AN ARCHITECTURAL TOOL FOR MANAGE INNOVATION✩

George R. Ribeiro-Justo
Capgemini
No 1 Forge End, Woking, Surrey, GU21 6DB, UK

Abstract
Innovation is an intrinsic part of modern society and natural goal of any successful organisation. However,
promoting and developing innovation is not an easy task. Both innovators and managers responsible for
promoting innovation have a difficult task in communicating and assessing their ideas. This paper presents
a framework for presenting and assessing innovations in technology service organisations. The foundation
of the framework is to apply computational thinking, more specific architectural framework abstractions,
to organise and classify innovations. The paper defines a number of innovation attributes relevant to the
technology service sector and also presents a tool to store and classify innovations.
Key words: Innovation model; Management of Innovation; Architectural Framework; Enterprise Content
Management

1. Introduction

Innovation is an intrinsic part of modern society and natural goal of any successful organisation, and is
seen as a key contributor for performance improvement [1]. One of the major difficulties for organisations
when promoting innovation is to provide a clear framework for employees to systematically propose, assess
and categorise their innovations. There is usually confusion as to whether a new idea constitutes an innovation
and some misunderstanding between what is an innovation or an invention. It has been argued that the
merit of any classification scheme is its utility, in its contribution to help better understand a phenomenon,
explain it or predict the future behaviour [2][3]. This paper attempts to present a classification schema for
innovation in the technology services sector.
There are many studies in the literature about innovation adoption framework but little has been devel-
oped with regards to supporting both managers selecting and promoting innovations and innovators when
proposing ideas. According to Harkema [4], “Innovation is one of the most difficult and elusive processes to
manage, judging by the failure rate of product innovation of most companies (60%-90%).
This paper focuses on a framework that will assist potential innovators in developing their ideas, and
managers (or adopters) in selecting and investing in the potential innovations.
The paper applies an Integrated Architecture Framework (IAF) abstractions as a framework to assess
new ideas like innovation and to categorise them in terms of their benefits and how to implement them. The
paper also proposes a tool to implement the framework based on an Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
environment.

2. What is innovation?

It is worth clarifying two conceptual aspects when referring to innovation. First, what innovation means
in a technology context and how to differentiate it from invention.
The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) uses the following definition [5]:
Technological Product and Process (TPP) Innovations comprise implemented technolog-
ically new products and processes and significant technological improvements in products and
processes. A TPP innovation is considered implemented if it has been introduced on the market
(product innovation) or used within a production process (process innovation). TPP innovations
involve a series of scientific, technological, organizational, financial and commercial activities.
The TPP innovating firm is one that has implemented technologically new or significantly tech-
nologically improved products or processes during the period under review.

✩ The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the author and should not be interpreted as representing
official policies, either expressed or implied of Capgemini UK Ltd.

Preprint submitted to International Journal of Innovation Management (IJIM) October 26, 2009
 Holbrook [6] discusses the problems with the definitions of innovation, and the OECD definition in
particular, because of its emphasis on new. For instance, a new product or process to an organisation in a
country may not necessary be classified as new to another country, therefore should not be classified as an
innovation. The author argues that new is a necessary but not sufficient condition. This demonstrates the
contention that still exists with the definition of innovation.
This paper will follow the concept of technological product and process innovation proposed by OECD.
However, it is important to agree with Holbrook that an innovation does not necessarily need to be the first
or radical but needs to present a degree of uniqueness, as Schumpeter [7] argues ideas need not be new to
be innovative. It is important to see the innovation in the market place it operates, and the benefits of the
innovation are as important as its uniqueness or new aspect.
A fundamental aspect of the framework presented in this paper is therefore to stimulate potential in-
novators to assess their new ideas in terms of their potential success by asking some key questions that
would enable them to better articulate their eventual innovation. It could also be used as a decision tool
for managers in selecting the innovations to be invested in. This is similar to the way software architects
constantly evaluate and select architecture options.

