Information Systems and Innovation Capacity

A Crossindustry Intepretive Study

Abdelkader Achi

, Camille Salinesi

and Gianluigi Viscusi

Centre de Recherche en Informatique, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France

College of Management of Technology (CDM), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL),

Lausanne, Switzerland

Keywords: Innovation Capacity, Innovation Engineering, Interpretive Research, Maturity Models.

Abstract: Innovation is one of the many challenges raised by the digitalization of business and economy. In the

current competitive environment, businesses are characterized by radical transformations through

digitalization of services and products and their ability to innovate is increasingly linked to the exploration

and exploitation of information and communication technologies (ICTs). This paper investigates the role of

information systems (IS) as a key factor to innovation capacity. Starting from these issues, the paper

explores through an interpretative study of the IS innovation practices as well as perceptions by managers

within a sample of 7 French based companies from various industries. The interviews have been conducted

on with a guide built based on a framework on IS innovation capacity maturity. Consistently with the

framework, the interview guide addresses process areas and practices related to three core categories:

management, innovation engineering, and support. The study reveals 7 fundamental contradictions that can

explain the main tendencies observed across the companies, out of which the most striking is a generalized

lack of maturity when it comes to exploiting their Information Systems to foster innovation.

1 INTRODUCTION

This paper investigates innovation capacity,

particularly with regard to the actual challenges by

the digitalization of business. We start from the

observation that many businesses undergo radical

transformations through digitalization of services

and products, and the commonly accepted intuition

that their innovation capacity is increasingly linked

to the exploration and exploitation of information

and communication technologies (ICTs).

Yet, besides well known success cases (Google,

Apple, Facebook, Amazon), there is not yet – to the

best of our knowledge- a repository of best practices

structured according to an innovation model that

explicitly consider IS related innovation capacity

dimensions. The main goal of this paper is to draw a

map of IS-based innovation practices as well as

perceptions by managers within companies of

various industries.

Our observations and conclusions are drawn

from an interpretative study that was conducted with

an interview guide constructed based on the

framework proposed in (Achi and Salinesi, 2015).

The rest of the paper is structured as follows:

section 2 discusses definition of innovation capacity

and the role of IS in innovation capacity throughout

literature. Section 3 presents the method used to

build and conduct the interviews. Section 4 presents

the qualitative interview guide and the framework

that was used to build it. Section 5 reports the case

study results. The paper is finally closed with a

summary of the 7 contradictions revealed by the

study, and our perspective on the topic of IS based

innovation.

2 INNOVATION CAPACITY

Literature reveals that a wide range of factors impact

the capacity for innovation of a organizations (Koc,

2007; Sharma and Rai, 2003). Based on the

literature on dynamic capabilities (Teece et al.,

1997), Lawson and Samson (Lawson and Samson,

2001) point out that seven elements are relevant: (i)

vision and strategy, (ii) harnessing the competence

base, (iii) organizational intelligence, (iv) creativity

and idea management, (v) organizational structures

Achi, A., Salinesi, C. and Viscusi, G.

Information Systems and Innovation Capacity - A Crossindustry Intepretive Study.

In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2016) - Volume 2, pages 487-495

ISBN: 978-989-758-187-8

487

and systems, (vi) culture and climate, and (vii)

management of technology. Other works have

attempted to address the topic of innovation capacity

with generic maturity models (Essmann and Preez,

2009; Esterhuizen et al., 2012; Müller-Prothmann

and Stein, 2011; Toole et al., 2012), with relatively

similar elements to the ones of the Capacity

Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) (Carnegie

Mellon University, 2002). However, even though we

can daily observe the role of IT in business

innovation, none of these works really raise the

question of what are the key factors of innovation

led by the use of IS. IS-based innovation capacity

remains a topic worth investigating, with still a

relatively few number of specific contributions.

