case study about innovation

Ten Types of Innovation: 30 new case studies for 2019

If you’ve followed my work for a while, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of the Ten Types of Innovation, a framework developed by Doblin (now a part of Deloitte).

I previously listed it as the #2 innovation framework you should be using.

And with good reason. I have used it frequently with clients to get them to think beyond innovating their product , which becomes harder, more expensive and less differentiating over time.

However, what I have found in recent workshops is that since it was originally published in 2013, some of the case studies and examples in the book already come across as out of date. That’s how rapidly the world is changing.

So here, I present three new more recent case studies for each of the Ten Types of Innovation, along with an outline on what each of them represents. Try and see which of these examples you would also suggest touch on more than one of the Ten Types, and let me know in the comments below:

1) Profit Model: How you make money

Innovative profit models find a fresh way to convert a firm’s offerings and other sources of value into cash. Great ones reflect a deep understanding of what customers and users actually cherish and where new revenue or pricing opportunities might lie.

Innovative profit models often challenge an industry’s tired old assumptions about what to offer, what to charge, or how to collect revenues. This is a big part of their power: in most industries, the dominant profit model often goes unquestioned for decades.

Recent examples:

• Fortnite – Pay to customise: This Free-to-Play video game by Epic Game Studios is currently one of the most popular and profitable games in the world. Unlike other “freemium” games which incentivise people to spend money to speed up progression, Fortnite is completely free to progress and people only need pay if they want to unlock cosmetic items which don’t affect gameplay but act to personalise their characters.
• Deloitte – Value sharing: Professional Services firm Deloitte is the world’s largest Management Consulting firm and still growing. They noticed a desire from their clients for assurance that the advice they were being given and transformation projects which Deloitte was running would actually succeed. As a result, Deloitte has begun trialling projects where instead of their fee being based just on Time and Materials, they will also share in value delivery, where additional bonus payments are only activated if previously-agreed performance metrics are successfully met.
• Supreme – Limiting supply: While most companies want to get their products in to the hands of as many people as possible, Supreme has built a cult following through deliberately forcing scarcity of its products. The streetwear clothing retailer announces limited items which will only be available from a specific day when they “drop”, and once they are sold out, that’s it, unless you want to pay huge markups for a second-hand item on eBay. Their red box logo is now so collectible and desirable that the company is able to sell almost anything by putting the logo on it for a limited time only. Case in point: you can find official Supreme Bricks (yes, like the ones used to build houses) which are still selling on eBay for $500.

Supreme’s limited quantity releases often lead to people queuing overnight

2) Network: How you connect with others to create value

In today’s hyper-connected world, no company can or should do everything alone. Network innovations provide a way for firms to take advantage of other companies’ processes, technologies, offerings, channels, and brands—pretty much any and every component of a business.

These innovations mean a firm can capitalize on its own strengths while harnessing the capabilities and assets of others. Network innovations also help executives to share risk in developing new offers and ventures. These collaborations can be brief or enduring, and they can be formed between close allies or even staunch competitors.

Recent Examples:

• Ford & Volkswagen – Developing Self-driving cars: As two of the world’s largest car-makers, Ford and Volkswagen are competitors on the road. However, in 2019 they announced a partnership to work together to develop technology for self-driving cars and electric vehicles which would be used in both company’s fleets of the future. While Ford brings more advanced automated driving technology, Volkswagen was leading in electric vehicles. Through the combined venture called ARGO, both firms can spread their R&D spending across more cars, while both developing competing products.
• Microsoft – launching on competitors platforms: Since new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has taken over, he has changed the innovation ethos of the company. Whereas previously Microsoft was a product-first company who tried to eliminate competing products and customers should stay within the company’s ecosystem, Nadella has shifted the mindset to a service company where their products should be accessible to customers should be able to access the products in whichever way they prefer. As a result, products such as Office 365 are now available in any web browser, as well as on the mobile marketplaces of Google’s Android and Apple’s IOS, previously seen as competitors.
• Huawei – Leveraging celebrity endorsement: Until recently, “high-quality smartphone” made people think of companies like Apple (USA), Samsung and LG (South Korea). Brands from China were often seen as competing on price but suffering from lower build quality and a lack of innovation. So in order to raise their profile in Western markets, Huawei has invested heavily in celebrities to endorse their flagship phones, such as Scarlett Johanssen, Lionel Messi, Henry Cavill and Gal Gadot. This initial investment raised brand name recognition, to the stage where it is now focusing marketing more towards features and functionality.

Huawei has paid Lionel Messi millions to endorse their brand

3) Structure: How you organize and align your talent and assets

Structure innovations are focused on organizing company assets—hard, human, or intangible—in unique ways that create value. They can include everything from superior talent management systems to ingenious configurations of heavy capital equipment.

An enterprise’s fixed costs and corporate functions can also be improved through Structure innovations, including departments such as Human Resources, R&D, and IT. Ideally, such innovations also help attract talent to the organization by creating supremely productive working environments or fostering a level of performance that competitors can’t match.

