Facoltà: Ingegneria Gestionale per la Produzione Industrial
Collocazione: 10131
Autore: Collu Ingrid Enrica
Data: 20/12/2011
Titolo: Open innovation in the food and drink industry
Relatore: Manzini Raffaella
Correlatore: Lazzarotti Valentina
Autorizzazione per la consultazione: NO
Le tesi si possono consultare unicamente in sede
The first part of this thesis aims to define the external context characteristics of the food and drink industry. A focal point of this first part is understanding the external environment in which food and drink companies operate, extremely turbulent, constituted by a structural change and a technological change. This scenario has led to new skills and new opportunities for innovation in the food sector: new technologies are changing the key sources necessary for the competition and create new opportunities for achieve a sustainable competitive advantage, in particular over the two technological areas of information and communication technology and biotechnology and bioengineering. The second part of this study is constituted by the internal context characteristics, which include company characteristics related to demographics and strategies. The demographic characteristic described in this study is the company’s size. Strategy characteristics include strategic orientations, aspects or goals of the innovation strategy, organizational culture. In particular, the different strategies of open innovation in this industry (mainly characterized by the creation of incremental innovation) and the management of the innovation funnel at the strategic level are described. A focal point of this last aspect is constituted by the adoption of the model “Want Find Get Manage”, which enable to manage in an effective way a complex innovation project. The third part of this study is the collaborative capability, an important ingredient of the open innovation model of an organization, since it defines how well individuals, teams, departments and business units are able to collaborate with external actors in an effective way. Intimately linked to the concept of collaborative capability is the need of networking certainly recognized in the food industry, in view of its long supply chains, the presence of large, global enterprises together with a very large number of smaller, specialized firms, specialized universities and research institutes, and high levels of state regulation. The internal and external context characteristics and the collaboration capability influence the type of open innovation model that the company uses. This fourth part, through the use of several case studies, aims to understand the different types of open innovation models. The different approaches of open innovation adopted by these companies are classified through the use of matrices, enabling to combine the five variable which classically distinguish the open innovation models, which are governance, organizational forms, openness direction (inbound/outbound), partners variety e innovation funnel openness. The last part is constituted by a reflection on the performances of innovation which, for having concretization in the case studies, requires a longer period of analysis.