This paper focuses on the use of ICTs to enforce

the logic of services and the exploitation of network

externalities at the business level. The ideal situation

of interest here is when the IS constitutes the

fundamental infrastructure for open innovation as a

complement to traditional R and D, thus allowing

companies to work both with internal and external

stakeholders for new ideas and expertise

(Chesbrough, 2003; Chesbrough and Bogers, 2014;

Chesbrough and Rosenbloom, 2002; Chesbrough

and Spohrer, 2006; Chesbrough, 2003). However, IS

actually covers a wider field than ICTs (Avison and

Fitzgerald, 2006; Hirschheim and Klein, 2012),

encompassing, among others, the interactions

between the different stakeholders.

Besides this, the role of IT has evolved

(Guillemette and Paré, 2012; Morabito et al., 2015)

from a traditional role of support activity to the key

instrument of the business strategy (Applegate and

Elam, 1992). As a result, the outcome of innovation

depends on a combination of factors that span from

the organization of the company activities and on the

management of interactions with stakeholders, to the

IS itself, thus requiring a kind of systematic

approach or “innovation engineering” that

instantiates a specific and integrated innovation

model.

Innovation can take many forms such as for

instance new products, processes, organizational

forms, and business models(Chesbrough and

Rosenbloom, 2002; Link and Siegel, 2007;

Nambisan et al., 1999; Orlikowski, 1991). Taking

the above issues into account, this paper defines IS-

based innovation capacity (“innovation capacity” in

short) as the ability of an organization exploit its IS

to elaborate new products or create new markets by

combining strategic direction with innovative

processes.

3 METHODOLOGY

The method used in this work is the interpretive

approach to information systems research (Klein and

Myers, 1999; Walsham, 2006, 1993). The research

involves both researchers and practitioners, with the

aim to understand (a) how innovation capacity is

developed in different industries and (b) how IS are

considered part of innovation process either

influencing or influenced by it (Walsham, 1993).

To this end we adopt the framework which

backbone structure is shown in Table 1. The

framework is built as an interpretative tool to

investigate on real cases (a) the means provided by

IT managers involved in innovation initiatives (b)

the meaning they give to innovation capacity, (c) the

diverse maturity level, and (d) the role of IS. Mostly

interviews were used as for sources of evidence, as

discussed below.

The study was carried out following the 3 stages

discussed below: (i) building the sample, (ii)

performing the interviews, and (iii) analysis.

At the first stage each candidate company was

contacted to arrange a meeting for presenting the

research project with different stakeholders, mostly

decision makers or responsible of innovation

projects. The goal of this first 2 hours meeting was

to allow them to understand the purpose of the

research and identify the right people for the

interviews. 100 companies were contacted at this

stage, either directly, or during an event organized in

association with the French club of CIOs (Club

Urba-EA). Only 20 companies declared their

interest, and agreed to meet us. At the end of the

stage, the study could be carried on with 7 of these

companies. Table 2 shows the characteristics of

these companies. As the table shows it, all these

companies are based in France, face an uncertain

environment, and they operate in various business

sectors.

Table 1: Interpretive framework for innovation capacity maturity driven by IS.

Categories Process areas

Management

Innovation Strategy IS Governance

Innovation

engineering

Ideation Demonstration and Evaluation Project management Market launch

Support

Human capital Culture of Innovation Waking Knowledge management

ICEIS 2016 - 18th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

488

Table 2: Characteristics of the study companies.

Com-

pany

Business

sector

Function of the

interviewees

Number of

employees

A Software

-Senior Regional

Marketing

Manager

Southern EMEA

1 300

Software

-France and

Southern Europe

Marketing

Manager

2 400

C Bank

-IT Architect

-Technology

Driven

Innovation

manager

188 000

Industry of

cosmetics

and well-

being

-Digital IT

Manager

-Responsible of

Corporate

Architecture

15 000

Marketing

studies

-President 25

Automotive

industry

-Responsible of

innovation

184 804

Public

employmen

t agency

-Director of

digital program

54 000

At the second stage, interviews were carried out

with 9 innovation leaders from the 7 participating

companies. This was achieved from 8th December

2014 to 22nd July 2015. The 9 interviews last in

average 1 hour and 30 minutes, and the topics

followed the framework in Table 1, as discussed in

the next Section. In general, the focus of the

interviews was on innovation and digital

transformation. During this stage, each interviewee

(usually an IT manager responsible or involved in

innovation activities) was asked to specifying the

scope of the intervention and innovation process she

was involved in with regard to the business goals.