• Perpetual Guardian – Four-day working week: This small financial advisory firm in New Zealand trialed moving to a four-day working week, giving their staff an additional free day each week as long as they got their outputs done. As a result, they found people adjusted their working rhythm to achieve the same outcomes in 20% less time , while also resulting in more satisfied employees.
• Netflix – Unlimited Vacations: In order to drive their breakneck growth, Netflix reviewed their formal HR policies to see what processes were getting in the way of people doing their best work. They discovered that most bureaucratic processes which slowed down high performing individuals were in place to only handle situations where a low-performance individual would do something wrong. As a result, they scrapped most formal HR policies to free people to work in their own ways to benefit the company, summarised in their “Freedom and Responsibility” culture document, including allowing staff to take as many vacation days as they felt they needed to produce their best work.
• WeWork – Leveraging other companies’ hard assets: WeWork’s business model revolves around providing affordable office rentals for entrepreneurs and companies, fitting a lot of tenants into the same space by offering co-working areas. In order to rapidly deploy new working spaces and attract customers, WeWork started using a system called rental arbitrage, where they would rent commercial space, create a ready-to-use coworking setup, and then rent this space to customers. By not having to spend CAPEX on purchasing the buildings themselves, they were able to rapidly expand with lower overhead.

Netflix allows staff to take unlimited vacation days

4) Process: How you use signature or superior methods to do your work

Process innovations involve the activities and operations that produce an enterprise’s primary offerings. Innovating here requires a dramatic change from “business as usual” that enables the company to use unique capabilities, function efficiently, adapt quickly, and build market–leading margins.

Process innovations often form the core competency of an enterprise, and may include patented or proprietary approaches that yield advantage for years or even decades. Ideally, they are the “special sauce” you use that competitors simply can’t replicate.

• Tesla – Vertically integrated supply chain: Tesla’s electric cars require huge packs of EV batteries, made of thousands of lithium-ion cells. Until recently, the lack of demand for electric vehicles meant that companies had not invested in battery technology development, resulting in prices remaining high and making the cost of cars prohibitively more expensive than their gasoline counterparts. Tesla invested in a massive gigafactory to produce the newest battery packs themselves, and the economies of scale, as well as not paying markups to manufacturers, are estimated to save them 30% of the cost of the batteries.
• Amazon Web Services – opening internal technology to third parties: When Amazon Web Services initially launched in 2006 , it effectively launched the cloud computing market, allowing external companies to not just host webpages but run code and calculations at a fraction of the cost of building their own server network. Since then, Amazon has continued to develop new technology it would use for its own services, such as artificial intelligence, image recognition, machine learning, and natural-language processing, and later make this technology available to their customers.
• AliExpress – Making everyone a Shop Owner: AliExpress is one of the world’s largest eCommerce sites, and serves as a commercial storefront for thousands of Chinese companies, allowing you to purchase everything to phone cases to forklifts. However, AliExpress also allows the platform to handle purchases as listed on external storefronts using a system called drop-shipping, where anyone can set up their own store, sell someone else’s products (but to customers it looks like they are coming from the seller) and then have those manufacturers send the product directly to the customer.

Tesla’s Gigafactory is the world’s largest building

5) Product Performance: How you develop distinguishing features and functionality

Product Performance innovations address the value, features, and quality of a company’s offering. This type of innovation involves both entirely new products as well as updates and line extensions that add substantial value. Too often, people mistake Product Performance for the sum of innovation. It’s certainly important, but it’s always worth remembering that it is only one of the Ten Types of Innovation, and it’s often the easiest for competitors to copy.

Think about any product or feature war you’ve witnessed—whether torque and toughness in trucks, toothbrushes that are easier to hold and use, even with baby strollers. Too quickly, it all devolves into an expensive mad dash to parity. Product Performance innovations that deliver long-term competitive advantage are the exception rather than the rule.

• Gorilla Glass – Changing chemistry to improve smartphone durability: Gorilla Glass by Corning was listed as one of the original Ten Types by becoming scratch resistant. I have included it again for how it has changed the properties of its glass based on customer feedback each year. In 2016, version 5 of the glass was designed to resist shattering when dropped from 5+ feet, dubbed “selfie height” drops. However, after discussing what properties their customers wanted, by 2018 version 6 was no longer trying to resist shattering when dropped from a height once, instead the chemistry and manufacturing process had been changed to make it resistant to cracking after 15 drops from a lower height (1 meter, or a “fumble drop from your pocket”). I love this example of innovation as the product performance doesn’t just try to become “ better ” by resisting one drop from a higher height than last year, instead figuring out what really matters to customers and delivering that.
• Raspberry Pi – full PC for $35: The original Rasperbby Pi was developed by a UK charity to make a simple yet expandable computer which was affordable enough for everyone. Their credit-card sized PC may look bare-bones (it comes without a case and is effectively an exposed circuit board), yet it contains everything which someone needs to run a Linux operating system, learn to program and even connect it with external sensors and peripherals to make all manner of machines. The latest version 4 is now powerful enough to serve as a dedicated PC, all for a price so low you can give it to a child to tinker with without fear of it being broken.
• Lush Cosmetics – Removing what people don’t want anymore: As people become more aware of their impact on the environment, customers are demanding that customers do more to reduce the amount of plastic packaging their products use which could end up in landfill or the ocean. Lush Cosmetics was an early pioneer in bringing packaging-free cosmetics to scale, offering some of their packaging-free products like shampoo bars and soaps in dedicated packaging-free stores .

