Why innovation processes need to support traceability

Abstract

Today, more and more companies employ innovation processes to gain a competitive advantage. The resulting ideas, i.e. products or services, are often desirable for end users, but also have to be feasible to produce and viable to sell. In practice, innovation processes (e.g. design thinking) and engineering are two separate processes with an information handover in between. This handover often includes a presentation and a prototype, which illustrate the overall idea. However, the rationales leading to this final idea are often neglected. Without this information, engineers are not able to make well-informed trade-off decisions between different aspects of the final idea, as they are required when realizing a desirable product feasibly and viably. Thus, engineers require a handover that needs to be as detailed and explicit as possible to close the documentation gap between non-engineers and engineers. In this position paper, we discuss how employing traceability can close this handover gap. Specifically, we illustrate how Gotel and Morris' traceability framework can be applied for innovative engineering processes. We present which benefits traceability provides to innovators and engineers and how traceability can improve the successful realization of innovative ideas.