3. Integrated Architecture Framework

The Integrated Architecture Framework (IAF) is a toolset that supports architects in producing a solu-
tion [8]. As a toolset, IAF offers a wide range of concepts and tools, which can be selected by the architect
depending on the engagement and the problem in hand. Although IAF does not offer a process, by using the
concept of roadmap the architect can be guided in a systematic way into the various aspects of the problem,
which eventually leads to the selected solution.
The IAF toolset is large but in this paper, the interest is in the solution being broken into abstraction
layers that helps the architect to focus on the important aspects at the right time. The IAF abstraction
layers are defined as follows:
1. Contextual: this layer focuses on the motivation or business reasons to produce the architecture. The
key question here is why? What benefits it will bring to the business and how they will be measured.
2. Conceptual: In this layer, the architect focuses on what the architecture should achieve. Define the
scope independently on distracting factors such as technology, organization boundaries and geography.
The ’what’ is usually defined in terms of principles, which will guide the architect in selecting options.
The principles are categorised and prioritized.
3. Logical: After identifying what is needed, the architect now focuses on how to solve the problem. The
components of the architecture are identified independently of the particular technology that will be
needed. A number of options should be considered and categorised according to the specified principles.
4. Physical: At this point, the architecture must be realized, which means that final details of the
architecture must be defined. In abstraction terms this implies with what the architecture will be built.
This varies from software and hardware to physical locations and cables.

4. Architecture-Oriented Innovation Framework

One of the ideas of this paper is to apply the IAF concepts to help the innovator organise their ideas in
the same way an architect organises the solution. By focusing on the key questions at the specific level of
abstraction, the innovators could make most of their new ideas. The innovation framework is organised as
follows:
1. Innovation Contextual View: The context is where some use or motivation for the innovation is
identified. The innovator should ask a number of questions:
Why is this new idea important? Why is this ideas worth investing1 ? What benefits will it bring2 ? Is
this idea an innovation or an invention? How could its success be measured?
2. Innovation Conceptual View: In this view, the innovator develops the concept without thinking
about how it will be developed. The key questions are:
What exactly is the idea and its principles? What are the possible constrains and applicability?

1A financial model would help to assess the cost/benefit of the innovation.

2A benefit relaisation model is also important to keep track of the benefit of the innovation in the case of organisational
or market changes. The model could be recallibated during the devsign time when more information about the innovation is
available.

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 3. Innovation Design View: The idea now needs to be developed. The components (resources) are
identified. It is important not to constrain the design too much at this stage as the details of the
implementation are left to the final stages. The design of the idea may involve a variety of components
including technology and people. A new process may need specialised people, tools and training. Key
questions: What are the components of the innovation? What are type of resources (people and tools)
needed? What is the user profile for innovation?
4. Innovation Implementation View: The innovator must now define what is needed for the innovation
to be ready for production. For instance, in the logical design a certain type of tool was identified but
here a vendor is selected. If a number of people with certain skills were identified in the design, now it
is necessary to identify if the resources exist or will need to be recruited.
Identify the specific vendors and resource skills Identify the investment needed

5. Innovation Attributes and Classification Scheme

The first part of the framework, described in the previous sections, focused on the potential innovator
users by defining a systematic way of structuring the innovation using a familiar language.
The framework now needs to be extended to support managers (and innovators) in selecting the proposed
innovations. The first aspect to consider is which characteristics (or attributes) of an innovation will be
relevant to the framework users to categorise, compare and select the innovations [9].
In order to do this, this paper draws from the wide body of work that exists in the literature covering
both theoretical and practical studies on innovation use and diffusion.