Giving children a cheap PC like the Raspberry Pi to learn and experiment on

6) Product System: How you create complementary products and services

Product System innovations are rooted in how individual products and services connect or bundle together to create a robust and scalable system. This is fostered through interoperability, modularity, integration, and other ways of creating valuable connections between otherwise distinct and disparate offerings. Product System innovations help you build ecosystems that captivate and delight customers and defend against competitors.

• Ryobi – One battery to rule them all: While handheld tools have had rechargeable batteries for decades now, Ryobi’s innovation was designing the modular One+ battery which could be used with over 80 different tools. Not only was this convenient for customers who needed fewer batteries overall for multiple uses, it also encouraged someone to buy into the Ryobi tool ecosystem once they had previously purchased one tool and battery set.
• Zapier – making APIs easy: Many web-based applications nowadays have an Application Programming Interface (API) which allows them to share data with other services. However, this often requires complex coding from the developers, and repeated effort to integrate with multiple different APIs. Zapier acts as a middleman for data, providing ready-made actions and API integrations between popular web services, allowing customers to automate certain activities every time a specific event happens.
• Airbnb – Expanding into experiences: Airbnb built their business on allowing everyday people to sell accommodation in their homes to strangers. Now the company has begun offering complementary services to people visiting new places through Experiences . These experiences are also sold by local guides, and allow guests to try things they would otherwise not have known about in addition to staying somewhere new.

Ryobi One+ battery powers multiple different tools

7) Service: How you support and amplify the value of your offerings

Service innovations ensure and enhance the utility, performance, and apparent value of an offering. They make a product easier to try, use, and enjoy; they reveal features and functionality customers might otherwise overlook, and they fix problems and smooth rough patches in the customer journey. Done well, they elevate even bland and average products into compelling experiences that customers come back for again and again.

• Kroger – Smartphone grocery scanning: US retail giant Kroger has been trialing a new smartphone app which allows shoppers to scan items as they shop, and then skip checking out altogether. Using the Scan, Bag, Go app, a customer will scan each item as they pick them up and place them into whatever bag they want, and once they are done, they can simply pay using the app and leave. This prevents shoppers having to wait in checkout lines and gives them an overview of their running total as they go, and also allows the supermarket to entice shoppers by sending coupons and offers directly to them.
• PurpleBricks – bringing real estate online: Estate Agents have a poor reputation for treating both sellers and buyers, especially for the amount they charge relative to the service they provide. PurpleBricks was one of the first online-only estate agents , where they could charge a significantly lower fee if the seller chose to complete some of the service processes themselves, such as showing the home to potential buyers. The firm can provide additional services for additional charges.
• Meituan Dianping – providing one app for all the services you want: As Fast Company’s 2019 Most Innovative company , Meituan Dianping provides a platform for Chinese consumers to purchase a variety of services. Known as a transactional super-app, you can use the app to book and pay for food delivery, travel, movie tickets and more from over 5 million Chinese small and large merchants.

Scan your own groceries with the Scan-Bag-Go app

8) Channel: How you deliver your offerings to customers and users

Channel innovations encompass all the ways that you connect your company’s offerings with your customers and users. While e-commerce has emerged as a dominant force in recent years, traditional channels such as physical stores are still important — particularly when it comes to creating immersive experiences.

Skilled innovators in this type often find multiple but complementary ways to bring their products and services to customers. Their goal is to ensure that users can buy what they want, when and how they want it, with minimal friction and cost and maximum delight.

• Dollar Shave Club – Direct to your door: Razor Blades have always been high-margin products, and Gillette was one of the original innovators by giving away the razor handle to make money on the subsequent razor blade sales. Dollar Shave Club has taken a different approach, by reducing the cost of each set of blades, but having people join a subscription service where blades are delivered to them automatically. While the margin on each set of blades is lower than retail, the subscription model has provided steady, predictable revenue for the company, to the extend that subscription boxes can now be found for almost any consumable product.
• Zipline – Blood Delivery for remote areas: In hospital settings, getting fresh blood can a matter of life and death. Unfortunately, many Sub-Sharan African countries don’t have road infrastructure suitable for quickly delivering blood between hospitals or storage locations. This is why Zipline has developed a simple, reliable drone network where hospitals in Rwanda and Ghana can order fresh blood from a central processing area and receive it within an average of 15 minutes, rather than the hours or days it would take using conventional transportation.
• 3D Printers – produce whatever you need at home: Instead of a single company, the industry of 3D printers is slowly beginning to change the way in which consumers get simple tools and parts. By downloading schematics from the internet (or designing their own), people owning a 3D printer now no longer to go to a retail location or order the parts they need. In commercial settings, this is also speeding up how quickly companies are able to prototype new ideas and designs, waiting hours rather than days or weeks.

zipline blood drone innovation

9) Brand: How you represent your offerings and business

Brand innovations help to ensure that customers and users recognize, remember, and prefer your offerings to those of competitors or substitutes. Great ones distill a “promise” that attracts buyers and conveys a distinct identity.

