Innovations as Part of Performance Management

“Innovation” comes from the Latin word “innovare” and stands for renewal or reformation. From an economic point of view, innovation is something complex and new that brings economic benefits for an organization and/or for the company. Innovation management includes elements such as ideas, inventions, and diffusions (Müller-Prothmann & Dörr, 2019). Innovations include the generation of ideas and the constant validation and review of these ideas as part of a structured innovation process (Nelke, 2016). Innovation management comprises three levels, as shown in Fig. 15.1. In addition to the operational level, the working level, there are the strategic and normative levels (Stibbe, 2019). Innovations are decided on the normative and strategic level and put into practice on the operative level (Helmold & Samara, 2019). Terms that are often used in connection with innovation are ideas, collections of ideas, and inventions. An invention must be differentiated to the extent that it has not yet been exploited and used as a creative achievement of a new problem solution compared to innovation. It is the same with the idea, which is a creative thought of something new. In all cases, “new” can always be seen relatively. It can be new for this situation, the company, or the world. In particular new developments such as New Work, Industry 4.0, or increasing globalization have an important impact on innovations and innovation management (Granig et al., 2018). Of central importance are the collection of ideas, the selection, and the decision on which ideas are to be implemented. This process must be managed by the higher management (Helmold & Samara, 2019).