The interviews combined open and closed questions,

as defined in the interview guide presented below. It

is worth noting that during the interviews, the

researcher has left each interviewee the chance to

deal with new themes or practices and when asked to

disclose his/her views on the interview itself.

The third stage of the study was dedicated to the

transcription, coding and analysis of the data

collected during the interviews. At this stage, all the

results were shared with the interviewees to avoid

mistakes such as misunderstandings, poor

interpretations, or coding errors. Interviewees were

asked to return the data collected with their

comments, which were used by the researcher to

develop a further assessment summary that was also

systematically provided to each company involved.

The analysis of interview material was conducted by

process area, and for the sake of consistency, the

answers of all the interviewees were grouped by

company.

Once all the interviews achieved and the analysis

of all the results done for all companies, a global

maturity analysis for the identified innovation

practices has been performed. This was done by the

researchers directly involved in the interview

process study, and by one external researcher to

consolidate the analysis and develop an outside-in

perspective.

The identification of the level of maturity of

innovation practices of each company formed an

inventory at the time of the interviews, thus

facilitating the implementation of an improvement

plan for every context.

The interpretive framework shown in Table 1

that was used to guide the interview process is

inspired by the CMMI model because it is a globally

recognized reference for practitioners, giving rise to

new variants in other areas such as 4, e.g., systems

engineering, purchasing, service, among others

(Cross, 2002). Each process area is further

decomposed down to questions. Table 3 illustrates

this decomposition structure for the process areas of

“Culture of Innovation”.

Table 3: Practices and Questions in the process area

"Culture of Innovation".

Process area: Culture of innovation

Best Practice 1: To be open for experimentation

Question: Do you think your company encourages the

collaborators to experiment new ideas?

Best Practice 2: Agree to take risks

Question: In your opinion, does your company tolerate

the risk-taking?

Best Practice 3: Authorize the possible failure without

stigmatizing the collaborators

Question: Does your company encourage innovation

initiatives even if they may fail or produce errors?

The process areas are grouped in three categories:

management, innovation engineering, and support.

Each process area relies on a collection of so-called

“best practices” that are expected to allow

companies increase their innovation capacity.

In order to investigate the innovation practices of

companies in a systematic way, a series of question

is defined for each and every practice of all the

innovation process area. These questions were

designed for managers in charge or involved in

Information Systems and Innovation Capacity - A Crossindustry Intepretive Study

489

innovation initiatives in each of the considered

companies. Their purpose is to learn more about

each practice, its implementation and also explore

whether they have other best practices that we did

not initially identified in the framework.

The example shown in Table 3 presents 3

questions for the process area culture of innovation,

each corresponding to a particular best practice in

the process area. In summary, in order to explore the

different dimensions of innovation by IS in a

systematic way, the interview guide was created

starting from the collection of all questions attached

to all best practices from all the process area covered

by the framework. The interview guide (see

Appendix 1 for the details) gathers structured

questions around the process areas of the

framework, based on the six main issues identified

in both the management of IS and innovation

management literature:

1. Innovation strategy and IS governance

practices (innovation strategy, role of IT in

innovation, communication)

2. Organizational practices of innovation

engineering process (formalization of the

process, collaboration of internal and external

actors, methods and tools to develop the

capacity for innovation, the creativity-related

practices for employees and management)

3. Knowledge management practices (the skills

development, knowledge sharing to enhance

creativity and innovation)

4. Human capital management practices

(assessment of contributions, valuing

employees, and the creation of organizational

trust)

5. Culture of innovation practices (identity,

standards, habits, and the system of prohibitions

and obligations shared within the organization,

risk-taking, the right to make mistakes, and

experimentation culture)

6. Foresight practices (knowledge of customer

expectations and their evolutions, technology

trends watch).