They are typically the result of carefully crafted strategies that are implemented across many touchpoints between your company and your customers, including communications, advertising, service interactions, channel environments, and employee and business partner conduct. Brand innovations can transform commodities into prized products, and confer meaning, intent, and value to your offerings and your enterprise.

• Gillette / Nike – being willing to lose customers who don’t align with purpose: I have combined both Gillette and Nike into this example of brand innovation since they have both recently aligned their brands to a purpose (social and political), which has been positively welcomed by some people but has resulted in hatred from other groups. Nike began by making former NFL Quarterback Colin Kaepernick the face and voice of one of their advertising campaigns. Kaepernick rose in prominence when he refused to stand during the national anthem before his games, his way of protesting the police brutality and inequality towards his African American community. This led to some people claiming he was disrespecting the American Flag, and therefore what the flag stands for. When his advert launched, a vocal minority took to social media to upload videos of themselves saying that Nike no longer aligned with their values, and they burned their shoes, vowing to never buy Nike again. Similarily, Gillette came out with a commercial urging all men to be “The best a man can be”, by pushing aside previously ‘masculine’ traits like bullying, chauvinism or fighting, and showing children how a modern man should behave. As soon as the ad was released online, many media outlets praised its message, but it brought the wrath of angry men who claimed that the razor manufacturer shouldn’t tell them what to think or how to behave, how they would never buy the products again, and how the world was becoming too politically correct, with women and minorities getting preferential treatment over white men. The advert quickly became one of the most disliked videos on Youtube, and even my commentary about the innovative message (seen in the video below) had the comments section covered by hate-filled messages. What both Nike and Gillette realised was that if they wanted to align with positive, progressive messages and values (which align with their target demographic of the future), then they would risk upsetting and alienating the proportion of their current customer base who didn’t share those views. In both cases, these were decisions that would have been signed off by all levels in the company, through marketing, sales, legal and the board, and the brands will be stronger in the future because of it.
• Burberry – modernising a classic brand: Burberry had built its luxury fashion reputation by aligning itself with the British Aristocracy, and its famous chequer patterned fabric was iconic. However, when trying to modernise and make the brand “sexy” in the early 2000s, a misstep happened when the luxury house began to license the chequered fabric, resulting in it becoming a status symbol and desired motif for a different social group: the British “Chavs” (rough, lower class and sometimes aggressive). This poisoned the once iconic brand in the eyes of their intended luxury clientele. In order to survive, the company and brand embraced innovation , by becoming one of the first fashion houses to redesign their website to be mobile-optimised, aligning their store layout to mirror the website, highlighting young British talent and livestreaming content and fashion shows. Most importantly, they moved away from the iconic chequer pattern in their fashion designs, where it is now limited to less than 10% of products.

10) Customer Engagement: How you foster compelling interactions

Customer Engagement innovations are all about understanding the deep-seated aspirations of customers and users, and using those insights to develop meaningful connections between them and your company.

Great Customer Engagement innovations provide broad avenues for exploration and help people find ways to make parts of their lives more memorable, fulfilling, delightful — even magical.

• REI – closing their stores on the busiest shopping day: Outdoor equipment retailer REI had begun closing its doors on Black Friday , traditionally one of the busiest shopping days of the year. They claim they are doing this to Eddie their customers to actually get outdoors and use their equipment, rather than queuing for discounted material goods.
• Peloton – bringing the gym into the home: Many people benefit from going to joint gym classes because the sense of a group working toward is goals together with a coach is more powerful than trying to exercise by yourself. Peloton makes exercise equipment with built-in screens, powered by a subscription to live and on-demand classes. It’s like being part of a workout group with the benefits of being at home.
• NBA – bringing the fans into the action: The NBA had invested heavily in innovation to make their sport more immersive. From live analytics and player statistics, new ways to watch like VR video, and official video game players for each team, they are finding new ways to bring basketball to the next generation, while making it even more exciting for existing fans.

Peloton brings exercise classes into the home

There we go, a new set of 30 examples of the Ten Types of Innovation.

If you found some of these examples interesting, please share the article.

Can you think of any more good examples? Let me know in the comments below.

Idea to Value Podcast: Listen and Subscribe now

• Latest Posts

Nick Skillicorn

Latest posts by nick skillicorn ( see all ).

