scholarly journals Enhancing Rural Innovation and Sustainability Through Impact Assessment: A Review of Methods and Tools

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (16) ◽  
pp. 6559
Author(s):  
So Young Lee ◽  
José M. Díaz-Puente ◽  
Pablo Vidueira

Assessing impacts in innovation contexts/settings with the aim of fostering sustainability requires tackling complex issues. Literature shows that key sources of this complexity relate to the need to integrate the local context; identify the underlying problems; engage key stakeholders; and reflect on their feedback throughout the innovation process. A systematic literature review on innovation impact assessment reveals that social impacts have been the most studied, thus, where promising methods and tools were used. Nevertheless, there are many unresolved issues beyond assessing social impacts in innovation processes. Literature highlights that building on co-creating innovation processes that respond to stakeholders’ real needs and context, and adapting to changing circumstances by integrating timely feedback from stakeholders are two critical challenges calling for a systems thinking approach. This study proposes Developmental Evaluation (DE) as a systemic approach to evaluation which supports adaptive development in complex environments and that adds value by integrating continuous feedback from diverse stakeholders. As a non-prescriptive evaluation approach in terms of methods and tools, DE can provide meaningful guidance to use diverse methods and tools in furthering ongoing development and adaptation in innovation processes by linking the evaluation activities—impact assessment among them—with the DE principles that are situational, adaptive and continuously responsive.

Polar Record ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 315-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jackie Bronson ◽  
Bram F. Noble

The need to address the human health implications of northern development is well founded, and the role of health determinants in environmental impact assessment is increasingly recognised; however, there is limited understanding of the nature of health determinants and current practices in northern project assessment and decision making. This paper reports on a study of the nature and use of health determinants in Canadian northern environmental impact assessment, and discusses the key challenges to, and opportunities for, improved practice. Four themes emerged from this study. First, the consideration of health is limited to physical environments and the physical determinants of health, with limited attention to broader social and cultural health determinants. Second, when health is considered in northern project impact assessments such considerations rarely carry forward to post-project approval monitoring of health determinants and evaluation of health impact management programmes. Third, while there is general consensus that health determinants should be an integral part of northern impact assessment, there exist different expectations of the role of health determinants in project evaluation and decision making due in large part to different understandings and interpretations of health. Finally, a broader conceptualisation of health and health determinants in northern environmental impact assessment is required; one that takes into consideration northern cultures and knowledge systems, and is adaptive to local context, geography and life cycles.


2017 ◽  
Vol 107 (03) ◽  
pp. 189-193
Author(s):  
M. Röhm ◽  
T. Prof. Bauernhansl ◽  
T. Schrodi

Für eine marktgerechte Produktentwicklung gibt es in Anlehnung an das Technologie-Reifegradmodell eine Vielzahl von Ansätzen, die den Entwicklungsstand von Technologie und Markt bewerten. Um im Innovationsprozess produktionsstrategische Lücken rechtzeitig aufzuzeigen, müssen Entwicklungsprozesse von Technologie, Markt und Produktion jedoch ganzheitlich betrachtet werden. Hierfür werden unterschiedliche Reifegradmodelle gegenübergestellt, Korrelationen aufgezeigt und erfolgsentscheidende Entwicklungsstufen abgeleitet.   Based on the technology maturity model, there is a variety of approaches describing the maturity of market demand and technology in order to combine technology push and market pull perspectives. However, to be able to show strategic gaps during the innovation process, development processes of technology, market and manufacturing skills have to be viewed holistically. For this purpose, the authors present different degrees of maturity models, show correlations and derive critical fields of action.


2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (06) ◽  
pp. 1340016 ◽  
Author(s):  
JUSTYNA DĄBROWSKA ◽  
IRINA FIEGENBAUM ◽  
ANTERO KUTVONEN

Open innovation holds great potential for improving the efficiency of companies' innovation processes, but also presents substantial risks. A key issue in innovation management is finding the right balance of openness, i.e., determining how open companies should be in their innovation activities. However, academics and business practitioners hold conflicting notions of what constitutes open innovation practice and of how "open innovation companies" are defined. In this paper, we present three in-depth case studies of global R&D-intensive companies, where we find that the firms' perception of their openness differs from their actual situation (as determined by the innovation practices that they apply), and that each company has a different view as to what constitutes open innovation. We claim that resolving conceptual ambiguity and differentiating between openness (as a philosophical aspect) and open innovation (as a way of structuring the innovation process) in research is critical in order to clarify the current state of open innovation research and enable the communication of results to practitioners.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 12469
Author(s):  
Beata Poteralska

