Managing the Front End of Innovation—Part I: Results From a Three-Year Study

Abstract

OVERVIEW:An IRI Research-on-Research project looked at effective practices in the front end of innovation through a study of practices in 197 large US-based companies over a three-year period. The research team used a holistic framework that evaluated front-end activities through the lens of the New Concept Development (NCD) model. Analysis of the data revealed that organizational attributes—senior management commitment, vision, strategy, resources, and culture—were of most importance to front-end performance, explaining 53 percent of the variance in performance among participating companies. All of the organizational attributes had correlations ranging from 15 percent for senior management commitment to 24 percent for vision, which suggests that all of the organizational attributes are important to a company's front-end performance.