Title: Leveraging stakeholder knowledge in the innovation decision making process

Authors: Zachary A. Collier; Benjamin D. Trump; Matthew D. Wood; Rossitsa Chobanova; Igor Linkov

Addresses: US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, 696 Virginia Road, Concord, MA 01742, USA ' School of Public Health, University of Michigan, 1415 Washington Heights, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA ' US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, 696 Virginia Road, Concord, MA 01742, USA ' Economic Research Institute, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 3 Aksakov str., Sofia, BG-1040, Bulgaria ' US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, 696 Virginia Road, Concord, MA 01742, USA

Abstract: Organisations must make decisions regarding how to best bridge existing societal challenges or market gaps with innovative technologies and business practices. However, many organisations turn to ad hoc decision-making. Within the contemporary environment of accelerating technological change, this is particularly problematic due to the inability of stakeholders to consider the full breadth of information that must be taken into account during the innovation process, and fosters the potential for inefficient outcomes. We propose an integrated mental modelling and multi-criteria decision analysis framework to provide a structured approach to innovation decision-making. Using formal and transparent decision rules to systematically extract the relevant knowledge from experts, one can efficiently map emergent challenges and assess value tradeoffs associated with competing objectives and investments. This process can assist in the identification of emerging societal, technical, and economic risks, and point to how different types of innovations may resolve such concerns.

Keywords: technology innovation; decision making; stakeholders; mental modelling; multicriteria decision analysis; MCDA; societal challenges; subject matter expertise; innovation networks; values hierarchy; knowledge economy; convergence.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBCRM.2016.078987

International Journal of Business Continuity and Risk Management, 2016 Vol.6 No.3, pp.163 - 181

Received: 15 Jun 2015
Accepted: 21 Dec 2015
Published online: 08 Sep 2016 *

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