Ontology-based project management for acceleration of innovation projects

Abstract

Shortening time-to-market for new product innovations is now and in future one of the critical success factors for market competitiveness and ability. The ability to faster and better arrive at innovative products is based on the knowledge, what constellations are excessively time-consuming and how this time barrier can be broken down in order to achieve acceleration. The ability to develop new things fast and effectively and to introduce them on the market does nowadays substantially depend on the increasingly complex knowledge and creative performance of all employees during the entire innovation project. At the moment we do, however, lack a computer-supported solution, aiming to provide the employee working on the innovation process with an appropriate support for an effective acceleration of innovations. A system for the acceleration of innovation, on the on hand, has to be backed up with a model allowing to represent innovation projects - and the occurring time-consuming constellations with all their complex interrelations and their semantics - in an information system. On the other hand, the system must be equipped with all knowledge concerning undesired time consumers and the respective avoidance strategies, the so-called innovation-acceleration knowledge. Ontology-based models and methods enable computer-supported representation of innovation projects, computer aided identification of time-consuming constellations and serve to infer and provide innovation-acceleration knowledge to ensure faster and better innovations. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.