Profiling the innovation management discipline a comprehensive perspective focused on creativity-based vs. knowledge-based strategies.

This thesis deals with managing the innovation process. It is based on three fundamental concepts: (1) creativity, knowledge and innovation are strongly related with each other; (2) the output of the process depends on their mutual interactions; (3) such a result should consists of an incremental value to some stakeholders. Unfortunately, in this field most of contributions analyze those interactions on a one-to-one basis and a lack of investigation about these three-variable system currently emerges. In order to help filling this gap this work aims at deepening the Creativity-Knowledge-Innovation (CKI) interactions and their effects in terms of incremental value to stakeholders from both a tangible and intangible point of view. As a result of the related findings, this thesis proposes the CKI triangle model that is thought to be: (1) a framework fostering a systemic analysis of CKI relationships; (2) a method for measuring the performances of a CKI interaction system; (3) a support for governments, managers and researchers coping with the design and the assessment of innovation programs aimed at ensuring an incremental value to stakeholders. Since different categories of stakeholders are concerned with the outcomes of the innovation process, this study adopts a broader perspective than the existing one in literature. It embraces four perspectives: macroeconomic, institutional, socio-cultural and corporate. Based on this slant, this work aims at contributing to the enrichment of the Innovation Management (IM) discipline. The CKI model and the study about the Innovation Management discipline have been carried out thanks to the wise mentorship, the multi-year collaboration and the continuous stimulus of Professor Roberto Palmieri. Finally, some practical results are discussed in order to complement these theoretical argumentations. The findings related to the case study approach proved to be coherently aligned with the theoretical results of the aforementioned model. Such case studies involve: 1) the design and implementation of the Enterprise 2.0 model in a multinational company operating in the automotive industry. The case study mainly covers the knowledge-based strategy and its outcomes affect the institutional, corporate and macroeconomic perspectives. Also this project was developed thanks to the supervision of Professor Roberto Palmieri; 2) the design and implementation of a vehicle pooling platform intended to be a Social Innovation initiative in low-income macroeconomic agglomerates – e. g. Convergence Regions in the European Union (EU). It mainly covers both the creativity-based and the knowledge-based strategies and the outcomes affect the institutional, corporate and socio-cultural perspectives; 3) the design and implementation of an innovative tine by two groups of students. There were different backgrounds within the teams, but a homogeneous composition between the teams. The groups of students attended an international summer school in Copenhagen – i. e. “Innovation Inspired by Nature” (IIN). It focused on innovation-oriented creativity dynamics inspired by biological processes. It was organized by the Copenhagen University (KU) and the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in collaboration with several Danish companies among which Kongskilde Industries A/S, a Danish multinational with subsidiaries worldwide and production facilities in Denmark, Germany, Sweden, United States and Poland. It is “a full line company within soil preparation, grassland machinery, complete diet mixers, grain handling equipment and pneumatic conveying in the plastic, paper and packaging industries”. The data were collected through the Participant Observation methodology introduced first by Bronislaw Malinowski and elaborated through some revisions to the Julie Ugleholdt Pedersen’s original methodology. This case study mainly covers the creativity-based strategy and its outcomes are related to the institutional, corporate and socio-cultural perspectives. This case study has been carried out thanks to a research collaboration with the “Design and Innovation Group” (D&I) of the “Technology and Innovation Management Division” (TIM) at the “Department of Management Engineering” of the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and, in particular, with Professor Jason Li-Ying and Professor Balder Onarheim. It was also possible thanks to Julie Ugleholdt Pedersen, researcher at the Copenhagen Institute of NeuroCreativity (CINC).