[Deutsche Fassung]

By Olaf Neumann

How do corporate decision-makers in a high-wage country (such as Germany) screen the pile of ideas, proposals and suggestions to select those which may be profitable in the long run? First, they need to identify valuable innovative ideas, and then they have to decide which innovative ideas the company will pursue. As a rule, this situation is complex and uncertain. In practice, companies have a range of tools and methods at their disposal and rely in addition on the personal experience and expertise of internal and external experts to assess ideas. Nevertheless, all efforts to base decisions on an objective and facts-based evaluation of new ideas are subject to certain limitations (see also “Die Bewertung von Innovationsideen. Eine empirische Analyse von Bewertungsdimensionen und sozialen Einflussfaktoren”/“The evaluation of innovation ideas: an empirical analysis of evaluation criteria and social influencing factors”, doctoral thesis at RWTH Aachen, 2012). Weiterlesen →