Paper short abstract:

The main aim of this paper is an attempt to answer the question posed in its title. In other words: Can we still speak about the innovation process as such? An additional aim is to identify new challenges faced by the managers who deal with management of contemporary innovations.

Paper long abstract:

The main aim of this paper is an attempt to answer the question posed in its title. In other words: Can we still speak about the innovation process as such? An additional aim is to identify new challenges faced by the managers who deal with management of contemporary innovations.

The inspiration to formulate this question has been Chesbrough's (2003) book: Open innovation. The main argument in this paper is that a gradual depiction (phase after phase) of the innovation process is, nowadays, insufficient. In our times, this process de facto is a complex set of diverse processes, partial and complicated. According to Buijs (2003, pp. 76-93), the process of innovation is a set of different, parallel, competitive and contradictory processes taking place at the same time which creates a bit chaotic composition. So, a contemporary technical innovation is the result not of one but of several processes. However, here we don't mean the approach which assumes that innovation is the result of a complex set of processes inside the organization (Doyle and Bridgewater, eds., 1998) because innovative processes today go far beyond the enterprise (see also: Dodgson, Gann and Philips, eds., 2014; Tidd and Bessant, 2009).

So, rethinking of a traditional approach to the concept of the innovation process is needed. On the basis of this, the process model of innovation has been elaborated (Jasinski, 2014).

The basic findings are based on four case-studies (Merck, Procter and Gamble, Nokia and IBM) which are analyzed in the paper.