Systematic support for strategic decision making in the service innovation life cycle

This paper describes a systematic framework to support strategic decision making in innovation development that attempts to put appropriate amounts of planning resource into the process at different stages of innovation life cycle from idea to the termination of line of business. It is constructed to make use of qualitative evaluation techniques early in the process when faster, less expensive methods are preferred to more accurate quantitative techniques. The work was triggered by the results of a large interview study about innovation management practice in 12 major Finnish organisations and an attendant research question "How should future uncertainty be managed during the entire service innovation life cycle?" The approach towards finding answers to the question was based on constructivist collective case methodology, and the process resulted in a framework model to support strategic decision making. This conceptual paper gives an overview of the model where separately developed techniques are integrated by applying generic risk management methodology to produce a more systematic, more comprehensive, but highly efficient management process for service innovations throughout the innovation life cycle.