Continuous Innovation: A Literature Review and Future Perspective

Abstract

Continuous Innovation (CI) has become one of the hot topics in innovation management field. However, studies focusing on the comprehensive and detailed explanation of CI concept are still limited. This paper aims to elaborate on CI concept using three fundamental questions: WHAT (what is the definition of CI and what are the determining factors?), WHY (why do companies need CI?), and HOW (how can companies develop CI?). The purpose of this paper is also to contribute in giving an understanding that is more exhaustive on CI definition, the importance of CI for companies, necessary elements in determining CI capability, and various strategies for CI development. From this literature study, a new and more comprehensive definition of CI was found, which categorized the reason why the companies need the CI and identified essential elements in determining CI capability. In addition, the mapping process produced a description of the proportion of CI development strategy as follows: technology-based (11%), People based (15%), organizational & system based (32%), strategic-based (11%), knowledge-based (22%) and collaborative & connectivity based (9%). It can be observed that current CI development strategies still focus on organizational, system based approach, and most of them (81%) rely on the internal resources of the company. Future perspectives, in this digital and internet era, which provides connectivity and the shift of the concept of, own economy to sharing economy; companies will have big potentials to work on innovation collaboratively. CI concept development should consider open innovations instead of today's "do-it-yourself" mentality (closed innovation).

Customer experience driven business model innovation

“…Most often, however, managers and researchers have focused their innovation efforts on the continuous innovation of products and services to achieve growth and long-term viability (e.g. Hjalager 2010;Horng et al 2018;Lianto et al 2018;Sood and Kumar 2017). While clearly firms must actively innovate their products and services to remain relevant, the heightened level of competition-often driven by new, technology-driven competitors-increasingly requires firms to adjust their business models to deal with highly dynamic market conditions.…”

Creating innovation that drives authenticity

“…As a result, managers and researchers have become increasingly focused on continuous innovation (e.g. Hjalager, 2010;Horng et al, 2018;Lianto et al, 2018;Sood and Kumar, 2017) to find new avenues for growth and to ensure long-term viability. The result is that innovation has become one of today's biggest management buzzwords (e.g.…”

Modelling the continuous innovation capability enablers in Indonesia’s manufacturing industry

“…This is because manufacturing sectors in the Asia Pacific are diverse and consist of many sectors, covering a wide range of perspectives from energy efficiency (Foumani and Smith-Miles, 2019) to automation (Foumani et al, 2020). The perspective of this study specifically is concentrated on Continuous Innovation (CI) as it has been widely proven as one of the key factors for a company's competitiveness and success in the ever-changing and dynamic business and industries environment (Steiber and Alänge, 2013;Javahernia and Sunmola, 2017;Stålberg, 2018;Lianto et al, 2018). Rothaermel and Hess (2010) stated that CI is the engine driving highly successful companies such as Apple, Google, Honda, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, General Electric, P&G, Sony and Tata Group.…”