Managing Idea Processes in Front End Innovation

Research topic
The PhD study concerns the management of ideas in early product development. In early product development, ideas are fragile and transformable and the development of ideas is dependent on diverse knowledge creation and social network processes to gain momentum. The management of ideas concerns the handling of ideas which can be categorised as the process of Idea generation, evaluation and selection of innovation ideas to enter the product development pipe-line. My study has basis in the area of management of innovation, engineering design and science and technology studies (STS). As such, the project wants to engage with management issues on creativity in product development by using theoretical perspectives from science and technology studies to make novel contributions on the subject of managing ideas in front-end innovation (FEI).

Objective and research approach
The research study seeks to investigate and understand how companies are integrating a process of idea management and how it supports the process of ideas. An assumption in the project is that product ideas in FEI are of a significant complexity on several levels. Through an empirical and theoretical investigation of how innovation organizations meets the challenge of managing product ideas in FEI, this picture of a complex relationship between elements such as technology development and product design, market analysis, human interaction and sociality, processes of knowledge creation, creativity, change and decision-making, and organizational structures is outlined. Another assumption is that in order to manage these complex processes of product idea development in FEI, we need to better understand the inter-relations between the elements of content, structure, and process, which can be both of technological-, organizational and social character. In the research project it is suggested that in order to illuminate the complexity of product ideas and bring forward a new frame for managerial implications, we make use of understandings from STS. The project has a methodological approach based on the views of pragmatism and mixed methods research. There is a focus on empirical data through studies in industry, academic knowledge and theories, and the development of new theory in an iterative and pragmatic way using different methods of data collection and analysis. It is the aim to draw on the different methodologies and theoretical understanding from management of innovation, engineering design and STS with a mutual complimentary contribution as the result. A challenge but also an important element of the research is to use the strengths from the different theoretical areas to go further than the analytical stage and input the development of a new framework of managing ideas in FEI. The PhD dissertation is paper based.