Knowledge in Innovation Processes

INTRODUCTION The success of industrial and scientific research has always been dependent on new discoveries and innovations, but tighter budgets and increasing global competition push the pace with which innovation must happen nowadays. Bringing new products to the market before competitors do constitutes a crucial competitive advantage for many companies and organizations. Accelerating discovery and innovation is increasingly dependent on the use of advanced information and knowledge technology for building environments that support the innovation process systematically and efficiently (cf. Specht, Beckmann, & Amelingmeyer, 2002; Amidon, 2002). Such environments depend on a number of advanced knowledge management technologies and have to adapt to the wide variety of innovative practices, innovation cultures, organizational context, and application areas where innovation takes place. It is essential that the functionalities of such are aligned with the needs of innovators and their context. Innovation starts with an adequate identification of goals including an appropriate problem description and ends with the successful exploitation of the problem solution. Therefore, innovation is understood as dealing with complex problem-solving processes in whose activities 3195 Knowledge in Innovation Processes knowledge of different types is applied and created. Systematic support of innovation processes requires efficient management of knowledge with respect to activities like acquisition, creation, enrichment, retrieval, reuse, and combination of such knowledge. When taking a closer look at innovation activities in different areas, a common core innovation process can be identified that consists of six overlapping but distinguishable phases. The specific characteristics of the innovation process imply an innovation-specific, multi-stage knowledge lifecycle and knowledge management support that reflects the dependency on the innovation environment and the characteristics of the innovation process.