Towards an Ideation Process Applied to the Automotive Supplier Industry
Résumé
Under the continuously rising innovation pressure, companies from many industry sectors find themselves confronted with the need to introduce or reinforce systematic innovation management methods and processes. It is widely recognised that ideas coming from both within and outside the organisation can be considered as the very source of innovations. Nevertheless, ideation - the generation and management of ideas - happens in the so-called "fuzzy front-end" of the otherwise well-structured process landscape of numerous modern organisations. This makes it difficult to assess and control idea generation in a way that the organisation can capitalise on the creativity of internal and external stakeholders to maximum. This article investigates the need of a structured approach towards idea generation and management within a company, and tries to give essential elements of an answer on the basis of the analysis of key success factors and a practical case study carried out at a German automotive supplier.