Supporting the Sytematization of Early-Stage-Innovation by Means of Collaborative Working Environments

Research in the area of the early-stage of innovation concentrates on non-linear innovation environments constituted by the nature of the “fuzzy front end” of innovations in which there are no well-defined problems or goals at that point in time [1,2]. Early-stage-innovation requirements are the general applicability and the support of iterations within the software tools to be developed within future collaborative working environments (CWE). The research presented in this paper focuses on innovators’ every day work and the related needs in todays and future work environments to provide a highly flexible software solution supportive to the early-stage-innovation. The adaptability of the software tools to – which depends on the fulfillment of the users requirements will be achieved by supporting the real-life work routines of innovation workers and teams; be they co-located or dislocated. In the actornetwork theory [3] early-stage-innovation is seen as a social process. Therefore the participation of individuals will be encouraged by the usage of game dynamics to supporting idea generation related workflows. To equalize the dependences of people working together in one place, time zone and personal relationship a database of knowledge and object representations will be implemented in the CWE. The CWE tools support and guide innovators to get connected to the right people, produce ideas based on explored knowledge and evaluate them to achieve the goal of developing successful innovations. The approach presented in the proposed paper is basing on the work carried out by the European funded research project Laboranova.