Status: Future project
Schedule: 2011-01 – 2011-12
CBI staff: Joakim Björkdahl and Sofia Börjesson
Funding: Apply for funding from CBI/Vinnova Internal
Description: Recently, the innovation audit has been introduced, both in literature and in practice. An innovation audit is intended to provide a systematic review of a firm’s or a business unit’s abilities and processes, to improve its offering relative to customers and stakeholders, in a creative or novel manner. An innovation audit can be defined as an audit that intends to investigate and improve a firm’s capabilities to innovate and perform innovation processes. Innovation audits assess a firm or a business unit’s needs and abilities to change, and also in what ways and how fast these needs and abilities are changing. Firms, scholars and practitioners believe and contend that innovation audits can improve firm processes and the capabilities to innovate, and thus will lead to improved competitiveness, performance and growth. However, what happens after these performed audits is yet not mapped and analyzed. The purpose of this project is to first investigate whether, and if how, firms have taken actions on the knowledge provided by different innovation audits and what the results have been and secondly to establish collaborative research projects. The project will in its first phase be based on interviews in nine companies. The overall objective is to identify one or two firms to establish action-oriented research collaborations with in order to develop joint knowledge about how to develop capabilities.

Status: Ongoing project
Schedule: 2009-10 – 2012-09
CBI staff: Henrik Berglund, Fredrik Borg, Jonas Hjerpe and Sören Sjölander
Funding: Vinnova
Description: The CBI Consortium for Innovative Growth is a project -- commissioned by the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (VINNOVA) -- that seeks to develop and diffuse methods and processes for capital efficient development and growth among early stage tech-companies.

Status: Future project
Schedule: 2011-01 – 2012-12
CBI staff: Sofia Börjesson, Maria Elmquist
Funding: To be applied for from Vinnova and Volvo Cars
Description:  This research study will build on our previous collaboration with Volvo Cars on the broad theme Developing Capabilities for Innovation.  The focus for this study will still be to understand the prerequisites underpinning Volvo Cars’ efforts and thereby investigating how to build capabilities for innovation (in large firms). In this phase of the project we will work closely with the strategic unit “Long term Strategy and Innovation” at Volvo Cars. We are currently in the process of defining exact scope for the collaboration, but it will include participating in developing and launching an innovation forum and in various activities such as an innovation jam. The objective is to explore and understand the process of building new innovation capabilities and thereby gain an increased understanding of the process of developing such capabilities.

Status: Ongoing project

Schedule: 2011-01 – 2011-07

CBI staff: Christian Sandström, Jonas Hjerpe

Funding: CBI internal

Description: The project aims to explore how the current transition from analog to digital, IP-based surveillance impacts different actors in the security business. In particular, it seeks to describe how incumbent firms are trying to deal with this technological discontinuity.

Status: Ongoing project
Schedule: 2008-09 – 2012-08-31
CBI staff: Maria Elmquist
Funding: Vinnova (Öppna och distribuerade Innovationsprocesser)
Description: This research project aims at investigating how to lead and organize collaborative innovation arenas and also at investigating how companies that participate in such activities can leverage on the knowledge generated. The project is a collaboration with SAFER, a research center on vehicle and traffic safety where over 20 companies collaborate. The project is not hosted by CBI but by the Division of MORE at Chalmers.

Full title: Profiting from addressing environmental problems - An exploration of how firms create and appropriate environmental value

Status: Ongoing project

Schedule: 2010-10 – 2013-01

CBI staff: Marcus Linder, Sofia Börjesson, Joakim Björkdahl

Funding: CBI

Description: This project explores the strategies for appropriating public value utilized by firms that provide offers that are differentiated on environmental performance. The study employs both qualitative and quantitative methods. An initial question in this project is to what extent that small firms that are differentiated by their environmental performance have higher or lower profits than comparable firms. An important follow-up question is what characterizes the appropriation strategies utilized by firms that are successfully profiting from environmentally differentiated offers. The project is now in its second phase.

Status: Ongoing project
Schedule: 2009-11 – 2011-04
CBI staff: Jan Wickenberg and Robert Bartmar
Funding: CBI internal
Description: The research performed within this project explores an organizational design used within 3P (Volvo AB), which aims to assure the customer influence over the innovation process.

Status: Current project
Schedule: 2011-01 – 2011-12 (phase 1), then 4 years
CBI staff: Maria Elmquist, Lisa Carlgren, Ingo Rauth
Funding: CBI Internal/Vinnova funding for first phase
Description: Recently, research has pointed at the field of design as one potential area of knowledge for companies with innovation ambitions. One of the most advocated approaches is design thinking, a concept put forward by practitioners like Tim Brown (IDEO) and Roger Martin (Rotman School of Design and Management). Many companies have also engaged in applying the approach.

The ambition of the project is to contribute to a better understanding of how design thinking can be implemented in large firms and what value design thinking creates in those organizations. More specifically it investigates how design thinking is perceived to create value in these firms and how the approach is integrated with the existing innovation and product development processes.

The project is designed as an explorative project in collaboration with the HPI School of Design Thinking in Potsdam, Germany, an institution providing executive education on design thinking. The data collection is based on a series of qualitative, semi-structured interviews. The sample will consist of 10 companies who have been formally trained at the HPI School of Design Thinking and have been using design thinking for more than two years in their own organizations. The interviewees will be managers in R&D who participated in the training or who work with people that participated. The first results from the study will be presented during fall 2011.