• How would YOU improve chess? - June 12, 2024
• When your imagination is beyond your skill level - May 9, 2024
• When does it make sense to play a character of yourself? - March 29, 2024
• Focus on doing fewer things in order to make progress faster - March 14, 2024

Share this:

Related posts.

Is Design Thinking dead?

We could all benefit from more failures

Don’t experiment to prove. Do it to improve

Endowment effect: why people value what they currently have.

great examples! I now feel inspired to innovate in my entrepreneurial project. Thank you ?

Greetings from Mexico

Excellent work!

They’s very interesting. Do you have the solutions of some of recent examples?

My university has taken pretty much everything from here, poorly rephrased a few things and have delivered it to us, the student, as an entire weeks worth of content. Maybe i should be paying my fees here…

Bachelor of business student Australia

Very interesting. Which course was it being used for?

Leave A Comment Cancel reply

The Whatfix Blog | Drive Digital Adoption

• CIO CIO CIO Blog Explore all new CIO and IT-related content on our enterprise digitalization blog hub. Explore by Category Change Management Digital Adoption Digital Transformation IT Optimization Procurement
• Employee Experience Employee Experience EX Blog Explore all new employee experience related content on our EX blog hub. Explore by category Employee Onboarding Employee Performance Employee Training & Development HR & People Management Knowledge Management Sales Enablement & Training
• Customer Experience Customer Experience CX Blog Explore all new customer experience related content on our CX blog hub. Explore by category Customer Adoption & Education Customer Growth & Retention Customer Support
• Product Product Product Manager Blog Explore all new product-related content on our product manager blog hub. Explore by category Product Documentation PX & User Analysis User Onboarding
• What Is Whatfix? What Is Whatfix? Whatfix Software clicks better with Whatfix. Explore Whatfix now! What Is a Digital Adoption Platform? Our ultimate guide to digital adoption platforms is a crash course for DAP beginners. Whatfix Resources Customers Pricing Resource Library
• Back to Blog
• Digital Transformation

8 Examples of Innovative Digital Transformation Case Studies (2024)

• January 19, 2022

With the rapid pace of technological advancement, every organization needs to undergo digital transformation and, most likely, transform multiple times to stay relevant and competitive. 

However, before you can reap the benefits of new technology, you must first get your customers and employees to adapt to this change successfully—and here lies a significant digital transformation challenge.

Organizations thriving in this digital-first era have developed digital innovation strategies prioritizing the change management mindset. This paradigm shift implies that organizations should continuously explore improving business processes .

8 Best Examples of Digital Transformation Case Studies in 2024

• Amazon Business
• Under Armour
• Internet Brands®
• Michelin Solutions

8 Examples of Inspiring Digital Transformation Case Studies

While digital transformation presents unique opportunities for organizations to innovate and grow, it also presents significant digital transformation challenges . Also, digital maturity and levels of digital transformation by sector vary widely.

If you have the budget, you can consider hiring a digital transformation consulting company to help you plan your digitization. However, the best way to develop an effective digital transformation strategy is to learn by example. 

Here are the 8 inspiring digital transformation case studies to consider when undertaking transformation projects in 2024:

1. Amazon extended the B2C model to embrace B2B transactions with a vision to improve the customer experience.

Overview of the digital transformation initiative

Amazon Business is an example of how a consumer giant transitions to the B2B space to keep up with the digital customer expectations. It provides a marketplace for businesses to purchase from Amazon and third parties. Individuals can also make purchases on behalf of their organizations and integrate order approval workflows and reporting.

The approach

• Amazon created a holistic marketplace for B2B vendors by offering over 250 million products ranging from cleaning supplies to industrial equipment. 
• It introduced free two-day shipping on orders worth $49 or more and exclusive price discounts. It further offered purchase system integration, tax-exemption on purchases from select qualified customers, shared payment methods, order approval workflows, and enhanced order reporting.
• Amazon allowed manufacturers to connect with buyers & answer questions about products in a live expert program.
• Amazon could tap the B2B wholesale market valued between $7.2 and $8.2 trillion in the U.S. alone.
• It began earning revenue by charging sales commissions ranging from 6-15% from third-party sellers, depending on the product category and the order size.
• It could offer more personalized products for an improved customer experience. 

2. Netflix transformed the entertainment industry by offering on-demand subscription-based video services to its customers.

Like the video rental company Blockbuster, Netflix also had a pay-per-rental model, which included DVD sales and rent-by-mail services. However, Netflix anticipated a change in customer demand with rising digitalization and provided online entertainment, thereby wiping out Blockbuster – and the movie rental industry – entirely. 

• In 2007, Netflix launched a video-on-demand streaming service to supplement their DVD rental service without any additional cost to their subscriber base.
• It implemented a simple and scalable business model and infused 10% of its budget in R&D consistently.
• The company has an unparalleled recommendation engine to provide a personalized and relevant customer experience. 
• Netflix is the most popular digital video content provider, leading other streaming giants such as Amazon, Hulu, and Youtube with over 85% market share.
• Netflix added a record 36 million subscribers directly after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

3. Tesla uses connected car technology and over-the-air software updates to enhance customer experience, enable cost savings, and reduce carbon emissions.

