Design-led innovation : Overcoming challenges to designing competitiveness to succeed in high cost environments

This chapter focuses on demonstrating the role of Design-Led Innovation (DLI) as an enabler for the success of Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) within high growth environments. This chapter is targeted toward businesses that may have been exposed to the concept of design previously at a product level and now seek to better understand its value through implementation at a strategic level offering. The decision to engage in the DLI process is made by firms who want to remain competitive as they struggle to compete in high cost environments, such as the state of the Australian economy at present. The results presented in this chapter outline the challenges in the adoption of the DLI process and the implications it can have. An understanding of the value of DLI in practice—as an enabler of business transformation in Australia—is of benefit to government and the broader design community.

Hidden innovation : Policy, industry and the creative sector

The term ‘two cultures’ was coined more than 50 years ago by scientist and novelist C.P. Snow to describe the divergence in the world views and methods of scientists and the creative sector. This divergence has meant that innovation systems and policies have focused for decades on science, engineering, technology and medicine and the industries that depend on them. The humanities, arts and social sciences have been bit players at best; their contributions hidden from research agendas, policy and program initiatives, and the public mind. But structural changes to advanced economies and societies have brought services industries and the creative sector to greater prominence as key contributors to innovation. Hidden Innovation peels back the veil, tracing the way innovation occurs through new forms of screen production enabled by social media platforms as well as in public broadcasting. It shows that creative workers are contributing fresh ideas across the economy and how creative cities debates need reframing. It traces how policies globally are beginning to catch up with the changing social and economic realities. In his new book, Cunningham argues that the innovation framework offers the best opportunity in decades to reassess and refresh the case for the public role of the humanities, particularly the media, cultural and communication studies disciplines.

A criteria based approach for evaluating innovation commercialisation

This study attempts to provide a criteria-based approach that can be used to evaluate the potential for technology transfer and commercialisation of a new technology from university research. More specifically, this study offers the critical factors for assessing marketability and feasibility of an innovation for the commercialisation and technology transfer process. The Delphi technique has been used to refine and categorise assessment criteria identified from various models and frameworks that emerged from literature. Proposed categories of criteria that are found to be important in the evaluation and assessment of a new technology for the commercialisation purpose include: Technological Readiness; Legal and Regulatory; Social Benefits and Impact; Economic and Market Factors.

Urban knowledge and innovation spaces : concepts, conditions, and contexts

Innovation is one of the key determinants of growth in the globalised knowledge economy, and ‘urban knowledge and innovation spaces’ form the spatial foci for sustained innovation. This paper aims to explore concepts, conditions and contexts that substantiate the development of these spaces of innovation. The paper seeks to identify the foundational elements of knowledge- based urban development to outline the concept of urban knowledge and innovation spaces, and justify its meaning, unique characteristics and growing influence in the contemporary cities. It rationalises the relevance of the three underlying conditions—namely policy, place, and people— to better understand their contribution in the development of such spaces. This paper sheds light over the varied contexts shaping each urban knowledge and innovation space uniquely. The paper reveals the interplay between design and policies that is required for the creation of spaces of innovation that are economically strong, socially connected, spatially stimulating, and environmentally sustainable.

The QUT innovation space : a trans-disciplinary learning environment for entrepreneurship education : final report

