An Approachtoagility in Enterprise Innovation

An ApproachtoAgility in
Enterprise Innovation

AlexanderGromoff, ValeryChebotarev, KristinEvina and YuliaStavenko

National Research University “Higher School of Economics”, Kirpichnaya str. 33/5

105679 Moscow, Russian Federation

{agromov, kevina,vchebotarev,ystavenko}@hse.ru

Abstract.The midline results of a scientificsurvey ofthe definition of requirements for the development of an innovative ECM system are presented. These results were obtained during the second stage of a complex project carried out throughGovernment Grant with participation of NRU and IT Corporation (Russia). The particular research is based on 3 scopes: 1) Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system as roofing, 2) umbellate Total Content Management system (TCM); 3) process-based enterprise innovation activity and subject-oriented approach to BPM.

Keywords.enterprise content, ECM, innovation, unstructured information, subject-oriented approach, business process management, S-BPM, communication network, contact net, networking.

1 Introduction

At the beginning of the twenty-first century the International Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) formulated the concept of “enterprise content management” (ECM) [1]. In accordance with the AIIM concept ECM is an “umbellate” term which joins strategy, methods and means for collecting, searching, administering, storing, archiving and introducing enterprise content, from the intercommunications of staff, personnel and/or information systems.

In this scope ‘content’ means unstructured information created by humans and located on paper and in electronic documents, e-mails, messages, presentations, audio, video and image files etc. Usually,the amount of this unstructured information exceeds 80% of the meaningful content of the entire enterprise, where the rest is stored in structured data centers. Unfortunately, due to inefficient retrieval processes, this huge amount of information is rarely used in managing enterprise processes [2].

For this reason ECM R&D is one of the most rapidly growing sectors of the IT market (overcoming the traditional corporate sector) [3]. Referencing to the AIIM report in the near future actual improvementsresulting fromthe ECM development and deployment will be cost reduction and efficiency growth in business processes.Afterwards, factors such as compliance management and reduction in “content chaos” will be realized, in other words, management of unstructured information. But surprisingly, such a serious part of enterprise activity in support of innovation activity is not mentioned in the AIIM report.

This particular work is dedicated to the study of definition of requirements for developing innovation support in the context of an ECM system, existing or planned for implementation. After this introduction we will clarify the meaning of innovation in our project. In section 3 we elaborate on how to set up an ECM system in order to support the innovation management process. Therefore, we look at this process from the subject-oriented point of view and apply S-BPM software to similar processes. In conclusion, the benefits the subject-oriented BPM approach delivers giventhe socio-psychological view on specific roles of subjects participating in innovation processes are summarized.

2 Models and Paradigms of Innovation Activity

Authors widely interpret the term ‘innovation’.Our definition is based on [4], slightly modified:

Innovation is an outcome of the process, where protectable results of intellectual activity are gained and used for developing patentable, worldwide acceptable products.

Therefore, the process of creatinginnovation is called the innovation process. In order to understand other meaningful specifics of the term ‘innovation’, the next definition is introduced:

Innovation is amarket-driven uniqueimplementation which leads to the qualitative growth ofprocess or product efficiency.

This definition reflects such important features of innovation as ‘great market demand’ and ‘implementation’. Analyzing these two definitions four important attributes of innovation can be formulated:

• Innovation is the result of a process which dramatically increases efficiency of a main activity.
• Innovation is unique development with worldwide impact.
• Innovation accumulates intellectual property.

• Innovation has to be strongly in-demand by the market.

Any process innovation process is oriented towards particular objectives. Due to the above formulated attributes of innovation these goals should project the growth of economic efficiency, support intellectual creativity by the subjects of the innovation process, and should aim on satisfyingcertain market requirements and final users of the innovative product.

Hence, an enterprise which implements an innovation process has to think of questions such as: uncovering, developing and growing the key technologies within the enterprise; and instantly verifying and reconsidering its technological and intellectual potential. Answers to these questions could lie in several scopes:

• Consideration of internal processes of high maturity, namely, with established knowledge of process logic, internal risk, and quality control and management.
• Creation of expert competence centers, where knowledge can be accumulated, stored and distributed enterprise-wide. Experts in such centers should be linked cross-functionally, thuselaborating solutions for complex interdisciplinary problems.
• Implementation of a unified information field (UIF) support and management system, which becomes a basis for interdisciplinary links, deploying complex problems and external information environment, and monitoring of scientific and innovation trends.

Properly speaking, having chosen an innovative way of development an enterprise has to create a new structure for managingspecialist staff, who are able to solve related problems and tasks. In this case it is possible to seriously consider knowledge economics or innovation economics, which could become an answer to the question ‘when will we (Russia) start on the way towards innovation development’. The short answer is simple – when the corresponding conditions existsfor:

• Instant improvement and management of internal processes and technologies.
• Generation and development of new knowledge of process logic and existing technologies.
• Specialists’ desirefor cross-functional experience and knowledge exchange.

Onestep towards the solution to the above issues, beyond financial investment, is the development and implementation of an innovation-oriented ECM platform. This platform must maintain and support the innovation process throughout its life-cycle. Consequently, requirements for this platform should depend on the organization of innovation development and onthe methodology used for its realization, as well as on a number of social meaningful factors.

