“Manufacturing Process Innovation Typologies and Antecedents

1. “Manufacturing Process Innovation Typologies and Antecedents Ohm Pandejpong Michigan State University

2. Motivations • Interests on innovation from various fields: e.g., Economics, Sociology, Engineering, etc. • Recent attention on process innovation. • Heavy focus of both practitioners and researcher on small incremental programs: e.g. TQM, JIT, Six-sigma

3. Motivations (continued) • The possibility of trading-off the benefits of incremental and radical improvements • Are different types of innovations compatible

4. Definitions • Wacker’s (2004) artificial terms • Garvin (1998) defines a process as a system of activities that transform inputs to outputs. • Innovation is defined as implementation of new ideas (Schroeder 1989, Galbraith 1982) • Implementation refers to the act of putting something into effect (Merriam Webster Dictionary)

5. Definitions (continued) • Manufacturing process innovation can be defined as an implementation of new ideas in a manufacturing process.

6. Different stages in innovation • Invention := the process that turns ideas into something explicit (Hargadon’s (1998) definition of implementation) • Integration: the process that causes an invention to become part of the system.

7. Classifications of Innovations • Two dimensions of the classification system • Origin of invention • Internal • External • Degree of radicalness (Benner & Tushman 2002, 2003; March 1991) • Incremental (Exploitative) • Radical (Explorative)

8. Incremental Radical Replication Appropriation External: New to the plant Exploitation Exploration Internal: New to the world Degree of Radicalness Origin of invention Classification (continued)

9. Literature Review • Potentially useful frameworks • Absorptive Capacity: Cohen & Levinthal 1990, Zahra & George 2002 • Learning Organization/Knowledge Management: Tang (1998), Nonaka & Takeuchi (1995) and Leonard-Barton (1995) • Organizational Ambidexterity (Duncan 1976; Tushman and O'Reilly 1996; Gibson and Birkinshaw 2004)

10. Lit. Review (continued) • Product Innovation Literature • Rationales: - certain similarities (Pisano 1997, Bender 2000) • Practice-oriented Paradigms • TQM, Lean, Six-sigma, Reengineering • (Benner and Tushman 2002; Benner and Tushman 2003), Subramaniam and Youndt (2005?) • Product life cycle, process type, technological dynamism, and other contingencies • Burns and Stalker (1961), Abernathy & Utterback (1978)

11. Proposed framework • Antecedents: • Opportunities identification , creation and selection • Resource Slack • Process management orientation • Process technical knowledge integration • Human capital • Culture of innovation • Innovation Capabilities: • Replication • Appropriation • Exploitation • Exploration Manufacturing Performance

12. Proposed methodology • Survey-based empirical research

13. Expected contribution • Identify antecedents of innovations of various sorts • Evaluate the compatibilities between different types of process innovation • Explore the differential impacts of different types of process innovation on performance