5.1. Innovations Attributes

Many of the existing innovation classification schemes focus on the social and organisational aspects; that
is; the context in which the innovation takes place. For instance, some people argue that large organisations
may be better in promoting innovation because of the resources available. Therefore, organisation size is
an important criterion for classification. In this paper, however, the focus is within a technology service
organisation, therefore this criterion is not important.
Another less common type of innovation classification is the area of focus. In [10], the authors suggest
three areas: administrative, technological and process, and product/service. Although it is important to
recognise the area of focus of an innovation to help to manage resources, the proposed areas are not relevant
to this work, as the focus is on technology-related innovations, which are also many cases are service-
orientated.
Much of the work in the area of characteristics of innovation is based on Rogers’ pioneer study on diffusion
of innovation [11]. Roger has defined a concise set of five attributes that could encompass a large number of
classes of innovations. His five attributes are summarised in Table 1.
Attribute Description
The degree to which an innovation is perceived as being better
than the idea it supersedes. Advantage can take several forms,
Relative Advantage particularly economic and social factors. Because of the economic
factor, diffusion researchers are not surprised to find relative
advantage a good predictor of adoption.
The degree to which an innovation is perceived as being
consistent with the existing values, needs, and past experiences of
potential adopters. Change agents find it difficult in promoting
Compatibility
innovations that run counter to strongly held values. The more
compatible the more likely to be accepted but 100% compatibility
implies that the degree of change would be marginal.
The degree to which an innovation is perceived as being difficult
Complexity
to understand and use.
The degree to which the results of an innovation are observable to
Observability
others, the more observable the more likely adoption.
The degree to which an innovation may be experimented with
Trialability on a limited basis before adoption. Those that can be tried will be
adopted more quickly as trial reduces uncertainty.

Table 1: Rogers’ Innovation Attributes

Adams framework on the other hand is based on four categories [3] of attributes. Each category in turn
is made of a number of attributes, as summarised below:

• Newness: the extent of the difference from previous state and repercussions of that difference. The
attributes include novelty, departure, disruption and risk. Newness has always been considered as a
significant aspect in studies of innovation. However, in practice and in particularly when promoting
innovation, the degree of novelty is not so important; especially as the measure of novelty tend to rely

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 Innovation Attributes
Rogers Adams Moore and Agarwal and Tornatzky and Justo
Benbasar Prasad Kline
Relative Relative Relative Relative Relative Benefit
Advantage Advantage Advantage Advantage Advantage
Compatibility Compatibility Compatibility Compatibility
Complexity Application Ease of Use Ease of Use Complexity Complexity
Complexity (as Roger complexity)
Observability Observability Observability Benefits
Trialibility Trialibility Trialibility Triability Demonstrability
Profile (Benefit) Image Image Social Approval
Benefit Result Demonstrability Divisibility Demonstrability
demonstrability
Visibility Visibility Benefit
Voluntariness
Ideation
Disruption Disruption
(newness)
Risk Risk
Planned/Unplanned Benefit
consequence
Application Scope
Application Benefit
Adaptability
Cost Cost/Size
Communicability
Profitability

Table 2: Innovation Frameworks Comparison

on individual perception. Attributes such as risk and disruption are important and one could question
their relationship with newness. The argument is that the most innovative and novel more disruptive
and risky, the innovation may be.
• Ideation: the information, idea and knowledge origins of the innovation (from where they originate).
Ideation is the combination of existing and new knowledge. This attribute does not seem relevant
when promoting innovation, as in reality it should not matter whether the idea is borrowed, adapted
or original. Observability and visibility can be treated as synonyms, therefore are part of benefits.
• Application: the innovation in action. It comprises fours attributes: complexity, adaptability, scope
(within the context of its application) and uncertainty. Application attributes are important for plan-
ning and management.
• Benefit: planned and unplanned consequences, including the degree to which original objectives have
been met. This category includes attributes such as relative advantage, actual operation (how the
perceived original objectives are satisfied), observability and profile (how it raises personal, group or
institutional profile). Benefit attributes are essential, as there is no point in proposing an innovation
that will not bring benefits. However, the benefits suggested by Adam and widely discussed in the
literature may not be perceived as important in practice. For instance, profile, the extent to which the
innovation raises personal, group or institutional profile.

Based on Rogers work, Moore and Benbasar [12] have expanded the relevant innovation characteristics
set to the domain of information technology. They suggest seven constructs (Ease of use,Relative advantage,
Compatibility, Image, Result Demonstrability, Visibility and Trialability)that comprise the primary use
perception that can help explain information technology (and other innovations) usage:
Agarwal and Prasad [13] have demonstrated that the perceived characteristics of an innovation can
really explain and predict user acceptance of new information technology. The authors use eight innovation
characteristics (see the above discussion above about Moores work): demonstrability, relative advantage,
ease of use, compatibility, image, trialability, visibility, and voluntariness (if the use of the innovation is
mandatory, possibly by senior management).
Tornatzky and Kline [14] work is based on the ten most frequently referred to innovation characteristics
from a selected number of articles reviewed. The ordered frequencies of the attributes range from compatibil-
ity,relative advantage, complexity, cost, communicability, divisibility, profitability, social approval, triability
and observability.

