Are innovative organizational concepts enough for fostering innovation?

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to define which organizational practices have significant impact on returns from new products or which foster or at least influence positively innovation. Survey responders were divided to see whether they innovated or not by the survey questions which explicitly asked them if they have introduced new products in the last two years. With Chi Square test, we identified the difference in usage of certain organizational practices. After that, two multi-regression models showed the impact on launching a new product and their impact on generated returns from new products.There is a significant statistical difference in usage of these four practices between innovators and non-innovators: temporary cross-functional project teams, quality circle, ISO 9000, financial participation by employees. Regression analyses showed that for new product launch, quality circles and ISO900 have a positive impact. Since not all new product launches do not become successes when regressed to returns on new products, team performance incentives and knowledge-based systems have a significant positive impact. To our knowledge and through our literature research, we did not find works that explored the impacts of innovative organizational concepts on the final result - innovation. Most studies focused only on some organizational innovations and their impact on innovation. Here we present an overall overview of innovative organizational practices, why they are mostly used and identified those which mostly influence innovation. © 2012 Imperial College Press.