4 RESULTS ANALYSIS

Overall, the interpretive study has showed an

increasing interest of both IT and business

managers, especially in the innovation process

through the use of IS. In particular, there is a clear

interest in implementing an IT innovation unit

within the Department of Information Systems (DIS)

and/or launching dedicated projects for innovation

and digital transformation.

Another initial observation is that often the

interviewees wondered about the methods,

techniques and tools allowing to innovate faster and

meet the challenges of an increasingly uncertain and

complex environment.

Our analysis of the results is presented under two

forms (a) a summary for each company, and (b) by

process area, for all the companies from the sample.

4.1 Analysis of Innovation Practices by

Company

Innovation practices driven by IS in the various

companies are quite varied, as the summary below,

for each company in the sample, show it.

Company A: IS occupies an important place in the

innovation strategy. The innovation process is

simplified into three phases (ideation, validation and

implementation) and a key indicator of innovation is

generated turnover. Organizational practices of the

firm show a high level of maturity compared to the

rest of the sample (considering: culture of

innovation, diversity of profiles, small project teams,

partnerships with actors of the ecosystem, strong

commitment to develop the internal human capital,

organizational environment of trust, management

style adapted). The interviewee points out that

European regulations are a constraint to innovation

for her company.

Company B: The DIS and the marketing drive

Innovation. Emerging technologies and IS are at the

heart of the innovation process. The company

operates in startup style to facilitate interaction of

internal and external stakeholders (e.g., customers,

research chairs, suppliers) to manage innovation.

The internal environment increases motivation,

curiosity and entrepreneurship, relying on multiple

methods and techniques to innovate.

Company C: The organization does not have a

proper process for innovation through the use of

IT/IS. The organizational structure is highly

hierarchical, and the process of decision-making is

very long with a low confidence level. The adopted

model of innovation is closed, exception made for

some innovative products exploiting external

cooperation. Internal communication on innovation

is very weak, while the company communicates

intensively on innovation outside (through

newspaper communication, advertisement,

sponsoring of innovation events, etc). It is worth

noting that this organization does not have a culture

ICEIS 2016 - 18th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

490

of innovation and does not invest in the development

of its human capital to strengthen the innovation

capacity.

Company D: There is no formalized process of

innovation, recognized and implemented by all

stakeholders (CIO, Business - or other- units),

whereas IT is perceived as a profit center. The

control and decision-making mechanisms are little

adapted to the process of innovation despite the

existence of a 2 year old budget dedicated to IT

innovation. However, the company recognizes the

existence of best practices of innovation

notwithstanding the difficulties related to the lack of

internal sponsorship.

Company E: The emerging technologies and IS are

at the heart of the innovation strategy and the

company's offer. Information system is a key factor

in the innovation strategy and best practices in the

treatment of human capital, and it is explicitly the

basis for a culture of innovation are for its

implementation. As the company is a marketing

service provider, the outcome of the innovation

process ultimately depends on interventions related

to customer management.

Company F: The business is aware of the

importance of emerging technologies in the process

of innovation. It has no dedicated IT/ IS strategy

despite the support of the top management to

innovation initiatives. However, the company has

implemented projects that meet the processing needs

(e.g., connected car), even if the current regulation is

not yet in line with the innovations provided. The

human capital is at the heart of the innovation

strategy. In fact, the organization has the expertise to

set the necessary conditions for employees dedicated

to innovation; however, the setting cannot be

generalized to all staff because of the high cost.

Thus, the company fosters innovation by investing

on the human capital mainly in dedicated projects.

The maturity level of the innovation practices is high

but concentrated only in the limited area of some

innovation projects.