No digital transformation discussion is complete without acknowledging the unconventional ideas implemented by Elon Musk. Tesla was a huge manifestation of digital transformation as the core motive was to prove that electric cars are better than their gasoline counterparts both in looks and performance. 

Over the years, Tesla has innovated continuously to improve its product, make itself more economical, and reduce its carbon footprint. 

• Tesla is the only auto manufacturer globally, providing automatic over-the-air firmware updates that allow its cars to remotely improve their safety, performance, and infotainment capabilities. For example, the OTA update could fix Tesla’soverheating issues due to power fluctuation. 
• Tesla launched an autopilot feature to control the speed and position of the car when on highways to avoid potential accidents. However, the user still has to hold the wheel; the vehicle controls everything else. This connected car technology has created an intelligent data platform and smart autonomous driving experience.
• Tesla further ventured into a data-driven future, and it uses analytics to obtain actionable insights from demand trends and common complaints. A noteworthy fact is that the company has been collecting driving data from all of its first and second-generation vehicles. So far, Tesla has collected driving data on 8 billion miles while Google’s autonomous car project, Waymo , has accumulated data on 10 million miles.
• Tesla’s over-the-air updates reduce carbon emissions by saving users’ dealer visits. Additionally, these updates save consumers time and money.
• Tesla delivered a record 936,172 vehicles in 2021, an 87 % increase over the 499,550 vehicle deliveries made in 2020.

4. Glassdoor revolutionized the recruitment industry by allowing employees to make informed decisions.

Glassdoor is responsible for increasing transparency in the workplace and helping people find the right job by allowing them to see millions of peer-to-peer reviews on employers, including overall company culture, their CEOs, benefits, salaries, and more. 

• Glassdoor gathers and analyzes employee reviews on employers to provide accurate job recommendations to candidates and vice-versa. It also allows recruitment agencies and organizations to download valuable data points for in-depth analysis & reporting. 
• It further introduced enhanced profiles as a paid program, allowing companies to customize their content on the Glassdoor profiles, including job listings, “Why is it the Best Place to Work” tabs, social media properties, and more. This gives companies a new, innovative way to attract and recruit top talent.
• Glassdoor created the largest pool of interview questions, salary insights, CEO ratings, and organizational culture via a peer-to-peer network, making it one of the most trustworthy, extensive jobs search and recruiting platforms – and one of the most well-recognized review sites
• Glassdoor leverages its collected data for labor market research in the US. Its portfolio of Fortune’s “Best Companies to Work For” companies outperformed the S&P 500 by 84.2%, while the “Best Places to Work” portfolio outperformed the overall market by 115.6%.

5. Under Armour diversified from an athletic apparel company to a new data-driven digital business stream to transform the fitness industry.

Under Armour introduced the concept of “Connected Fitness” by providing a platform to track, analyze and share personal health data directly to its customers’ phones.

• Under Armour acquired several technology-based fitness organizations such as MapMyFitness, MyFitnessPal, and European fitness app Endomondo for a combined $715 million to obtain the required technology and an extensive customer database to get its fitness app up and running. The application provides a stream of information to Under Armour, identifying fitness and health trends. For example, Under Armour (Baltimore) immediately recognized a walking trend that started in Australia, allowing them to deploy localized marketing and distribution efforts way before their competitors knew about it.
• Under Armour merged its physical and digital offerings to provide an immersive customer experience via products such as Armourbox. The company urged its customers to go online and share their training schedule, favorite shoe style, and fitness goals. It used advanced analytics to send customers new shoes or apparel on a subscription basis, offering customers a more significant value over their lifetime.
• It additionally moved to an agile development model and data center footprint with the ERP SAP HANA . 
• Under Armour additionally leveraged Dell EMC’s Data Protection and Dell Technologies to help fuel digital innovation and find peak value from its data.
• Under Armour created a digital brand with a strong consumer focus, agility, and change culture. 
• With the Connected Fitness app, it provided a customer experience tailored to each consumer.

6. Internet Brands® subsidiary Baystone Media leverages Whatfix DAP to drive product adoption of its healthcare businesses.

Baystone Media provides end-to-end marketing solutions for healthcare companies by providing a low-cost, high-value subscription offering of Internet Brands® to promote their practices digitally. Baystone Media empowers its customers by offering a codeless creation of personalized websites. However, as its userbase is less tech-savvy, customers were unable to make the most of their solution. 

The idea was to implement a solution for Baystone Media & its sister companies to enable its clients to navigate its platforms easily. In addition to PDFs and specific training videos, the search was on for a real-time interactive walkthrough solution, culminating with Whatfix .

Baystone media saw a 10% decrease in inbound calls and a 4.17% decrease in support tickets, giving them the runway to spend more time enhancing its service for the clients.