Effective development of technological innovations requires efficient management at the stages of their generation, realisation, and their implementation. For this aim, concepts such as foresight, technology assessment, and organisational capabilities assessment can be applied; however, so far they have been used mainly individually or sometimes combined but to a very limited extent. Moreover, they are not used comprehensively, but only selectively, e.g., at some stages of the innovation processes. The research problem undertaken in the paper concerns the effectiveness of the integration of these concepts: future research (mainly foresight), technology assessment, and organisational capabilities assessment for the needs of supporting innovation processes. The paper is aimed at presenting an original approach assuming the integration of the aforementioned triad. The proposed approach has been developed individually by the paper’s author on the basis of (1) state of the art analysis comprising both theoretical approaches and practical examples of individual and combined application of the concepts analysed, and (2) the author’s practical experience resulting from research projects conducted collectively. The research result comprises an original matrix approach where the individual concepts of the triad are applied in a way enabling their mutual complementation at all successive stages of the innovation process. The approach proposed comprises modules referring to the succeeding stages of the innovation process, namely generation, realisation and application of technological innovations. The areas of the approach application and possible directions of its further development are presented.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-79
Author(s):  
Sabrina Luthfa

This paper aims to understand about how uncertainty emerges in the innovation process. Since uncertainty is embedded in the innovation process, to understand how uncertainty emerges in the process one needs to understand how innovation process unfolds over time. Since an innovation process involves various resource recombination activities occurring in several phases, to understand how innovation process unfolds one needs understand “how do various resource recombination activities occur over time for the creation of novelty?” This knowledge would enable us to understand the conditions under which vital activities of resource recombination can/cannot be undertaken and coordinated as well as would allow us to understand the underlying decisions made by the innovators for their efficient undertaking and coordination. This paper investigates the innovation process in two companies through performing qualitative study. The innovation processes are analysed in the light of a conceptual model developed based on the Dubois’ (1994) End-product related activity structure model, Håkansson’s (1987) “ARA model” and Goldratt’s (1997) “Critical chain concept”. The findings suggest that uncertainty emerges in the innovation process in a cycle of interaction with resource void, activity void and actors’ limited cognition due to lack of knowledge, undue optimism, and rationally justified reason for disregarding information. Accordingly, a great deal of compromises is made while undertaking the activities.


2020 ◽  
pp. 479-498
Author(s):  
Hilal Hurriyet ◽  
Dilupa Nakandala

This chapter analyses the evolution of lean thinking and its widening applications from its origin of the manufacturing industry towards the other industries with the emphasis on how organizations could learn from lean thinking for achieving improved performance of innovation processes. Based on the degree of novelty, uncertainty and complexity associated with innovation processes, direct adoption of lean thinking for optimization is considered to be challenging. We discuss that organizations need to realize that there are opportunities for lateral learning from lean applications that have benefited systematic repetitive processes such as manufacturing by adapting to innovation processes through identification and shedding of non-value added activities. By identifying several lean innovation approaches in practice for optimizing innovation process, we stress the need and opportunity for the adaptation of lean thinking to cater the special characteristics of innovation processes.


Author(s):  
Andrea Wagemans ◽  
Tamara Witschge

In this article, we discuss how ‘action research’ as an experiential research approach allows us to address challenges encountered in researching a converged and digital media landscape. We draw on our experiences as researchers, co-developers and marketeers in the European Union-funded Innovation Action project ‘INnovative Journalism: Enhanced Creativity Tools’ (INJECT) aimed at developing a technological tool for journalism. In this media innovation process, as in other media practices, longstanding delineations no longer hold, due to converging professional disciplines and blurring roles of users and producers. First, we discuss four features of innovation in the current ‘digital’ media landscape that come with specific methodological requirements: (a) the iterative nature of innovation; (b) converged practices, professions and roles; (c) the dispersed geographic nature of media production and innovation processes and (d) the impact of human and non-human actors. We suggest action research as a possible answer to these requirements of the digital media landscape. Drawing on our experiences in the INJECT project, we illustrate how adopting an action research approach provides insight into the non-linear, iterative and converged character of innovation processes by highlighting: (a) how innovation happens at various moments, in various places and by various people; (b) how perceptions and enactments of professions change over time and (c) how roles are (re)combined and expanded in such a way that clear delineation is not easy. Ultimately, we argue that experiencing convergence through action research enables us to do justice to the complexity of the current media landscape.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Raedersdorf Bollinger

Purpose Innovation processes are inherently uncertain. They account for a high proportion of risks taken by companies and cause tensions. The purpose of this paper is to consider whether some management tools facilitate the smooth implementation of an innovation process. Does the relevance of these tools depend on the size of the company, its activity sector, the type of innovation expected or the viewpoint of the manager in charge? Design/methodology/approach The author answers these questions using a quantitative questionnaire survey of 169 companies. This survey allows the author to describe the tools and practices of management control of innovation processes and to highlight the specific needs of different sets of companies. Findings The collected data show a convergence of tools and practices used, which the literature on managerial control and creativity helps us to understand. Originality/value The paper also contributes to reconciling management control and innovation activities. In particular, it investigates how the use of management tools varies depending on managers’ viewpoints. A distinction is made between formal, information system-based tools and more informal, human relationship-based tools.


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