Company G: The organization does not have an IT-

based strategy of innovation. However, in the last

three years, the company has carried out projects of

digital transformation, sponsored by the top

management. Thus, within the scope of these

transformation projects, the company has an average

level of maturity of the innovation practices, with a

short-term organizational mode. Indeed, there is no

formalized process of innovation, recognized and

implemented by all stakeholders (DIS-business-

Others units). Furthermore, because of an internal

organizational culture unsuited to the requirements

of innovation, the management in charge of digital

transformation relies on external actors by selecting

a small internal team (5 people) to carry out the

projects and avoid lead change within the

organization.

4.2 Analysis of Innovation Practices by

Process Area

Innovation Strategy and IS Governance Practices

The analysis conducted on the sample shows that

none of the considered companies has a formally

defined innovation strategy dedicated to innovation

through the use of IS; while at the same time the

majority of interviewees notify the importance of

having a strategy and a clear vision for innovation in

an uncertain environment. The governance of

innovation within DIS is characterized in most of the

cases by less formalized control, communication and

sponsoring. In general, it is worth noting the

development of IT innovation units within DIS or

small entities dedicated to IT innovation or digital

transformation. The DIS recognizes the existence of

difficulties to collaborate with businesses for

innovation. Furthermore, the DIS defines the means

and actions to be implemented to make the IS an

innovation lever for business value. Yet, the

governance of the IT/Business ecosystem becomes a

relevant predominant requirement in most the

industries considered. In summary, the innovation

process by the IS results as being at an early stage

with companies not having feedbacks or indicators

on the related activities.

Organizational Practices of Innovation

Engineering Process

The majority of the companies in our sample does

not have a formalized innovation process,

recognized and implemented by all stakeholders.

Some companies have simplified the process into

three phases (ideation team, validation, and

implementation). Others focus on the management

of innovation projects without giving the required

attention and importance to the process itself since

the initial stages. The interviewees expressed the

need to support the activities as a standard and

recognized process for all stakeholders.

All interviewees recognized the importance of

multidisciplinary teams in innovation activities. As

for partnerships, the implementation of open

innovation practices start being adopted and

broadcast despite the persistence of mistrust inherent

to the risks related to openness.

Information Systems and Innovation Capacity - A Crossindustry Intepretive Study

491

Knowledge Management Practices

The knowledge management dedicated to innovation

is often poorly understood and generally equated

with knowledge bases that are difficult to exploit in

practice. Crowdsourcing practices, knowledge

sharing within communities and organizational

learning are very present in most of the DIS, the

majority of companies have infrastructures

supporting these practices but the appropriate level

of familiarity with the required technologies is not

consistent across business units.

Human Capital Management Practices

The interviewees agree that their companies offer

talents the freedom to express themselves and

promote the development of expertise; however, the

social climate, the well-being of employees and

adoption of a human capital management adapted to

innovation remain weak. The synergy between

internal and external human capital is non-existent

except for structures in which prevails a startup

spirit. It is worth noting that companies in the

sample having an Anglo-Saxon origin (A, B) note a

step ahead in terms of innovation practices related to

human capital management through the development

of training systems, recognition and creation of an

enabling environment for innovation.

Culture of Innovation Practices

Culture innovation practices are present or in

progress in small-scale structures. In large size

companies (in terms of number of employees and

units), the hierarchical structure represents a major

constraint to develop a suitable culture that enables

innovation practices (Companies G and C). The

companies of the sample that have an Anglo-Saxon

culture (Companies A and B), encourage employees

to take initiatives, accept risk taking and give time to

develop innovations.

Practices of the Foresight

Technology trends watch and business practices are

implemented in all the firms in the sample. However

not systematically involved, the DIS guarantees

coverage of the technological watch in all strategic

areas. Nevertheless, the results of trends analyses are

often not used systematically or only by a small part

of the staff of the companies in the sample. An

exception is Company A, where the results are

systematically sent to all employees. Finally, we

found a high level of maturity of foresight practices

in the companies operating in the ICT (company A

and B) or in nearby industries (company E).

