Corporate Governance and Control of Innovation Process

This chapter begins with the link between innovation and corporate social responsibility. In addition to the sustainability of products and services, innovation management should also consider the factors of climate change, energy consumption, environmental protection, resource scarcity or demographic change. These factors can be taken into account within the framework of a CSR concept. A CSR concept consists of four different levels: economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibility. These responsibilities build on each other. After the development of a CSR concept, it is important to consider the control of the innovation process in order, among other things, to use the existing resources of the company profitably and purposefully, or to ensure the flow of information between the parties involved in the innovation process or project. The control of innovation activities can be supported by innovation control. In this innovation control, the success measurement of the innovation management takes place according to predefined metrics or performance measurement systems. The development of innovation control should be based on the company’s innovation strategy. The tasks of the innovation control include, among other things, the provision of information and data for innovation management, the planning and control of innovation projects and the consulting of innovation management for the control of the innovation process. In addition, innovation control supports the selection and evaluation of ideas. The innovation control can consist of stand-alone metrics representing the company’s business in a compressed form, or performance measurement systems that combines several metrics and thus increases the meaningfulness of the overview. The Balanced Innovation Card is presented as an example of such a performance measurement system. This is a model for the planning and control of innovation projects. The Balanced Innovation Card is viewed as an extension of the Balanced Scorecard and takes account of the entire innovation management. The aim of the Balanced Innovation Card is to provide information on how to improve efficiency in innovation management. The following four perspectives are considered: innovation culture, innovation resources, innovation process and innovation output.