School of Management (SoM)

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Browsing School of Management (SoM) by Supervisor "Bessant, John"

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    The creation of a new product development capability in UK manufacturing small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs)
    (2006) Noke, Hannah; Bessant, John; Radnor, Zoe
    This is a study of how manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) create a new product development (NPD) capability in the UK. The UK’s innovative and productive performance remains a subject of considerable concern, not least because of its increasing productivity gap, but also because of concerns relating to the manufacturing industry’s reliance on gaining process efficiencies. Indeed it is believed that to remain competitive a move up the value chain is a necessity, through the likes of new product development. This exploratory research has adopted a qualitative approach, through interpretative means, allowing a rich and in-depth understanding to be gained. The study incorporates four detailed case studies on UK based manufacturing SMEs. A number of research methods were employed to aid triangulation of the data, including unstructured and semi-structured interviews, observation and documentation, such as company brochures and website material. The thesis makes two contributions to new knowledge and understanding. Firstly, the strategies that are employed and found to enable the creation of a NPD capability are identified; these include external involvement with other organisations to access resources and skills not possessed by the firms themselves. These outward facing strategies incorporate the use of strategic alliances, licensing of technology and ideas, and outsourcing elements of the NPD process. In addition, an internal, in-house development process was utilised. This offered the firms control of the process and the opportunity to capitalise on their own unique knowledge and skills which provided them with a competitive advantage. Secondly, this study provides a unique insight into the factors that are required for SMEs to create a NPD capability. Interestingly, this research indicates that these factors are not created simultaneously; rather, they occur at different rates and as such were categorised as ‘enablers’, i.e. those factors already enabling the creation of a NPD capability. The second group of factors, ‘qualifiers’, were found to be important to the creation of a NPD capability, but were not fully developed and were not enabling the process. However, the research identified the potential of ‘qualifiers’ to become enablers over time.
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    Exploring aspects of organizational culture that facilitate radical product innovation in a small mature company
    (Cranfield University, 2006) McLaughlin, Patrick; Bessant, John; Smart, Palie
    Much recent discussion has highlighted the challenges posed by what have variously been called “disruptive”, “discontinuous”, “breakthrough” and “radical” innovations. Although the labelling may vary, the underlying themes appear to be consistent. In particular it is clear that under conditions in which the dominant “rules of the game” change as a result of emergent or shifting markets, major movements at the technological frontier, dislocations in the regulatory environment etc, even organizations with well-developed innovation capabilities get into difficulties. This is less a matter of particular technological, market or political stimuli than of the limitations of the repertoire of organizational responses available to the firm. This resurfaces a long-running concern with managing innovation in two different modes, namely “exploitation” and “exploration”. This thesis reports the results of exploratory research into specific aspects of the organizational culture within the Research and Development (R&D) setting of a small mature UK based company, Cerulean. In doing so it also identifies and discusses key management interventions for developing an innovation culture that facilitates radical product innovation. Cerulean designs and manufactures quality control instrumentation and has in the past been very successful with radically new products. In recent years this propensity for “radicalness” has declined and the company now wishes to regain this capability. A grounded research methodology and a participative action research approach was utilised to surface issues that clearly illustrated both the presence and intensity of aspects of organisation culture that enabled and inhibited radical product innovation. Participative analysis of the data identified nine emerging themes and key constructs of an innovation culture that was found to influence “radicalness” in new product development ventures. The interrelationships between the themes were discussed in the context of current theoretical perspectives in the field of innovation management. This led to the development of a conceptual model that incorporates two “ideal” archetypal forms of innovation culture. A composite instrument was developed based on existing evaluation tools and used to assess the innovation culture. First use of the instrument indicated areas of opportunity in developing a radical innovation culture. Further participative analysis of the emergent themes and the assessment and evaluations of the extant innovation culture, resulted in a series of management interventions to stimulate the development of a culture to facilitate radical product innovation. The design of the interventions was also informed by the literature and other organizations, part of a national Discontinuous Innovation Forum (DIF) undergoing similar ambitions. The proposed interventions comprise a series of linked management actions in the form of a plan to shift the innovation culture of the company closer to a desired radical innovation culture.
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    Logistics service innovation management - evidence from two longitudinal case studies at Deutsche Post
    (Cranfield University, 2005) Kohler, Thomas; Harrison, Alan; Bessant, John; Hemmingway, Chris
    This study aims at exploring ways to better manage organisational development and change in practice. For project managers like myself it is important to gain a solid understanding about the drivers or inhibitors in these developments and change processes. I was particularly interested in those development and change processes aimed at the achievement or maintenance of competitive advantage within an industry. One way of achieving or maintaining competitive advantage may be based on serving the customer’s strategic needs through innovation (Chapman et. al., 2003). Various process models propose how service innovation projects in general should be managed. However, large and mature organisations in particular may encounter difficulties in their implementation (Dougherty and Hardy, 1996). From a practitioner’s point of view, this is an especially dire situation as service innovations, particularly those driven by strategic intent, are under great pressure from decision-makers to succeed. Along these lines Dougherty (1996) suggests a shift of focus, to a focus on the fact that innovation activities have inherent ‘tensions’. She defines ‘tensions’ as challenges that have to be dealt with during an innovation project. Drawing on the evidence of three sequential projects conducted at DHL Express, the parcel branch of Deutsche Post, I tried to investigate the nature of service innovations and their inherent tensions. By longitudinally tracking the activities and their inherent tension’s life cycle in an exploratory case study, I tried to get a better understanding of how tensions appear in innovation projects, as well as the dynamics of these tensions. The evidence of this first case study was used to theorise about an optimised sequence of activities, as well as first propositions about how tensions might be managed. The first set of propositions derived from the exploratory case was then given a trial in a second longitudinal case study. The activities of the first logistics service innovation project included a major ‘information engineering’ component. According to Davenport (1993) ‘information engineering’ deals with description of an already conceptualised process in informational terms, such that a system can be rapidly and rigorously constructed to support the new process design. Hence, the set of activities proposed in this study include the capability to include an information system component as a service innovation deliverable; a capability long recognised to be essential for exhorting positive influences on the operation of logistics systems (Kent, 1996). This research was conducted in the context of a number of unusual opportunities. First and foremost, both case studies had similar stakeholders and objectives. Secondly, all stakeholders contributing to the first case study were willing and able to collaboratively contribute to improvements in the management of activities and their inherent tensions. Finally, all inquiry participants then implemented those propositions into the following case study for inspection. Based on the evidence of the second case study, I show how managing activities and tensions with congenerous dedication exploited all four tensions to improve the probability of innovation projects to deliver.