5 CONCLUSIONS

CIOs and people in charge of IS who engage in

innovation and in the digital transformation of their

businesses have only this magic word in mouth:

"innovate!".

We are witnessing a renewal of organizational

and managerial practices that results -to a very large

extent- from the perceived benefits of a technology-

driven innovation. In particular ICT and information

systems has played a critical role in the rise of new

open innovation systems. Companies have never had

so many opportunities and strong demands of

increasingly sophisticated products and services in

their ecosystems.

Innovation is in the DNA of digital natives. But

for older companies and businesses, for

administrations, implementing good innovation

practices cannot be commanded in a snap of a

finger. This is a permanent improvement issue that

takes all the business dimensions (cultural,

organizational, human, etc). Where to begin? What

is the effectiveness of the various practices? How to

evaluate the strengths and places of improvement of

companies in terms of ICT based innovation?

This paper reports an exploratory study that was

conducted among 6 large French companies and 1

small French company (E) from different sectors.

The study was built as an interpretative study based

on interviews. The interview guide was a

questionnaire developed from a CMMI-like

innovation framework. Through this study, we

observed a change in the vision of managers on

organizational innovation process. Table 4 shows the

Fundamental contradictions emerging from the

analysis of the interviews. It was often seen as a

black box without the need to define a standard

process. The study also demonstrates that innovation

units or services innovation within directions of

information systems emerged only in the last five

years. In fact, we noticed that the majority of

interviewees raised the problematic of organizing

the innovation process internally and with the

ecosystems of different companies (see, e.g.

Contradiction 2, 4, 5 in Table 4). As soon as this

idea emerges, managers are faced with the lack of

reference or model of best practices easy to

implement in order to support the transformation of

business and to federate all stakeholders to innovate

and they have little to return 'experience (see, e.g.

Contradiction 2 and 4 in Table 4).

The study shows that despite the dispersion of

their maturity levels, companies (at least within the

sample) mostly agree on good practices.

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492

Table 4: Fundamental contradictions.

Contradictions Evidence Process areas Companies

1. Formalize the innovation strategy! But:

innovation is the strategy (sic).

- No formal innovation

strategy

- Development of IT

innovation units within

DIS or small entities

dedicated to IT

innovation or digital

transformation

- Innovation

Strategy

- IS Governance

A, B, C, D, E, F,

2. Standardize the innovation processes! But:

innovation processes are not even documented.

- There is no formalized

process of innovation

Innovation process :

- Ideation

- Demonstration

and Evaluation

-Project

Management

- Market launch

C, D, E, G

3. Create networks of multidisciplinary teams!

But innovation stays centralized.

- Develop innovative

projects without

standard approach

Innovation process :

- Ideation

- Demonstration

and Evaluation

-Project

Management

- Market launch

4. Foster open innovation! But sensible

information cannot be disclosed.

- The organizational

structure is highly

hierarchical, and the

process of decision-

making is very long with

a low confidence level

Innovation process :

- Ideation

- Demonstration

and Evaluation

-Project

Management

- Market launch

A, B, C, D, E, F,

5. Exploit the knowledge management tool!

But: people don’t understand it and how to

overcome the barrier of rigidity.

- Innovation process

with different opening

levels

Knowledge

management

C, D, F, G

6. Take a risk by betting on talents! But do not

give them right to fail.

- Management wants all

initiatives conclude with

innovations and does not

accept to take risks (D)

- Managers do not allow

the eventual failure and

employees are at risk of

being stigmatized on

failure (C)

Culture of

Innovation

C, D

7. Keep up to date with trends! But maintain

stability.

- This organization does

not have a culture of

innovation and does not

invest in the

development of its

human capital to

strengthen the

innovation capacity.

