Innovation Management of Conglomerates in Thailand

Managing innovation is to understand how the innovation process can be successfully led and resulted in output and outcome. Considering important factors before managing innovation will help firms avoid failures in innovation projects. The aim of this paper is therefore to proposea model of innovation management and the contextual factors influencing the management in conglomerates in Thailand.This paper conducted literature review of innovation management (IM) models, and analyzed the contextual factors by empirical studies on successful companies and thereby describing how they organized innovation to propose the conceptual IM model. Exemplar innovation management practices from the largest four conglomerates in Thailand that were driven by innovation policy were studied through in-depth interviews and observations. The factors were criticized and weighted on whether they are relevant and critical to the innovation management.Similar and important factors of innovation management are six groups of factors which are external factors, organizational stance factors, resource allocated factors, innovation management system, build on experience factors and the measurement of outputs; profit,sales,growth and outcomes; new customer, customer satisfaction and corporate image. While comparing both the proposed IM model and company’s practice, additional attention is paid to several dimensions of innovation searching for patterns that assist in the practical use of the findings.