In the current climate of global economic volatility, there are increasing calls for training in enterprising skills and entrepreneurship to underpin the systemic innovation required for even medium-term business sustainability. The skills long-recognised as the essential for entrepreneurship now appear on the list of employability skills demanded by industry. The QUT Innovation Space (QIS) was an experiment aimed at delivering entrepreneurship education (EE), as an extra-curricular platform across the university, to the undergraduate students of an Australian higher education institute. It was an ambitious project that built on overseas models of EE studied during an Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) Teaching Fellowship (Collet, 2011) and implemented those approaches across an institute. Such EE approaches have not been attempted in an Australian university. The project tested resonance not only with the student population, from the perspective of what worked and what didn’t work, but also with every level of university operations. Such information is needed to inform the development of EE in the Australian university landscape. The QIS comprised a physical co-working space, virtual sites (web, Twitter and Facebook) and a network of entrepreneurial mentors, colleagues, and students. All facets of the QIS enabled connection between like-minded individuals that underpins the momentum needed for a project of this nature. The QIS became an innovation community within QUT. This report serves two purposes. First, as an account of the QIS project and its evolution, the report serves to identify the student demand for skills and training as well as barriers and facilitators of the activities that promote EE in an Australian university context. Second, the report serves as a how-to manual, in the tradition of many tomes on EE, outlining the QIS activities that worked as well as those that failed. The activities represent one measure of QIS outcomes and are described herein to facilitate implementation in other institutes. The QIS initially aimed to adopt an incubation model for training in EE. The ‘learning by doing’ model for new venture creation is a highly successful and high profile training approach commonly found in overseas contexts. However, the greatest demand of the QUT student population was not for incubation and progression of a developed entrepreneurial intent, but rather for training that instilled enterprising skills in the individual. These two scenarios require different training approaches (Fayolle and Gailly, 2008). The activities of the QIS evolved to meet that student demand. In addressing enterprising skills, the QIS developed the antecedents of entrepreneurialism (i.e., entrepreneurial attitudes, motivation and behaviours) including high-level skills around risk-taking, effective communication, opportunity recognition and action-orientation. In focusing on the would-be entrepreneur and not on the (initial) idea per se, the QIS also fostered entrepreneurial outcomes that would never have gained entry to the rigid stage-gated incubation model proposed for the original QIS framework. Important lessons learned from the project for development of an innovation community include the need to: 1. Evaluate the context of the type of EE program to be delivered and the student demand for the skills training (as noted above). 2. Create a community that builds on three dimensions: a physical space, a virtual environment and a network of mentors and partners. 3. Supplement the community with external partnerships that aid in delivery of skills training materials. 4. Ensure discovery of the community through the use of external IT services to deliver advertising and networking outlets. 5. Manage unrealistic student expectations of billion dollar products. 6. Continuously renew and rebuild simple activities to maintain student engagement. 7. Accommodate the non-university end-user group within the community. 8. Recognise and address the skills bottlenecks that serve as barriers to concept progression; in this case, externally provided IT and programming skills. 9. Use available on-line and published resources rather than engage in constructing project-specific resources that quickly become obsolete. 10. Avoid perceptions of faculty ownership and operate in an increasingly competitive environment. 11. Recognise that the continuum between creativity/innovation and entrepreneurship is complex, non-linear and requires different training regimes during the different phases of the pipeline. One small entity, such as the QIS, cannot address them all. The QIS successfully designed, implemented and delivered activities that included events, workshops, seminars and services to QUT students in the extra-curricular space. That the QIS project can be considered successful derives directly from the outcomes. First, the QIS project changed the lives of emerging QUT student entrepreneurs. Also, the QIS activities developed enterprising skills in students who did not necessarily have a business proposition, at the time. Second, successful outcomes of the QIS project are evidenced as the embedding of most, perhaps all, of the QIS activities in a new Chancellery-sponsored initiative: the Leadership Development and Innovation Program hosted by QUT Student Support Services. During the course of the QIS project, the Brisbane-based innovation ecosystem underwent substantial change. From a dearth of opportunities for the entrepreneurially inclined, there is now a plethora of entities that cater for a diversity of innovation-related activities. While the QIS evolved with the landscape, the demand endpoint of the QIS activities still highlights a gap in the local and national innovation ecosystems. The freedom to experiment and to fail is not catered for by the many new entities seeking to build viable businesses on the back of the innovation push. The onus of teaching the enterprising skills, which are the employability skills now demanded by industry, remains the domain of the higher education sector.

Entrepreneurship education in non-business schools : best practice for Australian contexts of knowledge and innovation communities (Final Report)

