Assessment and Support? AI,R – A Pilot Project on Support Systems for Innovation in Automation Industry

AbstractVarious methods to assess innovation are used in companies and organizations. Audits provide little support for day to day use and few explicitly address how companies can benefit from the audit results in terms of e.g. how to learn, formulate goals and operationalization. Based on a concrete example, this paper explores how innovation assessment can be considered a tripartite audit process designed to support learning and give an increased cultural support for innovation. In the paper the audit process will be discussed from the perspectives of what, who and how. ‘What’ address the tool and assessment area, ‘who’ focus on the people that participates in the assessment process and ‘how’ on the very assessment execution. The awareness of the notion ‘innovation’ among the 70 industrial companies in the Automation Region Network in mid-Sweden are typically low, and as a response to that a pilot study project Automation Innovation Region (AiR) started in 2012 to develop support for innovation. During one year 2014/2015, employees in five companies (N= 44) participated in the study. The project developed a process, AiR Innowatch (Innowatch), combining a photo-based workshop on innovation, three workshops with themes on innovation climate, a web based weekly assessment tool, and a quarterly survey. The tools focus on innovation culture (what), the process highlights reflection, learning and integration (how) on assessment results from the perspective of individual, group and organisational (who) perspective. The goal was to design a learning based audit process that supports the companies to independently continue their work for increased innovativeness after the formal assessment process. This paper present the tools developed and the results from the pilot study as a base for discussion on auditing as a tool that supports learning and development of an organisational culture for increased innovativeness in established organisations