Empirical Study of Innovation Management in Focal Networks: Partner Selection and Realization

This article presents the results of an empirical study focusing on innovation activities in networks. In the summer of 2005, we interviewed twelve top managers of leading public companies in Germany. In order to develop new products, these companies nowadays have to rely increasingly on partners. However, a large number of unscheduled breakups of these innovation networks indicates that the established processes do not meet the modified requirements. The goal of our study was to gain insights into the coping strategies of focal companies in dealing with this new challenge. Analyzing the partner selection process, it became clear that there is a significant difference between the selection of known partners and new partners concerning the selection criteria and the information sources used. Therefore, it seems advisable to distinguish between these two groups in the selection process. The main result regarding the project management is that, on the one hand, the companies consider the network management aspects an important success factor for interorganizational projects. On the other hand, they have barely implemented these necessary tasks into their processes. As a result, many problems concerning planning, coordination and evaluation arise. This paper offers possible solutions to these problems