Total innovation management: a new emerging paradigm of innovation management

The innovation management is the key activity for company, and the innovation synergy mechanism and pattern between technology element and non-technology elements (mainly including strategy, culture, organization and institution) is the core issue for innovation-based organization. The traditional innovation management has provided the innovation synergy pattern between different products, but it limits itself to product innovation. The portfolio innovation management insists on the innovation synergy among technology, organization and culture and oriented to building up innovation competence, has provided more extension and pertinence, but not taken time-space dimension of innovation management into account. Therefore, based on cases studies of the firms home and abroad, a novel paradigm of innovation management - total innovation management (TIM) is put forward in this paper. This new paradigm combines the insights and coherence of the traditional innovation management view with the more relevant portfolio innovation management, and draws on three distinct areas of recent research, namely, the innovation theory of the firm, the resource-based view (RBV), as well as the complexity theory. It introduces the theoretical framework of TIM, and present the context of TIM formation. It holds, particularly, the view that all people are innovators. The paradigm of TIM provides a basis for an upgraded, more unified, and better-attuned view on innovation management field.