Enterprise Innovation

9The Virtual Innovation Factory

9.1. Introduction

The virtual innovation factory – VIF for short – is a factory that does not operate on solid goods, but on knowledge with the purpose to create and elaborate ideas toward innovations. The VIF concept is realized with the design of platform that is based on the scientific foundation of the BIVEE framework and an analysis of existing innovation management platforms.

It is a special kind of factory that helps generating ideas and aims at managing innovation, not just inside one company or organization, but in many of them. In the context of BIVEE, we call these agglomerations of actors, virtual enterprises. In a way, we can say the VIF produces and manages innovation by motivating and encouraging users (employees, students, professors and researchers) of these enterprises/organizations in participating (and taking an active interest) in the innovation cycle of their own organization.

The VIF aims at generating innovative ideas that will produce value, once managed and validated on a business and operational level, in the production space. The VIF is, therefore, based on knowledge and creates innovation paths or plans from which the ideas and innovation itself are managed.1

9.2. Methodological background

During the early stages of the BIVEE project, a reference framework was created. In many areas and aspects, this BIVEE framework does not want to reinvent the wheel on a theoretical level, but uses and adapts well-known scientific ...