In order to stay efficient, companies need to improve their existing business processes on a continuous basis. To ensure competitive edge, it is essential for companies to adapt radically to new business opportunities and when external demands change. However, experience and research show that companies have difficulties managing both the continuous improvement of the existing system and radical change at the same time. By using TQM and BPR to represent the two approaches to change Tor Tønnessen contributes to the understanding of the challenges of this integration and shows ways to accomplish a successful synergistic combining of the two approaches.

Achieving a well-balanced innovation portfolio is an often advocated goal for R&D managers, but guidelines how to achieve this are scarce in the innovation and management literature. In this study, we investigate the effects that balancing R&D budget allocation between exploratory and exploitative innovation activities has on new product performance. Furthermore, we distinguish between product and process exploratory and exploitative innovation activities offering a new and highly relevant contingency perspective on the requirement to balance exploratory and exploitative innovation activities within a portfolio. In doing so, we integrate these two important dimensions of innovative activity in a framework that can help senior managers to decide how to allocate scarce R&D resources within an innovation portfolio to maximize returns. Based on a unique data set of objective, internal financial accounting data from strategic business units in the chemical industry, we found not only that new product performance is enhanced through the simultaneous pursuit of exploratory and exploitative innovation activities (i.e., they are complementary) which holds true for product and process innovation alike. But we are also able to show that in process innovation, exploration requires more funding to achieve maximal performance when compared to product innovation. An imbalance of exploration and exploitation has less severe consequences than in product innovation efforts. Our study design that is based on firm-internal R&D budget data allows R&D managers to directly compare their budget allocation practice with our findings that are derived from a wide range of business units in one of the main process industries. Furthermore, our results have important implications for the practice of R&D budget allocation, since they highlight how product and process innovation efforts differ with respect to their impact of the exploration-exploitation balance on new product performance relationship.

Monograph on the fundamental dilemma between productivity and Innovation in the motor vehicle industry in the USA - following a historical account of the evolution of automobile design, shows how obstacles set by competitiveness, automation, etc. Shaped the course of technological change, and includes case studies with their respective chronology of events. Bibliography pp. 251 to 258, diagrams, graphs, photographs, references and statistical tables.

Patrick Schulze investigates the performance effects and organizational antecedents of innovation strategies and, in particular, ambidexterity.

This book is the first to present a rich selection of over 30 real-world cases of how leading organizations conduct Business Process Management (BPM). The cases stem from a diverse set of industry sectors and countries on different continents, reporting on best practices and lessons learned. The book showcases how BPM can contribute to both exploitation and exploration in a digital world. All cases are presented using a uniform structure in order to provide valuable insights and essential guidance for students and practitioners.

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 2,3, Free University of Berlin (Fachbereich Wirtschaftswissenschaften ), course: Seminar Innovative Organization, language: English, abstract: Internationalization, shorter product life cycles and increasing complexity have lead to a situation in today’s world where organizations around the globe, on every level of the innovation process and in every industry, face increasing competition. Especially affected by these characteristics are high-tech industries, which are often characterized through a high rate of product novelties, cutting edge technology and rapidly changing industry standards. Examples for hightechnology industries that have been used in academic journal articles and that have been subject to empirical research are the robotic industry, the semiconductor industry and the optical disc industry. Especially in those industries organizations rely on constant and ongoing innovation to create and sustain competitive advantages and, therefore, to stay in business. Those innovative companies that constantly innovate and that are characterized through a high level of entrepreneurship can also be illustrated as “knowledge-creating companies” or “learning organization”. But what makes them so innovative? How do they choose an innovation style? How is innovation managed? My point in this paper will be that innovation management should be able to answerer the following three questions: “How?” Which innovation style is used “When?” On which level of the innovation process is a style used “Why?” Reason for the innovation style used on that level These questions seem to be most important since Fagerberg states in the introduction of the Oxford Handbook of Innovation: “In spite of the large amount of research in this area during the past fifty years, we know much less about why and how innovation occurs than what it leads to.” Additionally, the question of “when?” is added to conceptualize the innovation process into dependent innovation process levels that follow each other in a distinct order. To answerer these questions I will start with a general description of what innovation is, what exploration and exploitation are, I will describe the general setting in which organizations have to operate and what defines an innovative organization.

Featuring contributions from prominent thinkers and researchers, this volume in the "Advances in Management Information Systems" series provides a rich set of conceptual, empirical, and introspective studies that epitomize fundamental knowledge in the area of Business Process Transformation. Processes are interpreted broadly to include operational and managerial processes within and between organizations, as well as those involved in knowledge generation. Transformation includes radical and incremental change, its conduct, management, and outcome. The editors and contributing authors pay close attention to the role of IS organizations and information technologies in facilitating business process transformation. Each chapter places major emphasis on clearly articulating the "knowledge" generated, both theoretical and applied. The book incorporates case studies and tables throughout, and provides fundamental grounding for any stakeholder of business process transformation.