Bridging theory and practice: Toward a unified framework of innovation

While the innovation literature has introduced over the years many conceptual frameworks for classifying innovations, there is yet little agreement among researchers on a unified framework for studying innovation. More troubling is the fact that most theoretical frameworks of innovations have had little impact on the way organizations conduct their innovation processes in practice. In addition, only few studies have connected the innovation process with the methodology used for turning ideas into useful products or services, namely project management. This conceptual paper offers a unified framework of innovation and demonstrates its value on real-life cases of innovation. The framework is an integration of well-known innovation frameworks with a project classification framework, adding the market and technological uncertainty dimensions. The unified framework enables to deal with one of the most important aspects of innovation, closing the uncertainty gap existing at the onset of the innovation process.