The Notion of Innovation

Sammanfattning: The average life expectancy for large companies on the fortune 500 list has declined rapidly since the 1950s. One major reason is the growing competition from new actors on the market. Innovation has become one of the most important competencies for companies to get ahead of the competition. The growing demand for companies to be innovative and at the same time operate their core business have deemed a challenging issue. As the amount of research on innovation and innovation management grows, definitions and terminology within innovation becomes vaguer which makes it harder for companies to implement innovation as a general strategy. Ericsson wants to accomplish an innovative culture where multiple types of innovation thrive, but to get there, they need to become better at innovation. The goal of this thesis is to understand what the most critical areas are to improve and if innovation metrics can be a useful. This thesis explores the current research to understand how the concept of innovation is described in research. It is mainly a qualitative study based on 14 interviews with employees with different roles within the department of Packet Core at Ericsson’s site at Lindholmen. Two surveys were also used to quantify some results. The finding of this thesis is that innovation has become a complex subject. There are multiple different backgrounds and perspectives in research, which contributes to the vagueness. For employees, the perception of innovation is often based on personal opinions rather than something that is defined by the company. The thesis concludes with recommendations on how Packet Core at Ericsson Lindholmen can proceed to improve the most crucial areas to come closer to their goal of an innovative culture where all types of innovation thrives.