Managing Ideation and Concept Integration in the Product Innovation Work Process for Non-Assembled Products

Abstract

In an exploratory inquiry, involving informants in 19 global manufacturing companies in six sectors of the process industries, ideation, and concept integration during the pre-development of non-assembled products was studied. New and previously deployed constructs and concepts related to innovation in a process-industrial context have initially been developed, refined, and empirically tested. The findings demonstrate the importance of an early integration of constructs and concepts for raw material innovation, innovation-related process technology, and product innovation, as a prerequisite for successful ideation of new or improved products in the process industries. Companies in different sectors of the process industries can implement and use the novel “integrated framework” for contextualization and conceptualization of new product ideas in their development or reconfiguration of an enhanced work process for non-assembled products.