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Processes of novelty generation and adoption have received much more attention than novelty evaluation. This paper explores the internal processes enacted by organizations to recognize and assess novel ideas for further implementation by focusing on the role that artifacts play in identifying the creative potential of an idea versus another one. Our empirical study focuses on the evaluation of novelty in the form of new experiences and builds on the analysis of two highly creative organizations, elBulli restaurant, led by chef Ferran Adrià, and the Italian Drama Academy Nico Pepe. We find that organizations implement three distinct processes to evaluate the novelty of ideas: analyzing, structuring, and formalizing. In these processes, artifacts play a key role in making novel ideas tangible by anticipating audiences’ reactions, integrating the novelty generated into an organizational corpus of knowledge, and consolidating novel ideas for future applications. Our results show that these processes take place iteratively in all phases of the idea’s journey, increasingly leading to the collective identification and assessment of novelty.

This paper aims to identify the factors that influence the evaluation of an idea beyond its intrinsic values, especially those that relate to the presentation of the idea. With reference to a review of research conducted in the fields of psycho-sociology and psychology and using a qualitative comparative approach, the analysis of 57 pitches of entrepreneurial ideas during two start-up weekends shows that ideas receive the highest evaluation when they are judged to be the best in terms of novelty, feasibility, and relevance. However, our results also show that mastery by ideators of the basics of pitch presentation – especially clear enunciation – is also a necessary condition for acceptance of the idea by the audience. The paper seeks to contribute to the literature by identifying the most favorable configurations for a positive evaluation of an entrepreneurial idea in this type of innovation contest.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a structured procedure for the capture and evaluation of innovative ideas in the early stages of product development. The procedure is designed to take account of internal and external factors affecting the value of innovative ideas.

The proposed procedure is based on divergent and convergent approaches to innovation. Ideas are generated and captured using targeted questions and subsequently evaluated using modifications of the Kano model and failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA). Idea evaluation considers four criteria – delight, originality, market share potential and simplicity – which are used to compute an “idea priority number”.

A case study looking at innovations in swimming goggles verified the validity of the proposed procedure. The procedure also supports fact-based decision making and applies a structured perspective to the innovation process that makes it easier to manage.

The case study made use of a pilot survey in which 32 customers participated. Although the case study was only intended as a demonstration of the method’s use, such a sample size could lead to unreliable results in certain cases.

Applications of standard or expanded FMEA do not add value to a product because the main purpose of the approach is to prevent failure. The proposed inversion of FMEA logic combined with customer view via the Kano model offers a method for the structured analysis of product innovations. No similar approach to the evaluation of innovations has so far appeared in the literature.

This chapter presents the personal perspectives of the author on issues related to methodology in teaching children with learning disabilities and to the role of methodology in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Additionally, problems schools have had in implementing IDEA are highlighted and proposals offered to alleviate those difficulties.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a workshop process to enhance the learning of employee-driven innovating (LEDI) and to evaluate in multiple ways the practical effects of the LEDI process, which aimed to enhance the employee-driven innovation practices at workplace level in a public organisation. Although front-line employees are increasingly encouraged to participate in innovation, organisations lack multi-level knowledge on the practices, outcomes and effects of participation.

A six-month development process (LEDI) was conducted to empower front-line hospital support service workers to learn to innovate and to apply this in the services they provide. The process consisted of different themes: future visions, current services, creating new services and evaluations of ideas and innovation embryos. The multi-method evaluation of the process included pre-evaluation of the generated innovation ideas, a developmental evaluation of the selected innovation embryos, a follow-up evaluation of the innovation ideas and an evaluation of the organisational level effect via a quantitative survey.

The intervention process had positive effects on employee participation and learning to innovate. The conclusion of the four evaluations is that the LEDI process developed a new kind of agency among employees and enabled significant improvements to services. The evaluation of the organisation-level effect revealed that the process had also improved the views regarding preconditions for development.

The intervention method is a practical application of employee-driven innovation conception that is validated as practical and effective at workplace level. The process is a viable method for enhancing workers’ innovation-related learning in service organisations. The novelty of the method is based on the multi-disciplinary combination of approaches that consist of theories of practice-based innovation, expansive learning and emphatic human-centred service design.

