The Role of Innovation Management in Enterprises - Assessment of Maturity Levels, Innovation Types and Necessary Competences

Innovation and the capability to innovate have a high relevance within the European Union. They have a strong impact on economic growth, productivity and play a critical role in providing opportunities for new jobs. Companies have to deal with several innovation tasks and manage those tasks. We hypothesize that innovation is of growing relevance for companies and their future business. We conducted a survey with 199 companies in Germany, Austria, Italy and Switzerland about the level of innovation. Using innovation maturity levels showed that less than ten percent of all companies are dealing with “future-shaping” projects, which might enable new business fields. A comparison of the importance of different types of innovation now and in five years shows an increasing relevance especially for business model - and process innovation. Furthermore, more than 35 necessary skills and competences for innovation managers were surveyed. A certain open-mindedness of the participating companies towards innovation in general is recognizable. When looking on the results of our survey the increasing role and significance of innovation management’s relevance as well as on typical tasks and needed skills for employees cannot be denied.