Improve
IMP³rove Approach
Innovation is the result of a company’s efforts to develop new products, new services, new business models or processes in which their customers or clients see a new or additional value added, and for which these customers are willing to pay a price. Hence, innovation is not just an invention. Innovation has to prove its value in the market. Only then Innovation Management will contribute to the company's sustainable growth.
IMP³rove takes a holistic approach to improve your innovation success. It covers all dimensions of Innovation Management including:
Innovation strategy, Innovation organization and culture, Innovation Management processes, as well as enabling factors for Innovation Management
IMP³rove provides you with a highly professional Innovation Management consulting process, into which an assessment tool, which is based on benchmarking, is integrated.
SMEs have the chance to benchmark their own Innovation Management performance against other companies of their sector and size. This serves as a basis for a well directed Innovation Management consulting follow-up and leads to a solid and sustainable company development at eye level of best practice.
The Implementation of IMP³rove in the curriculum
by Michael Terler and Pascale Koo
Through the degree program, students acquire skills to fully understand relationships within companies and learn how to take into account business, technical, legal, personnel and international aspects. They deal with questions concerning all areas of the birth and implementation of innovations and are taught all about the development and optimization of products, process and services, from the decision process right through to introduction onto the market. It is necessary to plan, steer and promote innovation workflows and, as such, it is essential for Innovation Managers not only to have management skills, but also to be equipped with technical, business and innovation skills. Innovation Managers are executives who act as a competent and integrating bridge between product development, technology, company management, research, marketing and clients.
The main objective is to manage challenging innovation projects and to head interdisciplinary teams with people from the most varied departments (technology, marketing, distribution, R&D, etc.) and a whole range of sectors. In order to find innovative and strategically good ideas and to be able to position them in the market, innovation managers have to be visionaries that think out of the box as well as possess corresponding implementation skills.
Students begin applying their skills during the course of the degree program in practice-oriented projects focusing on current themes. One of these projects and integral part of the curriculum is the application of the IMP³rove approach. This includes the IMP³rove assessment, benchmarking, interpretation of the benchmarking report with the support of a trained IMP³rove expert and development of measures and their implementation to close the gaps identified. In other words; students assess their own companies, derive measures accordingly and can implement some of them immediately in their daily work. IMP³rove fits perfectly into our curriculum since it needs both fields of core competence (implementation and strategic innovation competence) explained earlier. By analyzing their own company in respect to those competencies the students deepen their acquired knowledge and abilities in these fields.
This kind of procedure is a WIN-WIN-WIN for all three parties involved and therefore proofed to be a great success ever since its start in 2007.
WIN for the students:
The students apply their theoretical knowledge on innovation management to find practical solutions for their companies. Furthermore, this project gives them the opportunity to position themselves as innovation experts within their company which can lead to great long-term career perspectives. In addition, the experiences gained in the practical application of IMP³rove can later become part of the student’s bachelor thesis.
WIN for the companies:
Not only do the companies learn more about their innovation status, they also profit from the insight knowledge of their employees. The whole internal organization of IMP³rove is entirely taken over by the students, so financial and personal resources needed for this project are extremely small. The learnings generated through this project can immediately be implemented by their employees, our students, which are supervised and guided by professionals at CAMPUS 02, who have many years of practical and academic experience in the field of innovation management.
WIN for the university:
The university, respectively the responsible coordinators at the institution, learns how well its students understood the content and how well they can derive measures in order to solve real practical problems in the field of Innovation Management. By integrating the learnings generated into the curriculum of the semesters to come, the degree program can constantly improve -> an innovative way of quality management.
Since the project deepens cooperation with the industry, Campus02 increases its reputation amongst SMEs and the probability that companies, which are satisfied with the cooperation, return to the university with future projects.
Outcome
Our overall experience with this way of implementing the IMP³rove project is very positive. The most relevant insights were gained throughout project implementation on the one hand and from project results on the other. Most importantly, the students experienced their first attempt as innovation managers and got the opportunity to perform as “innovation consultants” by putting the acquired knowledge from their studies into practice in their own companies. It should however be added that some students experienced obstacles when trying to retrieve sensitive data such as revenues or spending on innovations. Especially larger companies were hesitant to give away such information, whereas smaller companies turned out to be a lot less reluctant. Also, both extent and complexity of the project are not be underestimated.
All companies involved benefitted from the results of the projects, since it allowed them to compare themselves with the competition and helped them raise awareness of innovative potential within their companies. Not only can IMP³rove be a starting point for new innovations, for example in product development, it could also be a possible “way out of the crisis”. Needless to say, the deduced measures must therefore be really put into practice and assessment should be carried out repeatedly, before companies’ day-to-day business catches up on them again.
Conclusion
Due to its tremendous success, the IMP³rove project is already an integral part of the Innovation Management degree program and executed on a regular basis. That way more and more SMEs are reminded to review their innovation performance by benchmarking themselves with other companies. Yet, not only SMEs are interested in assessing their innovation performance, as can be seen from a high number of requests from bigger companies. This proves that they, too, understand that IMP³rove supports companies to develop their innovation management and their employees, while our students ensure that this is not a one-time shot, but an ongoing, continuous process.