Hi,
I am conducting the research in the field of the technological process innovation.
It will be carried it out within the manufacturing companies.
I need to qualify 8-10 companies for my project.
One of the steps is to determine whether:
- a company is a persistent 'process innovator' (e.g. it conducted say 2-3 process innovation projects within last 10 years)
- the innovation projects were completed successfully.
Therefore, I need to define the selection criteria.

The literature presents tens of 'factors' that can assist as 'judges' in determining whether the innovation project was successful, for example, project objectives fulfilment, improvement in process efficiency, issued patents, financial performance, etc.

For my project, I intend to adopt as follows:
- The success at project level => project goals = project outcome,
- Persistence of a company in innovation - minimum 2-3 process innovation projects conducted within last 10 years.

I would be very grateful for your opinions about the two criteria outlined above.

P.S. My project will involve incremental innovation only, therefore, the criteria such as no. of issued patents may not apply.

I have some doubts in terms of my selection critieria:
- For example, a project may be successful in regards to the fulfiled objectives but it could have been achieved by trippled costs and delivered late due to its poor management. Obviously, I can also take into account these concerns during company and its projects selection.
- In terms of persistence in innovation. I wonder whether it can be accepted that I have selected 10 years time period, I mean why 10 years and not e.g. 5 or 15 years period. My argument is that most of the innovation projects is conducted within a few years. It seems logical that persistence in innovation means that a company must had to conduct at least 2-3 projects to call itself the persistent innovator. I also intend to back it with proper journal papers.

Please help and share your knowledge on this topic.
Thanks.

This is quite an interesting topic.

What discipline is this from engineering, science or management? Because what do you define a process as? I see a process could include any methodology from how to optimally pack parcels to how to make plastic parts. Are you comparing like with like or allowing cross-field comparison. Because that could cause a massive impact on the results.

Also how do you control the goal setting process. For example a company could see a 10% improvement, get 15% in real life but there is actually 25% possible improvement. They look successful but they had minimal ambition that makes them look successful.

10 years is a very long time period. How many companies have someone working on the same project for that long? You may have better luck at looking companies with multiple department/branches looking at similar projects simultaneously.

Thank you for your reply.
The discipline is from both engineering and science (research).
I study management of technological process innovation.
I will allow cross-field comparison, i.e. I study various sectors of non-continuous process industry (discrete, assembled product) such as automotive, machinery, etc.

In terms of successful project completion, one of the most critical success factors identified so far (literature), is clear vision and clear objectives of the innovation project. The companies I will be looking for (no ad-hoc innovation management but structured approach) should have a written record of the completed projects. The same remark would apply to 10 years period, at least for this moment. Once I start process of companies selection for the project I may need to revise my requirements.

That makes a bit more sense.
Looking at the management of innovation with focus on manufacturing.
While trying to identify persistent innovators and how they meet goals (i know i have butchered that)
Want to investigate written records of 8-10 companies and make comparisons
That sounds very interesting though I have a few things

I did a placement year were I was on a project that was about 3-5 years old. It was the pet project of the MD and he wanted a very particular design to work but we kept hitting problems. We kept trying to modify the machine to make it work but it never did and I know that the project is still active 3 years later. It is conceptually flawed and competitors made a better design work. Yet the MD keeps "persevering" with this project and I bet they will never tell you anything about this project. However as a whole the company is quite innovative and if they gave you positive examples, it would look very successful. So what I am trying to say is that companies could hide failures, diluting there success culture. I don't know how you can account for this but could have a significant impact.

Also you might have trouble defining were one project ends and another begins. Again during the placement year there was a very large broad project that spawned many sub-projects. One of the sub-projects developed into an idea for a brand new processing plant that technically addressed the goals of that first project. However the new plant should be a separate project, as it is a 5 year+ project and would require substantial investment. This might be very common, where there are several interlinked projects that together may reach the goal but the individual project was a failure.

My honest opinion is that you will have trouble getting companies on board unless you make a very anonymous system. Or you look at IT sector were everything moves fast and the management would be more open to outsiders.