Waking

A, B, C, D, E, F,

What is the role of Information Systems in handling

these contradictions? Of course IS can participate to

innovation in the sense of embedding new

technology, or delivering services through new

technologies. But also, interestingly, they can be

used to build and deliver innovative services, they

can be shaped to create networks of innovators

within, outside and across companies, they can be

built in a way that let actors and customers

participate to innovation. Last, IS government

bodies can use the design thinking methodology

usually employed to develop IS to shape the

innovation strategy, and document and standardize

innovation processes – just like any other business

Information Systems and Innovation Capacity - A Crossindustry Intepretive Study

493

or engineering process.

More evidence needs to be gathered, cases

documented, techniques experimented and

replicated. We wonder if sharing experiences

between researchers and practitioners could fuel this

process of continuous improvement of practices and

help finding the levers adapted to each business

context to strengthen the capacity for innovation.

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APPENDIX 1

Qualitative interview guide

Introduction: presentation by the researcher of the

research project, presented by the respondent of his

company and of its function, concepts of innovation

and maturity model (What is innovation? What are the

different forms of innovation? What is a maturity

model, and why use it?).

Innovation strategy and IS governance practices

What is the place of innovation in your business

strategy? Do you have you an innovation strategy?

How important are IS do in your innovation strategy /

innovation processes? What are your current strategic

priorities in innovation? In your opinion, does the IT

management sponsor innovation and promote creative

and innovative practices? Does your company use IS

to obtain a competitive advantage? In your business,

what are currently the IS priority? Is your strategy /

approach to innovation communicated to all

collaborators?

Organizational practices of innovation engineering

process

What is the unit that brings innovation within the

company? What type of organization your company set

up to lead the innovation process? Do you have an

IS/IT Innovation unit? Do you have a clearly

formalized innovation process? In your opinion, has

your company a relationship with customers close

enough to enable a strong ability to anticipate their

needs and innovation in products/services? Are your

processes depending/relying on your ecosystem

(customers, suppliers, competitors, communities,

experts, universities)? In your company, is it important

that the innovation teams are composed mainly: the IT

staff, people with business skills and/or

multidisciplinary skills? Do you have a unit dedicated

to innovation within the IT department? Are your

managerial practices adapted to innovation (delay in

decision-making, autonomy, etc.)? What techniques

and tools do you use to innovate? How do you assess

your innovation projects? Is your innovation process

based on control within the boundaries of the enterprise

since the emergence of the idea until the placing on the

market or else do you favor openness? Have you done

innovations? Over the past four years, has your IT unit

worked on innovation issues? What is the average

number of ideas generated / innovation projects every

year? What were your innovations over the last four

years? What is the number of employees working on

innovation projects or the number day man / year?

Knowledge management practices

Does your management encourage the sharing of

knowledge? Do you have a knowledge management

process? Do you use that knowledge to innovate? Do

you combine internal and external ideas to innovate?

Do you promote your internal ideas outside the

company? Do you use the crowd to produce knowledge

or innovate? Has your company or IT unit developed

practices / tools to promote knowledge sharing?

Human capital management practices

Does your company implement devices for employees

to learn, train and develop their skills to innovate? How

do you judge the mood of your teams? Do you assess

the contributions of employees on innovation? Do you

have a compensation system to motivate employees to

propose creative ideas? How do you staff your

innovation teams within your company? In your

opinion, does your company ensure that the internal

environment is encouraging intellectual curiosity and

motivation of employees?

Culture of innovation practices

Do you think your company encourages employees to

experiment with new ideas? In your opinion, does your

company tolerate risk taking? Does your company

encourage innovation initiatives even if that results in

failure or errors? Does your company gives you the

freedom to use some of your time to develop creative

ideas? Is your corporate culture based on continuous

improvement and ambition? Do you think there is a

synergy between the culture of innovation and your

company's cultural model?

Foresight practices

Do you think the objectives of technological and

business intelligence are clearly defined? Does you

organization continuously/regularly watch

technological/innovation trends to identify

opportunities and threats? Is your IT department

responsible for the technological intelligence within

your company? Do you organize joint discussions with

business on the development of ICT-Business

processes to develop new products/services offering?

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