Javier Perez-FreijeDesign of Organizational Controls for Managing Innovation

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Managing innovation is crucial for firm success in high-velocity environments. Although the primary emphasis of R&D professional literature has been on formalizing development activities, this book defines a control concept for the fuzzy front-end of the innovation process, which is characterized by higher levels of ambiguity and uncertainty that in turn diminish administrative information, or firms‘ knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships and outputs.

Through in-depth case studies of the responses of IBM, Kodak, Infineon, and SAP to control challenges in the fuzzy front-end, this research expands existing control theory by examining the relationship among firms‘ administrative information, the impact of organizational controls and their design.

The results challenge several important features of existing models of R&D management and diverge from common beliefs about controlling the fuzzy front-end. Conventional wisdom suggests organizational control may be detrimental to innovation, but this study suggests otherwise. Formal controls supporting information processing requirements may be more appropriate than previously thought, as highlighted by discussions of their impact based on case studies. These findings offer significant managerial implications.