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Innovation occurs not only in products development but also in processes development. However the academic articles show that product innovation or product and process innovation has been strongly interested by scholars since 1990s, e.g. (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1995; Chryssochoidis, 2010; Johne & Snelson, 1988; Krishnan & Ulrich, 2001). Process innovation is the prerequisite for developing ISC while presently we have only fragmented knowledge on BPI (Frishammar, et al., 2012), even though more research are beginning to work in innovation on processes (Benner & Tushman, 2002; Lager, Hallberg, & Eriksson, 2010; Stadler, 2011).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Productivity: Innovation means the development of productivity. The innovation in the business processes can lead to the whole industry’s productivity increase at some point.
Business Process Management (BPM): A methodology to align an organization's business processes with what the customers need and want. In the process of management, it promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility, and integration with technology. BPM can help to improve processes continuously.
Supply Chain Management (SCM): The management of a network of interconnected businesses involved in the provision of product and service packages required by the end customers in a supply chain. SCM can help to design, planning, execution, control, and monitoring of supply chain activities with the objective of creating net value, building a competitive infrastructure, leveraging worldwide logistics, synchronizing supply with demand and measuring performance globally.
Product and Process Innovation: A kind of innovation about process changes and improvements because of the development of new products, changes in design of established products, or use of new materials or components in the manufacture of established products.
Supply Chain Innovation (SCI): An innovation management to the innovative activities occurred in the supply chain, to help companies gain more value in the supply chain.
Intelligent Supply Chain (ISC): The supply chain is smart enough to predict or anticipate customer demands, sense changes in supply and demand, and quickly respond to unplanned events. It can use information and quicker decision-making as a substitute for additional inventory.
Process Innovation: An innovation in generalized processes, not just in the processes related to business, but also in the supportive processes, like the processes in financial processing and organizational management.