7. Sophos implemented Salesforce to streamline its business and manage customer relations more effectively.

Sophos went live with Salesforce to accelerate its sales process , enhance sales productivity , and increase the number of accounts won. However, the complex interface and regular updates of Salesforce resulted in a decreased ROI. 

• Sophos implemented Whatfix to provide interactive, on-demand training that helped users learn in the flow of work. The 24*7 availability of on-demand self-support, contextual guidance, and smart tips allowed Sophos to manage its new CRM implementation effectively. 
• It unified internal communications using Whatfix content. First, they created walkthroughs for the basic functionality of Salesforce such as lead management, opportunities, etc. Next, they moved to slightly more complex features that their users were uncomfortable with and created guided walkthroughs and smart pop-ups. Sophos also used Whatfix to align the sales and product management teams by embedding videos and other media to unify product communication instead of relying on various communication tools.
• Sophos experienced a reduction in sales operations support tickets globally by 15% (~12,000 tickets). It saved 1070 man-hours and achieved an ROI of 342%. 

8. Michelin Solutions uses IoT & AI to provide customers with a more holistic mobility experience.

The digital strategy of Michelin Solutions has essentially centered around three priorities:

• Creating a personalized relationship with customers and end-users
• Developing new business models
• Improving their existing business processes 
• AI is extensively used in R&D, enabling the digital supply chain driven through digital manufacturing and predictive maintenance. For example, connected bracelets assist machine operators with the manufacturing process. 
• It deployed sophisticated robots to take over the clerical tasks and leveraged advanced analytics to become a data-driven organization. 
• Offerings such as Effifuel & Effitires resulted in significant cost savings and improved overall vehicle efficiency. 
• Michelin Solutions carefully enforced cultural change and launched small pilots before the change implementation . 

• Effifuel led to extra savings for organizations and doubled per-vehicle profits.
• A reduction in fuel consumption by 2.5 L per 100km was observed which translates into annual savings of €3,200 for long-haul transport (at least 2.1% reduction in the total cost of ownership & 8 tonnes in CO2 emissions).
• Michelin Solutions shifted its business model from selling tires to a service guaranteeing performance, helping it achieve higher customer satisfaction, increased loyalty, and raised EBITDA margins.

Each industry & organization faces unique challenges while driving digital transformation initiatives. Each organization must find a personalized solution and the right digital transformation model when implementing new technology. Their challenges can prepare you better for the potential roadblocks, but the specific solutions will need to be personalized according to your business requirements.

Open communication with your customers and employees will help you spot potential issues early on, and you can use case studies like these as a starting point.

If you would like to learn how you can achieve these results by using a digital adoption platform , then schedule a conversation with our experts today.

Request a demo to see how Whatfix empowers organizations to improve end-user adoption and provide on-demand customer support

• All Headlines

Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies of 2021

Two cases about Hertz claimed top spots in 2021's Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies

Two cases on the uses of debt and equity at Hertz claimed top spots in the CRDT’s (Case Research and Development Team) 2021 top 40 review of cases.

Hertz (A) took the top spot. The case details the financial structure of the rental car company through the end of 2019. Hertz (B), which ranked third in CRDT’s list, describes the company’s struggles during the early part of the COVID pandemic and its eventual need to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 

The success of the Hertz cases was unprecedented for the top 40 list. Usually, cases take a number of years to gain popularity, but the Hertz cases claimed top spots in their first year of release. Hertz (A) also became the first ‘cooked’ case to top the annual review, as all of the other winners had been web-based ‘raw’ cases.

Besides introducing students to the complicated financing required to maintain an enormous fleet of cars, the Hertz cases also expanded the diversity of case protagonists. Kathyrn Marinello was the CEO of Hertz during this period and the CFO, Jamere Jackson is black.

Sandwiched between the two Hertz cases, Coffee 2016, a perennial best seller, finished second. “Glory, Glory, Man United!” a case about an English football team’s IPO made a surprise move to number four.  Cases on search fund boards, the future of malls,  Norway’s Sovereign Wealth fund, Prodigy Finance, the Mayo Clinic, and Cadbury rounded out the top ten.

Other year-end data for 2021 showed:

• Online “raw” case usage remained steady as compared to 2020 with over 35K users from 170 countries and all 50 U.S. states interacting with 196 cases.
• Fifty four percent of raw case users came from outside the U.S..
• The Yale School of Management (SOM) case study directory pages received over 160K page views from 177 countries with approximately a third originating in India followed by the U.S. and the Philippines.
• Twenty-six of the cases in the list are raw cases.
• A third of the cases feature a woman protagonist.
• Orders for Yale SOM case studies increased by almost 50% compared to 2020.
• The top 40 cases were supervised by 19 different Yale SOM faculty members, several supervising multiple cases.

CRDT compiled the Top 40 list by combining data from its case store, Google Analytics, and other measures of interest and adoption.

All of this year’s Top 40 cases are available for purchase from the Yale Management Media store .