In the current era of global economic instability, business and industry have already identified a widening gap between graduate skills and employability. An important element of this is the lack of entrepreneurial skills in graduates. This Teaching Fellowship investigated two sides of a story about entrepreneurial skills and their teaching. Senior players in the innovation commercialisation industry, a high profile entrepreneurial sector, were surveyed to gauge their needs and experiences of graduates they employ. International contexts of entrepreneurship education were investigated to explore how their teaching programs impart the skills of entrepreneurship. Such knowledge is an essential for the design of education programs that can deliver the entrepreneurial skills deemed important by industry for future sustainability. Two programs of entrepreneurship education are being implemented at QUT that draw on the best practice exemplars investigated during this Fellowship. The QUT Innovation Space (QIS) focuses on capturing the innovation and creativity of students, staff and others. The QIS is a physical and virtual meeting and networking space; a connected community enhancing the engagement of participants. The Q_Hatchery is still embryonic; but it is intended to be an innovation community that brings together nascent entrepreneurial businesses to collaborate, train and support each other. There is a niche between concept product and business incubator where an experiential learning environment for otherwise isolated ‘garage-at-home’ businesses could improve success rates. The QIS and the Q_Hatchery serve as living research laboratories to trial the concepts emerging from the skills survey. The survey of skills requirements of the innovation commercialisation industry has produced a large and high quality data set still being explored. Work experience as an employability factor has already emerged as an industry requirement that provides employee maturity. Exploratory factor analysis of the skills topics surveyed has led to a process-based conceptual model for teaching and learning higher-order entrepreneurial skills. Two foundational skills domains (Knowledge, Awareness) are proposed as prerequisites which allow individuals with a suite of early stage entrepreneurial and behavioural skills (Pre-leadership) to further leverage their careers into a leadership role in industry with development of skills around higher order elements of entrepreneurship, management in new business ventures and progressing winning technologies to market. The next stage of the analysis is to test the proposed model through structured equation modelling. Another factor that emerged quickly from the survey analysis broadens the generic concept of team skills currently voiced in Australian policy documents discussing the employability agenda. While there was recognition of the role of sharing, creating and using knowledge in a team-based interdisciplinary context, the adoption and adaptation of behaviours and attitudes of other team members of different disciplinary backgrounds (interprofessionalism) featured as an issue. Most undergraduates are taught and undertake teamwork in silos and, thus, seldom experience a true real-world interdisciplinary environment. Enhancing the entrepreneurial capacity of Australian industry is essential for the economic health of the country and can only be achieved by addressing the lack of entrepreneurial skills in graduates from the higher education system. This Fellowship has attempted to address this deficiency by identifying the skills requirements and providing frameworks for their teaching.

Service innovation and business models

Western economies are highly dependent on service innovation for their growth and employment. An important driver for economic growth is, therefore, the development of new, innovative services like electronic services, mobile end-user services, new financial or personalized services. Service innovation joins four trends that currently shape the western economies: the growing importance of services, the need for innovation, changes in consumer and business markets, and the advancements in information and communication technology (ICT).

Exploring innovation driven value creation in B2B service firms : The roles of the manager, employees, and customers in value creation

This study adopts the premise that innovation capability underpins a service firm's value creation ability and that management style, employee behaviors and marketing underpin its innovation capability. This study examines the role of managers and employees in the creation and delivery of superior value to customers via the firm's innovation capability. To test this premise the current study examines the role of transformational leadership (TFL) as an aspect of the service firm's management style in creating and delivering value to customers through its services. This study adopts a multi-level study, collecting data from managers, employees and customers of service firms in a Southeast-Asian country, Cambodia. The results show that a service firm's innovation capability has a positive effect on the firm's value offering (VO), the VO has a positive relationship with customer perceived value-in use (PVI), and PVI has a positive relationship with firm performance. This study also finds moderating effects of TFL on the relationship between service innovation capability and VO, and of service marketing capability on the relationship between VO and PVI respectively.

Achieving superior SME performance : overarching role of marketing, innovation, and learning capabilities

While most studies examine the effect of marketing, innovation, and learning capabilities (often separately) on performance, this study develops a unified model to investigate the combined effect of these capabilities on performance. This study further examines the complementary effect of these capabilities on performance. This study draws on the resource-based view theory to examine 171 manufacturing SMEs. The findings suggest that marketing, innovation, and learning capabilities are positively related to SME performance. In addition, these capabilities interact with one another to create great synergy in achieving SME performance.

The role of intellectual resources, product innovation capability, reputational resources and marketing capability combinations in SME growth

This article examines the extent to which combinations of intellectual resources and product innovation capability, and reputational resources and marketing capability, influence the ability of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) to meet or exceed performance goals. Empirical results drawn from 171 SMEs suggest that when the combination of intellectual resources and product innovation capability in addition to the combination of reputational resources and marketing capability are high, SME growth is enhanced. However, a high level of intellectual resources combined with a low level of product innovation capability as well as a combination of a high level of reputational resources with a low level of marketing capability (and vice versa) are not significantly related to growth. These results imply that a high level of resources cannot compensate for a low level of capabilities (and vice versa).