5.2. Proposed Innovation Attributes

Based on the previous studies and the objectives of the proposed framework, the following seven attributes
are defined:
1. Adaptability: The degree to which an innovation can be modified to fit local needs. This attribute
is important for classifying innovations as it can make the innovation reusable.

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 Context Concept Design Implementation
(Why?) (What?) (How?) (With What?)
Benefit Risk Complexity Demonstrability
Cost Disruption Adaptability

Table 3: The Innovation Framework Attribute Classification

2. Benefit: Benefit will be seen in terms of the advantages of the solution it presents and how visible
these advantages are. As previously states, it replaces newness, and consequently should identify the
scope of the benefits are perceived; i.e. at departmental, organisation or global level, which implies its
uniqueness.
3. Complexity: Relates to the ease of understanding and use; the degree to which an innovation is
communicated as being relatively difficult to use; the degree to which an innovation is perceived to be
difficult to understand and use, and is negatively related to rates of adoption.
4. Cost/Size: Cost does not appear as an important attribute in most (innovation adoption) frameworks
because it does not influence adoption. However, for framework aiming at developing ideas into inno-
vation, it becomes an important factor. Cost may be difficult to quantify, so a different factor is used,
’size’ which is function of both estimated cost, resources and duration.
5. Demonstrability: The degree to which an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis;
the degree to which an innovation is communicated to allow experimentation on a limited basis; the
degree to which an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis. Those that can be tried
will be adopted more quickly, though results are ambiguous, as trial reduces uncertainty.
6. Disruption: The degree to which an innovation is communicated as being different from existing
innovations. Radical vs. incremental: radical innovation, a new paradigm, the next “killer application”,
all point to the same thing fundamental change in the activities of the organization and a large depar-
ture from existing practices. The concept tends to have been applied to technological innovation [3].
Disruptive innovations can be broadly classified into low-end and new-market disruptive innovations
(Wikipedia). It is important for a manager selecting an innovation to assess how radical or disruptive
the innovation would be.
7. Risk: Often associated with uncertainty, varies across organizational contexts and perceived in different
ways; the degree to which organizational members perceive the new interventions to be risky. The greater
the uncertainty of the outcome the greater the degree of perceived risk. Risk can be at its least where
market, product and process repercussions are non-existent or minimized.
Table 2 summarises the studied frameworks and compares their attributes to the framework proposed in
this paper.

6. Classification Schema
The synthesis of the managers and innovators views is defined by mapping the select attributes to the
IAF-like framework, as summarised in Table 3. This allows us to establish a multidimensional classification
of innovation by clustering the attributes in the respective layers. For instance, innovations categorised by
design would have a similar degree of complexity and adaptability whilst innovations classified by imple-
mentation would have similar levels of demonstrability. This allows us to focus on particular aspects of the
innovation when assessing them. In practical terms, this also means that tools implementing the framework
can implement classes and metadata to focus on theses aspects, as described in the next section.
As discussed in [14], most of innovation attributes (if not all, as some authors argue) are defined as
perceptually (subjective) based, and this is one of main flaws in the studies of innovation characteristics.
A solution is to use ranges from low to very high. However, this does not help us to identify the suitable
value. An alternative is to use value ranges. For instance, low usability means that the user would require x
number of training days. Another option, which has been applied to statistical analysis studies of innovation
adoption framework, is to use questions to quantity the attributes [12] [15]. This would help the framework
user to identify the value of a particular attribute. Table 4 summarises the values defined for each attribute
in the proposed framework.

7. A ECM-based Framework Tool

This section presents a tool to support the proposed framework using an ECM (Enterprise Content Man-
agement) environment. The original spreadsheet solution is replaced with forms and content management
objects.