Nowadays two models of innovation process are known [6]:

• The first model describes atraditional organizational approach, which could be considered as linear innovation creativity process. Here,the predetermined sequence of actions is involved as integration of intellectual investments, innovation development, innovation implementation and improvement, and justification for the innovation or whatever applications it may have. This model has serious disadvantages such as a limitation of links between participants of the process and neglect of all good wills.
• The secondmodel represents a newer approach and can bedescribedas a nonlinear iterativeinnovation process. In this model multipleinterdependent intellectual resourcesare involved at all stages of the process; in addition, parallel, iterativeand quickly-modified process can be executed to meet rapidly changing business requirements. The modelof multipleintellectual resourcestakes into accountthe diversity of these intellectual resourcesandcreates conditions fortheir creativenetworking.

It is always necessary to consider methodologicalaspectsthat supportthe innovation process. There aretwobasicinnovation implementation paradigms: the support of the innovations themselves, orthe support of the intellectual resourcesthat create them (i.e. the subjects of innovation activities)[6]. These paradigms have importantdifferences, which affect thechoice ofmethodology to be used formanagingthe innovation process.

Paradigm1: Innovation Support.

Features: focusesonthe abstractsubject and predictedsituation,clearlyregulated objectives and standards, normative model employment.

Attitudetosubjects:domainknowledge,skillsforthe regulatorymethodsutilizationand givenschemeof the innovativeprocess.

Paradigm2: Intellectual Resources Support(Subjects of Innovation Activities).

Features: focusesonspecificsubjects, poorlyregulatedwork, non-standardsituationsand descriptivemodels usage.

Attitudetosubjects:proceduralknowledge, skillsforcreatinginnovationinnetworkstructures, conditions for the subjects reflection.

3 Innovation Process Management from theSubject-Oriented Point of View

In order to build an innovative ECM system it is necessary to meet five requirements to the control system of the innovative process:

1. The innovation management system has to be self-organized to become vigorous, including networked structures, social networks and thus creating conditions for the diffusion of intellectual outputs.
2. High-level management has to be decentralized as a consequence of the self-organizing structure.
3. The system should be complex yet efficient.The variety of infrastructure elements and innovation activity subjects as well as interoperation between them leads to an additive effect, which is highly required in innovation process support.
4. To remain useful,the system has to offer its intellectual resources rationally offering outsourcing of the competences, thus, providing ‘fresh stream’ of the ideas, approaches, and solutions to the internal competences.It is necessaryto maintainits existing resources, as well asto catalog new resources.
5. The system must operate on“natural selection” mechanisms. True competition and the selection of ‘best of breed’ are the key elements in building a self-improving and developing system.

Summarizing all five issues it is clear that the system must be able to support all subjects of the innovation process. The most reasonable way to develop such a system with the necessary capabilities is the application of the subject-oriented approach to the innovation process management, as in its way certain conditions can occur for the realization of process/network ad hoc social groups, and thereby an efficient process for obtaining and managingnew knowledge.

The subject-oriented approach was developed by Metasonic AG (founded in 2004) and offers a platform for dynamic process-oriented applications which include modeling, validation and immediate execution of business processes [13] [14] [15].The creation ofMetasonicledto the emergence ofa fundamentallynew kindofbusiness process management,namely,the Subject-Oriented Business Process Management (S-BPM). Immediate execution means that an executable application for workflow control is generated automatically from the description of business process models.Modeling,validationand implementation stages areintegrated and automated.

According tothe survey in [8] core advantages of the S-BPM for business process management include:

• Low cost,highquality, efficient automation ofbusiness processes;
• The abilityto make quick adjustments and with immediateimplementation;
• The abilityto enforce activecompliance management on allemployees involvedin business processes.

The technologicaladvantages ofS-BPM, as a platform for providing subjects withopportunitiesforcreative andreflectivework[9] [10] give it adecisive advantage.

The S-BPMsystem allows to:

• describe processes easily and rearrange models on-the-fly;
• imitate execution of process models in order to achieve synergy by comparing models with the colleagues using general creative potential;
• dynamically connect with new external, intellectual resources and/or processes performed by external subjects;execute processes exactly as modeled. This means that process users are always given real information about process runtimes, critical paths, and resource bottlenecks.

S-BPM refers to participants within a process as “subjects”. Each subject in the process is defined, modeled and documented by the description of his/her individual actions. Here “subject” is considered not only as a resource, which isrequired to perform a specific action, butalso as a rational personwho possessesintelligence,creativity and reflection.

The S-BPM approach is supported by the Metasonic Suite. This platform consists of Metasonic Base, Metasonic Build, Metasonic Proof, and Metasonic Flow.Firstly, models are described in Metasonic Build, after that the completed models are validated with Metasonic Proof directly in a live enviromentand, finally, they are loaded on a server (Metasonic Base) as applications using Metasonic Flow.

