Innovation chains

It remains to be seen whether China can create its own innovation chain from R D to commercial implementation. Given the prerequisites of political stability, committed leadership, adequate allocation of resources and a functioning infrastructure of research and training institutions, the future can be very promising. 

In the same dictionary, innovation is defined as the introduction of novelties the alteration of what is established and something newly introduced a novel practice or method . We can re-interpret this for the industrial environment as the introduction of new products, application processes or services to the market based on prior knowledge . Thus, innovation in R D is the generation of new ideas, which can then be used to produce these new products, processes and services. It should be obvious that this is an activity that does respond directly to planning. Certainly, at the development end of the innovation chain, rigorous planning is a prerequisite and this is covered in Section D on Project Management. 

This black and white separation of creativity and innovation is fine in theory, but in practice is false. Creativity is required at all stages in the innovation chain leading to the development and introduction of new products processes and services. Creativity represents the birth ofideas, innovation the process by which those ideas reach fruition. 

With the increased importance of getting new products into the market quickly, the time-to- market issue, attempts have been made to reduce the number of decisions points and stages in a streamlined process. Time equates to money, therefore the sooner a company is able to get a product to market the sooner it can recoup its expenditure on R D. Guidelines for achieving this time reduction in the length of the innovation chain will be given, with particular emphasis on the role R D Management plays in this process. 

Successful management of the innovation chain from idea to marketable product in the shortest possible time is the key task. 

The time taken to travel along the innovation chain (see Figure DIO), known as the lead-time, can vary from several months in speciality chemical companies to many years in pharmaceutical companies. This wide variation can, in part, be explained by... 

Having dealt with the selection and evaluation of projects for R D, the steps in the Innovation Chain and the importance of time compression management in the introduction of new products, the next topic to cover is the management of projects, with particular emphasis on the managerial skills that are required. 

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