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 Attribute Values
Low: The innovation cannot be modified.
adaptability Medium: The innovation can be modified but some work is necessary.
High: It is possible to modify the innovation to suit local requirements.
Low: The innovation may not solve the problem it is planned for or
its benefits will only be seen at departmental level.
Medium: The innovation only resolves part of the problem or
Benefit
it will benefit the whole organisation.
High: The innovation will solve the original problem and provide
unplanned-for benefits that at global level, possibly outside the organisation
Simple: a small number of components and few people are involved
in developing the innovation.
Medium: a medium number of components and more than one business
Complexity
unit will be involved in the innovation.
High: a large number of business units will be involved in developing
the innovation.
Small: Less than 5 people, less than 3 months and 50k.
Cost/Size Medium: 5-10 people, 3 to 12 months and 50K-500K.
Large: more than 10 people, over 12 months and more than 0.5M.
Easy: The results of the innovation are easy to demonstrate and can be
seen by the user.
Medium: Not all results of the innovation are apparent and some users
Demonstrability will not find easy to understand it.
Difficult: The innovation is difficult to demonstrate and the results are
difficult to communicate.
Low: users will be immediately familiar with how the innovation works and
it will cause only some disruption to the adopting unit.
Medium: The innovation represents a large departure from existing behaviour
for the adopting unit and it will cause disruption more than one unit of
Disruption
the organization.
High: The innovation represents a large departure from existing behaviour
across the whole organization or for the wider stakeholder community, and
will cause major disruption for the whole organization.
Low: there are few risks involved with the innovation and its implementation.
Medium: There are risks with the innovation but they are manageable.
Risk
High: The innovation represents a risk for the whole organisation and the
feasibility of the innovation is often questionable.

Table 4: The Innovation Framework Attribute Values

7.1. The Tool Overall Design

The objective of the tool was to use as much as possible the ECM out-of-the-box functionality in order
to provide easy to use electronic document template for entering the innovation proposal, and apply the
framework attributes for managing, classifying and accessing the proposal. For simplicity, the framework
does not use workflows to automate the innovation lifecycle, as the objective is to assess the classification
aspects of the framework.

7.1.1. Innovation Form

ECMs provide out-of-the-box electronic forms, which can be use as a document, which has been used
to implement the innovation form. The form has been designed with separate tabs for each view of the
framework with the related attributes. An additional tab with identification information has also been
added. The attributes values have been specified as dropdown menus. Each one has an associated help
facility, which describes the values for each attribute, when the mouse is place in the field. The identification
page also contains a number of useful searches, which are defined later. Figure 1 illustrates the various
aspects of the form:
The concept of profile is introduced to define aggregate information about the successful innovations in
terms of its main attributes. The concept of successful innovation is defined as those innovations that were
delivered. The Get Latest Innovation Profile button retrieves the updated version of the profiles, as more
innovations are delivered.

7.2. Classification
Classification is the process of assigning metadata to content, specifically the selection of a document
class and property values. Classification can also be accomplished by filing objects into folders that define
classification taxonomies.
For the innovation framework tool only one class was defined and the classification will be done only via
the attributes, defined as the class metadata as shown in Figure 2.
The attribute values are defined as metadata dropdowns. Few more properties have been defined as
metadata to allow classification and search, for instance Innovation Status. It is possible to associate the
class metadata and the eForm data. So, the user fills in the form and the metadata is automatically
populated.

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 Figure 1: The Innovation Framework ECM Tool

7.2.1. Searches and Reporting

Metadata is not only used for classification but also for searching. The tool provides a different search
for each view to allow the user to assess existing innovations during the development process, defined as
buttons in the initial tab. The user can click on the found content to view them. Figure 3 illustrates the
Conceptual attributes search.

8. Final Remarks

This paper has proposed a framework for assessing and classifying innovation based on software archi-
tecture thinking. The foundation of the framework is to interpret an innovation as an architectural design
and apply software architecture abstractions used to assess and classify design solutions to innovation. The
framework uses seven attributes as the basis for classification of innovation. These attributes were derived
from existing work on the area of innovation diffusion and the nature of the proposed framework. Finally,
the paper also describes an ECM-based tool, which implements the framework and assists both innovators
and managers in storing and assessing existing innovations.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank David Pepperell, Capgemini CTO and Head of Innovation, for his
comments on this paper.

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 Figure 2: The Innovation Framework Metadata

Figure 3: The tool search screen.

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