Metasonic Build is the design component of Metasonic Suite; no additional programming is needed. The process participants can easily model their processes themselves using an intuitive user interface, and orchestrate the services they need for that purpose. They operate with five items: "subject", "message", "send", “receive" and "function". The last three items describe the subjects’ states while performing the process.

Metasonic Build uses two types of models: the “subject interaction diagram” (communication flow) and the “subjectbehavior diagram" (internal behavior) [13]. The first model typeis intended todescribethe process ofmessageexchange between subjects; the secondone specifies the subjects’ activities in the process bydescribing the subjects’states andtransitionsfromonestate toanother.

Fig. 1.Subject interaction diagram

Figure 1 shows an example for a subject interaction diagram in the innovation process. The subject"Initiator"sends the message"Requestforcommunity creation” tothe subject"Agent"(this isnot a man,but an element ofan ITsystem). "Agent",who hasstaff profiles, sendstwo messageswith hisrecommendationson potentialinvestors of intellectual capital andtheir profilesback to the "Initiator”.

Having examined therecommendationsandprofiles of candidates,the“Initiator"sends invitationsto potential investors (subject “Employee”) and, after receivingthe consent,createsa new community for the innovation development.The formalestablishment and registration of the communityis operatedby the “Agent”.A potentialinvestorbecomesparticipant ofthe innovation process.The development of innovation begins afterthe collection of intellectualinvestmentsofthe community.

Fig. 2.Behavior diagram of the subject “Initiator”

Figure 2 shows the activity description of an innovation creation initiator (which has turned into the owner of the process). This model is the detailed decomposition of the subject “Initiator” in Figure 1.This model does not need difficult logic constructions and operators typical for notations of traditional modeling methodologies. All necessary decisions according to the logic of process performance are made by the subject who possesses a certain degree of freedom within the limits of the given process model.

If there is a necessity to increase or to narrow the degree of subjects’ freedom, the subject itself could easily adjust the model respectively. For this purpose the real subject (the employee of the enterprise) needs to study only 5 (five) elements of modeling and several ways of their interconnections.

Then what comes after shaping models of these two types? Before answering this question, let us recall the traditional approach to modeling. For example, the methodology and tool system ARIS allows modeling on three of five levels (stages) of systems life-cycle development: Requirement Definition Level, Design Specification Level and Implementation Level. At the first stage models which define business requirements to the projected system are under construction. The Design Specification Level models are transpositions of business requirements to information technologies. The Specifications Level models derive from the Requirement Definition Level models. Finally, the Implementation Level models describe the concrete implementation of the system; they follow fromthe Design Specification Level models.

The subject-oriented approach allowsan alternate scenario of development. In relation to life-cycle development the two models presented above are the requirement descriptions of the workflow control system. To turn simple models into executable applications without programming skills, it is necessary to fill models and elements (subjects, messages, conditions, transitions) with all necessary attributes and properties. The procedure will provide the generation of the high-grade application, including connections to other information systems, electronic documents flows, automatic steps etc. Thus, one and the same models created with the Metasonic Suite describea process at all three levels. Modeling is kind of combined with programming and allows round-trip engineering [13].

After creating the models it is possible to jointly validate them in an interactive computer-based role play with all people involved. Once the validation result is positive the models are loaded onto the runtime server and are instantiated as copies of the process if the defined starting event takes place.As mentioned before, in the innovation process each participant should have a degree of freedom in decisionmaking which stimulates creativity, reflection, and self-organization. If a modification of theprocess is needed, it is brought into the corresponding model by the actors themselves. Loading the new model ontothe server again automatically updates the application. All existing copies of the process (initial and changed) remain as well as the information belonging to the different versions. This is very importantto gather and generalizethe experience ofthe innovationactivity within the enterprise.

In the process of innovative creativity the most essential risk factor is the loss of information applicability. In order to solve its challenges, continuous aggregation of investigated information and selection of relevant information is required. Hence, acontrolled system of workflows connected with other information services providing reliable, efficient access to relevant information from unstructured sources, along with coding services, preservation and access to structured information is necessary.

4 Conclusion

The described approach usingthe S-BPM platform enables operational connection of multiple services permitting access to unstructured information and along with various DBMS with access to data at the field level. Thus, access to unstructured information can be carried out via one query executed simultaneously in several servicesconnected to the systemat a time,such as, Yandex, Google, Exalead or Fast. Therefore, there is an auto-generation of system architecture of innovation process management which could be corrected and analyzed by a subject-matter expert group, responsible for processes of innovationdevelopment, as the solution matures.

It is worth nothing that the flexibility of the solution’s architecture is the cardinal advantage, enabling innovative results in the optimal way. Morally, formulated in 1983 by V.A. Legasov [11],the concept of flexible production management on a universal information highway, is available today in the form of services onthe information corporate bus (ICB).

The above description demonstrates that a high-grade innovation-focused ECM system can be designed only from the subject-oriented point of view to innovation process management. This approach has advantages not only to innovation processes, but also forall processes that demand flexibility, simplicity and speed of modification. The S-BPM implementation as part of an innovation ECM system gives enterprisesapowerful tool for independent management of business processes and ECM system services.