Innovation-oriented Management

"With cost cutting, you win quarters, with innovation you win decades" (Alan Lafley, P&G)

A central research topic driven by the Chair of Management is innovation-oriented management. Our goal is to better understand how managers can promote innovations of all kinds in their companies through their behavior, guidelines and decisions.

Managing companies in such a way that new innovations - related to products, services, processes or even business models - are initiated and implemented on a regular basis is a central responsibility of managers in practically all industries today. In many companies, however, successful innovation-oriented management requires the removal of a number of barriers, especially if existing processes and attitudes have been established over many years.

In our research, we focus on this topic and want to better understand for example:

• What does an innovation-oriented corporate culture look like and how does such a corporate culture affect companies' success?
• How should the interface between product development, marketing and other functions be designed in order to promote innovation activities?
• Which incentives at company level actually promote innovative behaviour of individual employees?
• What role do lower-level employees play in identifying innovation opportunities and implementing them?

In practical applications and industry cooperations we are dealing with the following questions among others:

• Which creativity techniques and tools can be used to identify ideas for innovation?
• Which approaches currently discussed in popular scientific literature really add value for companies?
• What characteristics and qualities should a top manager have in order to recognize and implement innovation and to promote innovative behavior among the employees?
• How to deal with failed innovation projects and how to reduce possible negative consequences for future efforts?
• What role can digital media play in the discovery and implementation of innovation projects?
• How can the potential of innovation ideas in early phases be assessed?

Selected publications:

• Garms, F./Engelen, A. (forthcoming): Innovation and R&D in the Upper Echelons: The Association between the CTO’s Power Depth and Breadth and the TMT’s Commitment to Innovation, in: Journal of Product Innovation Management.
• Engelen, A./Weinekötter, L./ Saeed, S./Enke, S. (forthcoming): The Effect of Corporate Support Programs on Employees’ Innovative Behavior: A Cross-Cultural Study, in: Journal of Product Innovation Management.
• Hempelmann, F./Engelen, A. (2015): Integration of Finance with Marketing and R&D in New Product Development: The Role of Project Stage, in: Journal of Product Innovation Management, 32(4), 636–654.
• Engelen, A./Brettel, M. (2012): A Coalitional Perspective on the Role of the R&D Department within the Organization, in: Journal of Product Innovation Management, 29(3), 489–505.
• Brettel, M./Heinemann, F./Engelen, A./Neubauer, S. (2011): Cross-functional Integration of R&D, Marketing, and Manufacturing in Radical and Incremental Product Innovations and Its Effects on Project Effectiveness and Efficiency, in: Journal of Product Innovation Management, 28(2), 249–267.