'Innovation Profiler' - Identification and Prioritisation of Innovation Factors Based on Social Network Analysis

Abstract

Innovation is essential for both economies and companies to ensure competitiveness in today’s global markets. While many companies struggle with this task, others seem to take maximum advantage of their resources. The difference between innovation leaders and less innovative organisations can be ascribed to a variety of factors such as innovation infrastructure or corporate culture. Given limited resources, companies need to prioritise their efforts to become and remain innovative. The ‘Innovation Profiler’ is a tool to undertaking an individual analysis of a company’s innovation infrastructure and behaviour. It takes into account not only success factors but identifies disruptive factors for the development of a robust innovation management. The ‘Innovation Profiler’ provides insights into interrelations between various factors in order to understand their individual impact on the innovation capability. Analytical measures to analyse complex interrelations are based on methods of social network analysis (SNA). As a result, organisations are enabled to leverage their innovative potential by focusing on selected factors that are identified as highly relevant for their specific innovation management.