Innovating the innovation process: an organisational experiment in global pharma pursuing radical innovation

Abstract

The challenge of managing the fuzzy front end of the innovation process is particularly acute for large, multi-brand, research and development (R&D)-intensive firms. Poor performance at generating radical innovations has resulted in many large organisations seeking to innovate how they organise for innovation. This paper presents an inductive, longitudinal study of an organisational experiment that sought to get 'game-changing, radical ideas' into the new product development funnel of a top three pharma. The immediate outcomes of a team-based internal innovation tournament included 33 new product ideas, 14 of which were radical. The medium term outcome of the experiment was a reorganisation of how the firm now pursues radical innovation activities. We link these outcomes to team leadership, contrasting innovation processes, including decisions about how to incorporate the 'voice of the consumer'. The inductive, longitudinal study suggests causal interconnections between innovation team leadership, innovation team processes, and innovation outcomes.

Overcoming consumer resistance to innovations – an analysis of adoption triggers

“…Innovation adoption is the endpoint of the NPD process (Robbins and O'Gorman, ). Researchers refer to adoption as the individual's decision to make full use of an innovation (Frambach and Schillewaert, ; Rogers, ).…”

Facilitating Radical Front‐End Innovation Through Targeted HRM Practices: A Case Study of Pharmaceutical and Biotech Companies

“…Recent research underlines how the fuzzy front‐end of innovation is different compared to other stages in the innovation process, and organizations might therefore need to manage this stage of the process differently (de Brentani and Reid, ; Roper, Du, and Love, ). In their seminal work, Cooper and Kleinschmidt (, p. 26) revealed how “the greatest differences between winners and losers were found in the quality of pre‐development activities,” and Reid and de Brentani (, p. 170) even call the fuzzy front‐end “the root of success.” Despite the impact of this phase, there are still few empirical studies clarifying FEI practices (e.g., Elmquist and Segrestin, ; Kim and Wilemon, ; Robbins and O'Gorman, ; Verworn, Herstatt, and Nagahira, ), but there are exceptions (e.g., Börjesson, Dahlsten, and Williander, ; Markham, ). While FEI has attracted attention in research, there is a lack of a generally accepted definition, as noted by Koen () and Zhang and Doll (), and the terminology varies (Nobelius and Trygg, ).…”

“…Duyck and Allen (), Aagaard and Gertsen (), and Robbins and O'Gorman () all point out the critical role of FEI in pharmaceutical innovation performance due to the duration of FEI, the unique characteristics and challenges of pharma, as well as the key decisions being made in the early innovation phases. Because of the lengthy duration and vast costs of pharmaceutical R&D, emphasis is put on failing faster to ensure a constant flow of internal and radical ideas for development (beyond the patents being purchased externally [DiMasi and Grabowski, ]), which emphasizes the role of the front end of pharmaceutical innovation.…”

Critical success factors in early new product development: a review and a conceptual model

“…Other researchers agree that firms should explore customer expectations and requirements before product development begins (Kim and Wilemon 2002b;Smith et al 1999;Verworn 2006;Verworn et al 2008). Such information is useful because it clarifies project objectives early in the development stages (Cooper 1988;Cooper and Kleinschmidt 1987;Zien and Buckler 1997;Robbins and O'Gorman 2015;Verworn et al 2008;Murphy and Kumar 1997). In addition, customers may offer product ideas at the front end of NPD that developers have not yet § considered (Cooper et al 2002;Kim and Wilemon 2002a).…”