Innovation governance in practice: A business policy approach

Abstract

Innovation is a key driver for any organization’s competitiveness and sustainability. Even in the public sector, a lack of innovation may affect organizations in many different ways, ranging from lost opportunities for more efficient and innovative processes to staff morale decrease; staff that embeds organizational knowledge, values and culture. Innovation can provide new ways of doing things; strengthening competitive advantages or providing more competitive products and services. Innovative organizations also make jobs more fulfilling, and ultimately making the world a better place. Board directors need to be more than just observers. According to Chouaibi, Boujelbene, and Affes (2009), board directors do have a main role in what driving innovation concerns, and that there is a need for an adequate framework in order to promote such involvement from the board of directors. Moreover, Saravia and Saravia-Matus (2017) suggest the problem of the determination of causality has become an increasingly important question in the field of corporate governance. By following a logical thinking process, we ended at a pragmatic and deployable model backed by logical cause and effect. Taking a business policy approach, we argue that it is possible to attain more innovative organizations and innovation governance should be on every board’s priority list.