentations, and business press. Most interviews were conducted on-site. On average, six executives were interviewed per organization. The interviews ranged from half-hour to over four hours, with the average being about ninety minutes. In follow-up sessions, findings and interpretations for each company were reviewed and validated with the help of key informants to improve the credibility of the research findings. Upon completion of the research project, the researchers presented their integrative findings to several of the organizations. The findings were received positively; both by organizations who originally participated in the research project and other organizations only had a chance to hear the final findings.

THE INNOVATION PROCESS

Most organizations encourage innovation and discuss the need for it, but do not specify a process of innovation (Dobni, 2006). The first sign of a successful innovation program in an organization is the presence of a defined innovation process. The very act of defining and creating a common language around innovation encourages those within an organization to value and critically consider innovation processes. Consider the following:

'One of the most difficult things that we undertook was to articulate the process of innovation. We were coming up with new ideas, discoveries, and solutions to client problems, and even new business models for revenue generation. All of these were good. However, we asked the question, how good are we at coordinating resources for truly leveraging the value of these innovation? ... Are we exploiting each of the ideas to the maximum? Are we crafting our ideas in the most efficient manner? Are the appropriate experts evaluating ideas?.... The need for an organizationalwide process of innovation was clear.'--VP of Global Markets, Consumer Products Organization

Based on our analysis, the following stages of the innovation process are the most common: generation and mobilization, advocacy and screening, experimentation, commercialization, and diffusion and implementation (see Figure 1). The stages are interlinked in a cyclical manner. An organization may choose to execute each stage on its own, outsource it, or execute it in conjunction with external entities (e.g. customers or business partners). An idea, whether internally or externally generated, moves through a series of stages before it is adopted wholly into a company or a marketplace. The stages of the innovation process detail the major steps that an idea must go through to become fully implemented and accepted. Not all ideas complete all stages of the innovation process, but all ideas that lead to novel practices which are integrated into a company or products and services that are commercialized for the marketplace do pass through these stages.