Innovation is crucial for business in order to meet consumers' needs and stakeholders' expectations. Innovation emerges as a must for all activity sectors, including the textile industry. Change can be an opportunity for organizations that present competitive advantages and new solutions. However, not all changes are directly visible, and innovation by nature is impossible to quantify and measure. This intangibility requires tools to help managers monitor the results of their investment. The present study applies the Innovation Scoring 1.0, a Portuguese tool for companies to self-evaluate in what concerns innovation, efficiency, and profitability improvement. It is structured in three main sections: literature review, case study, and conclusions. The study showed that a company may improve its results through open innovation, being leadership, and organizational culture determinants in the process.
TopIntroduction
Innovation becomes, more and more, a significant factor when defining and delimiting business objectives. The literature has been studying its contributions about strategic results and sustainability (Alegre & Chiva, 2008), being today accepted as being “vital to sustain and guarantee the advancement of companies' businesses” (Chesbrough, 2012 p. 1). Innovation systems are important determinants of technological change (Hekkert et al, 2007), requiring companies to improve their capacities and resources to develop new products, services, systems and processes (operational or production), ways of working and technologies, in order to respond to the needs and expectations of its consumers.
In this context, innovation appears as an indispensable requirement for the success and sustainability of all activity sectors, among which is the textile industry (Rech, 2006). Indeed, technological changes have introduced significant changes in the competitiveness of the textile industry, especially with regard to the definition of new areas of competition (more internationalized), sustainability of products and processes (more reduced), as well as product differentiation (increased). In the new competitive standard, regarding technological innovation, product quality, organizational innovation, flexibility, speed of delivery and rationalization of production costs prevail (Rech, 2006).
Companies must obtain competitive advantages through differentiation (Godinho, 2003). Change must be an opportunity and organizations can obtain competitive advantages through new solutions and value added (Poças, 2015). However, results of the change are not always immediately visible, and it is often suggested that innovation, by nature, is impossible to quantify and measure (Cerveira, 2009). This intangibility requires the creation of tools that help managers to monitor the results of their investment, given that developing a business without a consistent image of its performance and objectives increases the degree of uncertainty and risk (Patton, 2007).
This chapter is related with innovation management, more specifically with the need of having a tool to monitor the performance of the company. There is a gap in the literature review between innovation and business performance (González-Fernández & González-Velasco, 2018). One of the many reasons why companies invest strategically in innovation is related to the objective of achieving better performance (Beechler & Woodward, 2009). How can we evaluate and manage innovation is the research question and this study analyses this problematic through Innovation Scoring 1.0, from COTEC, a system that aims to provide organizations with an instrument for self-diagnosis of their capabilities and performance in the field of innovation. Additionally, it assists in the analysis of the organization's performance, identifying and assessing the capabilities and weaknesses in terms of innovation. Above all, it aims to encourage companies to diagnose and develop innovation in a more systematic, efficient, and effective way (COTEC, 2018).
The Innovation Scoring is applied to a Portuguese company in the textile sector for helping the diagnosis and propose suggestions for improvement. It is structured in three main chapters. In the first chapter, a theoretical framework is presented, through a literature review, which addresses three main themes:
- 1.
Innovation.
- 2.
Innovation Scoring.
- 3.
Textile sector.
In the second chapter, the methodology used, the general and specific objectives, the questionnaire used, and the description of data collection are presented. An analysis of the results obtained is obtainable and their discussion is made. In the third and last chapter, the conclusions on the application of Innovation Scoring in the textile company under study are presented, the limitations are pointed out and recommendations for future research are suggested. This study highlights leadership and organizational culture as determinants in the process of innovation.