Measurement of the innovation front end: Viewpoint of process, social environment and physical environment

The front-end phase is in the literature generally regarded as the most critical phase of the innovation process. This is due to its inherent uncertain and ambiguous nature and its significant potential to improve overall innovation capability in industrial firms. The front-end phase precedes and feeds the new product development project phase by creating a continuous stream of new incremental and radical product concepts. Such a comprehensive measurement system dealing with the front-end phase of innovation process makes it possible for the people responsible for the innovation activities to get a picture of the efficiency of innovation process front-end and effectiveness of outcomes and impacts. This paper describes conceptually the theoretical backgrounds, a tentative idea and first managerial implications of a method, Balanced Innovation Front-End Measurement BIFEM, we are going to develop and test in 30 Finnish, German and USA companies during next two years. The framework of the model for measuring the innovation activities front end contains at the first draft five assessment viewpoints as follows; input, process, outcome, social environment and physical environment. A connection with these elements in the measurement of innovation activities as a whole has been weak, but now these will be covered by the new approach. In this paper we concentrate on three out of five assessment areas - those three are (1) process, (2) social environment and (3) physical environment. In this paper the theoretical background of innovation process front-end itself is described first (1). Second (2) the viewpoint of social environment is discussed. Third (3) this is followed by a description of a physical environment of innovation process front-end. Next fourth (4) the earlier developed and tested Programmes' Assessment Method PAM and Quality Maturity Method QMM by the writers are illustrated. Fifth (5) the most crucial points from the viewpoint of measurement in the front-end stage of innovation process are discussed. Finally sixth (6) the conclusions and structure of the new measurement method Balanced Innovation Front-End Measurement BIFEM is described.