Proposing a framework for evaluating and selecting ideas in the FEI: a case study of Volvo Cars
Anne Elerud‐Tryde, Aet Soonvald · Chalmers Publication Library (Chalmers University of Technology) · 2011
Companies must innovate in order to survive on the market.The early activities of the innovation process (also known as the front end of innovation), especially idea generation and selection, are often mentioned as important for a successful innovation process.The importance of radical innovation to remain competitive in an ever changing world is also emphasized in innovation management.Although radical and incremental innovations need to be managed differently, most FEI processes seem to be developed for incremental innovations.Moreover, much innovation literature covers how ideas can be generated but not as much literature exists on how ideas can be selected.Therefore, we propose a framework for selecting ideas.This framework was applied to an innovation jam, an online brainstorming event, carried out at Volvo Cars in order to test and refine it.Two additional studies were also conducted, one contextual and one comparative study.The framework proposes that ideas need to be evaluated differently according to the nature of the idea.It therefore contains a categorization of ideas into radical and incremental.From the study of Volvo Cars it was clear that no other processes within the company were adapted for managing radical innovation.The study also showed that most existing processes did not consider the commercial and business aspects of an idea to the same extent as the technical aspects.In the process of developing the framework we also discovered that ideas in the early stages can be hard to handle since they are seeds of ideas rather than fully developed ideas.The area of the idea could thus be argued to be more important than the idea itself.Finally, success factors were identified and guidelines for applying the framework were provided.