Managing Early Phases of Innovation Processes and the Use of Methods within Empirical Results From an Industry Survey

Innovation processes demand for a powerful and far sighted management. A key to manage innovation are measures, which need to comprise potential success factors in order to impact on validity. Companies have to prioritize their challenges within the topic of innovation and technology management. The paper introduces to measuring innovation success and proposes a combined index value. A survey focused on innovation processes and method application within 87 companies identifies potential success factors for new product development (NPD). The survey enlightens the intensity of method application within the development process. Results are related to successful and less successful companies and highlight the importance of systematic method application in NPD processes. The authors conclude that more efforts to explicitly define processes have to be done by the management. Furthermore the study indicates that the application of particular methods during the whole process leads to a higher innovation success.