As n on-technical innovation, particularly organisational innovation, is playing an increasingly important role in better understanding innovation and its impact on the competitiveness of companies (and countries). There is a need to better measure and integrat e organisational aspects in indicators measuring innovation performance taking into account sectoral specificities. There are at least three main causes for the growing importance of organisational innovations:

• Organisational innovations are enablers for technological innovations: The full exploitation of technological innovations in companies often needs or is entangled with organisational change.
• Organisational innovations have a competitive advantage in itself: New organisational solutions and management methods improve company's performance and thus constitute a dimension of innovation of its own right.
• Organisational innovations are prerequisites of knowledge development in the company: A company's competence to create, acquire and make best use of knowledge and skills is largely grounded in its organisational and managerial practices.

Although there has been a growing interest in organisational innovation, the empirical basis of organisational innovations is still weak and scattered. Therefore, the overall goal of this project is to provide suggestions of how to survey organisational innovation on a European level including a special focus on different industry sectors. More specifically, the project has three aims:

• Aim one: Recommendations for surveying organisational innovations
• Aim two: Analysis of the importance of organisational innovations across industry sectors
• Aim three: Use results to improve the concept and methodology of the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) with respect to organisational innovation

In order to accomplish these goals, the project team led by the Fraunhofer ISI and involving researchers from France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Slovenia is conducting interviews with representatives of research institutes, with policy makers and intermediaries as well as with experts from different industry sectors (aerospace, automotive, biotechnology, chemicals, electronics, food, machinery, medical devices and textile) of various European countries ( Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, UK, etc.). In addition, the project team's experience in research and measurement of organisational innovations as well as a wide network of European and international researchers working on similar tasks are contributing to this project.

finished

EC DG Enterprise and Industry: Innovation Policy Unit

• Cranfield School of Management, United Kingdom
• Centre de Recherche en Economie Industrielle Internationale (CREII), France
• Lunaria, Italy
• MER Eurocentre for Management and Development, Slovenia

Armbruster, H.; Kirner, E.; Lay, G.; Szwejczewski, M.; Coriat, B. , Patterns of organisational change in European industry (PORCH), Ways to strengthen the empirical basis of research and policy, Frauunhofer-Institut für System- und Innovationsforschung, Karlsruhe; European Commission, Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry, Innovation Policy Unit, 2006