Achieving superior innovation-based performance outcomes in SMEs through innovation resource–capability complementarity

Firms are increasingly identifying new avenues to enhance their market position. One such effort involves the firms' ability to continuously learn. Learning has the capacity to enable firms to develop and implement more efficient and effective innovation-focused strategies, resulting in the ability to develop and deliver more products in a timelier manner. This study tests the relationship between innovation resource–capability complementarity and innovation-based performance. This study further elaborates that while innovation resource–capability complementarity drives innovation-based performance; their relationship will be enhanced via the firms' possession of superior learning capability. The findings show a significant effect of innovation resource–capability complementarity on innovation-based performance. The results also show that firms that possess superior learning capability are willing to question their operational processes and routines and make adjustments following the feedback obtained from customers and channels; thereby enhancing their abilities to develop more new products and increase their speed in delivering products to the customers.

Enterprise systems lifecycle-wide innovation readiness

Enterprise Systems have been touted as a key driver of delivering benefits through innovation in corporate Information Systems. The advent of such systems expects to deliver best practices that improve organizational performance. Yet, most Enterprise System installations struggle to see lifecycle-wide value of it. Considering that Enterprise Systems deliver lifecycle-wide innovation; we observe organizational readiness for lifecycle-wide Enterprise Systems innovation. The A VICTORY apriori model compares contributions of eight constructs for organizational readiness for continuous Enterprise Systems innovation. The model is tested responses of both client and implementation partner. Results indicate that six of the eight constructs of readiness make significant contributions to organizational readiness for Enterprise Systems innovation.

Enterprise system lifecycle-wide innovation - research in progress

Enterprise Systems purport to bring innovation to organizations. Yet, no past studies, neither from innovation nor from ES disciplines have merged their knowledge to understand how ES could facilitate lifecycle-wide innovation. Therefore, this study forms conceptual bridge between the two disciplines. In this research, we seek to understand how ES could facilitate innovation across its lifecycle phases. We associate classifications of innovation such as radical vs. incremental, administrative vs. technical innovation with the three phases of ES lifecycle. We introduce Continuous Restrained Innovation (CRI) as a new type of innovation specific to ES, considering restraints of technology, business processes and organization. Our empirical data collection at the implementation phase, using data from both the client and implementation partner, shows preliminary evidence of CRI. In addition, we state that both parties consider the implementation of ES as a radical innovation yet, are less interest in seeking further innovations through the system.

Innovation in the Australian Spatial Information Industry

Business literature reveals the importance of generating innovative products and services, but much of the innovation research has been conducted in large firms and not replicated in small firms. These firms are likely to have different perspectives on innovation, which means that they will probably behave differently to large firms. Our study aims to unpack how firms in Spatial Information perceive and engage in innovation as a part of their business operation. To investigate these questions we conduct 20 in depth interviews of top management team members in Spatial Information firms in Australia. We find that small firms define innovation very broadly and measure innovation by its effect on productivity or market success. Innovation is seen as crucial to survival and success in a competitive environment. Most firms engage in product and/or service innovations, while some also mentioned marketing, process and organisational innovations. Most innovations were more exploitative rather than exploratory with only a few being radical innovations. Innovation barriers include time and money constraints, corporate culture and Government tendering practices. Our study sheds a light on our understanding of innovation in an under-researched sector; that is spatial information industry.

A digital airport experience : design-led innovation in support of airport strategy

The digital era is proving to be one of disruption, where new technologies matched with innovative business models can be harnessed to attack even the most established of companies. For businesses with the relative certainty of captive customer bases, such as airports, the ability to digitally diversify offers the opportunity to venture into new modes of operation. For an airport, this opportunity can also be leveraged to sustain superior customer support regardless of a customer’s location in the world. This research paper presents a case study of the development of an Australian Airport Corporation’s mobile application as part of a greater digital strategy initiative using a design-led approach to innovate. An action research method provides the platform for an intensive embedded practice and study of design-led innovation within the major Australian Airport Corporation. The findings reveal design-led innovation to be a crucial in-house idea generation and concept development capability enabling the bridging of distinct corporate domains associated with commercialisation, operations and customer experience. A Digital Innovation Checklist is presented as an output of this research which structures an organizational approach toward digital channel innovation. The practitioner’s checklist is designed to aid in the future development of digital channels within the broader spectrum of strategy by addressing business assumptions.