This chapter provides an in-depth understanding of the cognitive processes that facilitate creativity from a multi-level perspective. Because cognitive processes are viewed as residing within the individual and as an individual-level phenomenon, it is not surprising that a plethora of research has focused on various cognitive processes involved in creative production at the individual level and the factors that may facilitate or hinder the successful application of these processes. Of course, individuals do not exist in a vacuum, and many organizations are utilizing teams and groups to facilitate creative problem solving. We therefore extend our knowledge from the individual to the team level and group level, providing more than 50 propositions for testing and discussing their implications for future research.

Recognizing the impact of innovation on organizational performance, scholars from a number of disciplines have sought to identify the conditions that make innovation possible. Although these studies have served to identify a number of key variables, the relationship between these variables and innovation is complex. In this chapter, we argue that the apparent complexity of these relationships may be attributed to cross-level differences in the requirements for innovation and the existence of complex interactions among the phenomena operating at a given level of analysis. The implications of this multi-level perspective for understanding how innovation occurs in organizational settings are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the different heuristics adopted by a crowd and a management committee to evaluate new product proposals, and whether, in assessing the value of proposals, they emphasize different features.

The study takes a quantitative analysis approach to study an internal innovation contest held by the biotechnology company Novozymes. The contest generated 201 proposals that were evaluated by 109 research and development professionals by means of a virtual preference market, and by a management committee.

The crowd and the committees’ assessments of the value of the proposals were based on different features. The committee emphasized experience and inventors’ seniority; the crowd set more store on informative idea descriptions but penalized overly complex and lengthy proposals.

The design of the innovation contest does not allow full comparison of the preference functions of crowd and committee. The findings from this case study cannot be generalized. The early stage of new product development seems fruitful for investigating crowdsourcing and knowledge management.

Firms should consider adopting preference markets for idea screening and evaluation since they appraise ideas from different angles compared to managers. However, they complement, rather than substitute managerial evaluation, especially in the case of more detailed proposals.

This is one of the first attempts to identify differences in the decision-making processes of crowds and committees. The paper identifies their strengths as evaluators of new product ideas and finds that the “wisdom of crowds” has some limitations in relation to the ability to process complex information.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of information aggregation markets (IAMs) for community‐based idea management and to present IDeM, a novel Internet‐based software tool that can be used for generating and evaluating new ideas utilizing the concept of IAMs.

Starting with a review of existing methods for collective intelligence, IAMs are identified as a prominent method for collective intelligence. Specific requirements for exploring IAMs for idea management are derived. Based on these requirements, a software tool for implementing IAMs in the context of idea management is developed (IDeM). IDeM has been evaluated and evaluation results are used to identify IDeM's benefits and limitations. A review of related work points out the innovative characteristics of IDeM.

Evaluation results indicate that IAMs is an efficient method for idea generation and evaluation. Moreover IDeM is perceived both as easy to use and efficient in supporting idea generation and evaluation.

IDeM can be used by commercial or other organizations for supporting generation and evaluation of new ideas.

IDeM's innovative aspects are: in addition to trading, it allows users involvement by means of new idea submission, rating of ideas and commenting on ideas; it confronts the uncertainty of new idea related events by offering an expert based valuation mechanism.; and it extends the typical output of IAM tools – which is price of idea‐stocks – by calculating the volume weighted average price.

Companies have to assess the benefit of supplier innovation before realization. The specific situation of supplier innovation differs from conventional innovation evaluation because a supplier innovation refers to a subproduct for which the supplier is responsible. To date, supplier innovation evaluation has not been comprehensively discussed in the literature. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to focus on how supplier innovation should be evaluated.

For this purpose, a case study based on expert interviews has been conducted to identify how supplier innovation is evaluated in practice. On the basis of the empirical findings the specific situation of supplier innovation is discussed in relation to theoretical basics about the object, objective, time, reference, person, recipient, criteria, and methods of evaluation as well as the evaluation and selection process.

Results are recommendations for the special situation of supplier innovation evaluation before their realization in the purchasing company.

Based on the recommendations, a systematic and comprehensive approach with evaluation criteria and methods should be developed. Future research should address useful evaluation criteria and methods.

Managers can use the recommendations to evaluate supplier innovation in practice and to establish a systematic evaluation and selection process for supplier innovation.

The research findings contribute to the literature about innovation management and supplier management research by providing insights into the special situation of supplier innovation evaluation; in particular, this is the first paper which provides a systematic and comprehensive discussion about supplier innovation evaluation.