Introduction

There are many books on innovation, its management and its organizational foundations. This literature, however, only deals with innovation from an organization’s viewpoint and dwells on the question, what an organization has to do to foster innovation. These considerations ignore the inventor and the decision maker. What - very specifically - has an inventor to accomplish on top of his invention to gain the attention of the decision maker? Moreover, what - very specifically - does a decision maker need to assign the scarce resources he has the mandate to allocate to the most promising inventions and ideas for the organization? This book aims to describe the different requirements imposed on the protagonists, and - entirely in the sense of a handbook - to provide guidance, how and with which means the protagonists communicate, and which information in the different innovation phases can be expected and which are required, respectively. Eventually, a business model integrates the perspectives of inventor, decision maker, and organization, which enables a common “language” and communication platform for the emerging tension field and allows asking and answering the right questions.