Innovation Management and Agile Strategies for Change

The importance of innovation management and agility is growing both in practice and in academia. This paper provides a current overview of the existing body of the literature in the field of innovation management. The main objective of the paper is to provide and to test the Co3 MDI model (co-creation, co-operation, co-ordination) as an embedded element of the agile strategies for change. The aim of the model is to help businesses to develop their innovation management activities as a business agility plan to approach change confidently. Research questions driving this paper are: 1/ to identify change determinants and drivers for Bulgarian SMEs; 2/ to evaluate the innovation management practices of Bulgarian SMEs and 3/ to identify the possibilities to apply innovation to foster agility employment in organisational strategic process. The research study, based on a survey of Bulgarian SMEs, concludes that there is a gap between what is expressed as a strategy for change by the managers and what is actually implemented. It is confirmed that there is an inherent tension between the conservation of existing practices and behaviors, on the one hand, and innovation or transformation strategies, on the other hand, i.e. Bulgarian firms are willing to initiate a change in order to improve their competitive position but focusing on “wrong” development determinant such as decreasing costs and relying mainly on internal resources.