| Innovation Audit |
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Exclusively for partners, the CBI conducts business innovation audits regularly in order to investigate the innovative capacity as well as improve the business innovation process of partner firms, thus supporting the partner firms to improve the process of commercializing new ideas. In the audit process, the firms' current business innovation practice and performance are measured by sets of measuring quantitative tools. Complementary interviews and workshops facilitate the identification of gaps between current and potential business innovation performance. Suggested focus areas and actions combined with gained insights are delivered to the partner firm in a concluding workshop and discussion. Two innovation audits have been carried out during May and November 2007 on two separate partner firms and the next innovation audit is planned for spring 2008. Comment from the SCA Audit
“I believe that this is the start of new trend in Business Management. Networking B2B , bypassing the usual Business Consultants, is the new rule of the game. Much of the knowledge on innovation is tacit, not explicit, and hence cannot easily be conveyed via a third intermediary. By letting highly knowledgeable representatives from various non-competing companies actively and directly participate in the Innovation audits, administered and facilitated by CBI at Chalmers, so much more can be achieved and revealed than the normal intermediary way. We are extremely pleased with the outcome so far and look forward to the outcomes to come by maintaining this network of innovation practitioners.” Bengt Järrehult, Professor and Director Innovation & Knowledge Management, SCA Innovation Audit ProcessThe purpose of the innovation audits is to investigate and improve the business innovation process of partner firms; help improving the process of commercializing new and valuable ideas (putting good ideas into widespread use). An overview of the process is presented below from a data perspective. Innovation Audit process from a data perspective Graphical depiction of the innovation audit process In the innovation audit process, the audited firm’s current business innovation practice and performance is initially measured through sets of measuring tools (questionnaires, business data and interviews – 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 in figure above). The complete audit team (see separate section below) is then gathered to conducts interviews and workshops which aim at identifying gaps between current and potential innovation performance (see 3, 4, 5 and 6). Finally, suggested focus areas and actions combined with gained insights, are delivered to relevant and specific project owners within the audited firm in a concluding workshop and discussion (see 8). After that, a dialogue about the progress is maintained up until the next business innovation audit. An important outcome of the business innovation audits is also the potential research areas that disclose through the working process. These research areas can either be put into existing research themes or become separate research projects for CBI researchers and persons from partner firm to work on. Audit Team A crucial component for the audits is naturally the audit team members. Members from CBI, representing the academic side of the team, are selected based on the characteristics of the firm to be audited. In addition the team is complemented by external fellow researchers, selected and invited from CBI’s network of partner companies. This allows for the analysis and reflections to also involve perceptions and insights from other industries and companies than the firm being audited. In addition the involvement of these external fellow researchers ensures that relevant topics are covered from a day-to-day business point of view.  An Audit Team consists of CBI faculty, industry professionals and key stakeholders from the audited firm Audit ToolsInnovation MetricsThe innovation metrics include sets of information provided by the firm to be audited. The first set reviles lead time, costs etc of specific projects that has gone through the Stage-gate model (or similar) of the company. The second set of information included more business related data and on an aggregated level such as, time to market, degree of newness – part of value of invoiced product volume from newly launched products, traditional business data etc. ScorecardsTwo sets of web-based questionnaires (scorecards) are used in order to gather quantitative data from the audited company. In the two scorecards, creative climate and business innovation capabilities of the firm is respectively measured based on perceptions from the employees. The respondents are divided into respondent groups, representing different department and functions of the company, in order to enable internal comparison of the final scorecard results. Naturally the scorecard results are also used for comparison with other audited companies. Each of the two web-based questionnaires –Creative Climate Scorecard and Business Innovation Scorecard – includes about 50 statements linked to 10 parameters. The respondents give their view of how accurate each statement is based on their perception. Interviews guidesTwo types of interview are conducted. First, as a complement to the scorecard and innovation metrics, information interviews are carried out to capture the contextual information about the company, its current innovation process and other relevant phenomenon within the company. This interview is semi-structured and an interview guide is used, differing depending on the purpose of the interview. A second interview is conducted after the initial pre-analysis of metrics results, scorecards results and information interviews. Also this interview is semi-structured and the interview guide varies depending on who is the interviewee and based on what has been seen as interesting areas from the pre-analysis. Workshop structures
The aim of the first workshop is to diagnose the audited companies innovative capabilities, identify key problem areas, and suggest areas of improvements. People from different backgrounds are gathered carrying varying perceptions of what is important and not, different workshop participants bring different findings from interviews and the overall aim with the workshop is therefore to gathered and manage all these thoughts in a structure way. A modified version of the KJ Shiba method is therefore used. The second workshop aims at getting the representatives from the audited company to fully understand the insofar findings from the audit team and to encourage an open feedback discussion on the findings’ relevance and accuracy. The workshop’s structure therefore includes presentation of observations, discussions and validation or modifications of these observations. The third workshop is structures in a similar way as the second workshop, but in addition it includes a more open-structured phase, allowing for the whole group to discuss and agree on how the suggested improvements can be turned into initiation of practical activities. Since the aim of workshop is also to generate internal ownership of pinpointed problems and potential solutions, the representatives from the audited company is overall given a greater role in this workshop.
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| Last Updated ( Monday, 01 September 2008 10:45 ) |
All in all the innovation audit consists of three different workshop and each of these are structured differently depending on participants and the purpose of each workshop. 