And the Top 40 cases studies of 2021 are:

1.   Hertz Global Holdings (A): Uses of Debt and Equity

2.   Coffee 2016

3.   Hertz Global Holdings (B): Uses of Debt and Equity 2020

4.   Glory, Glory Man United!

5.   Search Fund Company Boards: How CEOs Can Build Boards to Help Them Thrive

6.   The Future of Malls: Was Decline Inevitable?

7.   Strategy for Norway's Pension Fund Global

8.   Prodigy Finance

9.   Design at Mayo

10. Cadbury

11. City Hospital Emergency Room

13. Volkswagen

14. Marina Bay Sands

15. Shake Shack IPO

16. Mastercard

17. Netflix

18. Ant Financial

19. AXA: Creating the New CR Metrics

20. IBM Corporate Service Corps

21. Business Leadership in South Africa's 1994 Reforms

22. Alternative Meat Industry

23. Children's Premier

24. Khalil Tawil and Umi (A)

25. Palm Oil 2016

26. Teach For All: Designing a Global Network

27. What's Next? Search Fund Entrepreneurs Reflect on Life After Exit

28. Searching for a Search Fund Structure: A Student Takes a Tour of Various Options

30. Project Sammaan

31. Commonfund ESG

32. Polaroid

33. Connecticut Green Bank 2018: After the Raid

34. FieldFresh Foods

35. The Alibaba Group

36. 360 State Street: Real Options

37. Herman Miller

38. AgBiome

39. Nathan Cummings Foundation

40. Toyota 2010

About Stanford GSB

• The Leadership
• Dean’s Updates
• School News & History
• Commencement
• Business, Government & Society
• Centers & Institutes
• Center for Entrepreneurial Studies
• Center for Social Innovation
• Stanford Seed

About the Experience

• Learning at Stanford GSB
• Experiential Learning
• Guest Speakers
• Entrepreneurship
• Social Innovation
• Communication
• Life at Stanford GSB
• Collaborative Environment
• Activities & Organizations
• Student Services
• Housing Options
• International Students

Full-Time Degree Programs

• Why Stanford MBA
• Academic Experience
• Financial Aid
• Why Stanford MSx
• Research Fellows Program
• See All Programs

Non-Degree & Certificate Programs

• Executive Education
• Stanford Executive Program
• Programs for Organizations
• The Difference
• Online Programs
• Stanford LEAD
• Seed Transformation Program
• Aspire Program
• Seed Spark Program
• Faculty Profiles
• Academic Areas
• Awards & Honors
• Conferences

Faculty Research

• Publications
• Working Papers
• Case Studies

Research Hub

• Research Labs & Initiatives
• Business Library
• Data, Analytics & Research Computing
• Behavioral Lab

Research Labs

• Cities, Housing & Society Lab
• Golub Capital Social Impact Lab

Research Initiatives

• Corporate Governance Research Initiative
• Corporations and Society Initiative
• Policy and Innovation Initiative
• Rapid Decarbonization Initiative
• Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative
• Value Chain Innovation Initiative
• Venture Capital Initiative
• Career & Success
• Climate & Sustainability
• Corporate Governance
• Culture & Society
• Finance & Investing
• Government & Politics
• Leadership & Management
• Markets and Trade
• Operations & Logistics
• Opportunity & Access
• Technology & AI
• Opinion & Analysis
• Email Newsletter

Welcome, Alumni

• Communities
• Digital Communities & Tools
• Regional Chapters
• Women’s Programs
• Identity Chapters
• Find Your Reunion
• Career Resources
• Job Search Resources
• Career & Life Transitions
• Programs & Webinars
• Career Video Library
• Alumni Education
• Research Resources
• Volunteering
• Alumni News
• Class Notes
• Alumni Voices
• Contact Alumni Relations
• Upcoming Events

Admission Events & Information Sessions

• MBA Program
• MSx Program
• PhD Program
• Alumni Events
• All Other Events

How Innovation Drives Economic Growth

Three Stanford scholars explore how we measure innovation, how innovation drives productivity, and how productivity affects inequality.

June 24, 2019

How do you measure innovation, and how does it impact the economy? Three Stanford scholars discussed those questions and more during a recent panel discussion. | Reuters/Jason Lee

In 1500, China’s economy was the strongest in the world. But by the 19th century, the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan had leapfrogged over China by churning out goods and services in vast quantities while the former superpower stalled.

Why? Some economists argue that China’s lack of free markets and unencumbered innovation in the West led to the shift. But what is the relationship between innovation and markets, productivity, and inequality?

The answer to that puzzle and others were explored during a recent forum on the relationship of innovation to economic growth at the Hoover Institution. Three Stanford professors, all Hoover fellows — Stephen Haber , Edward Lazear , and Amit Seru — spoke on a panel moderated by Jonathan Levin , dean of Stanford Graduate School of Business.

The panelists offered thoughts on how innovation is measured, the role of markets, and what types of firms are likely to innovate. They examined how productivity affects wages, skills, and social inequality, and considered what kind of policies might ensure that the pace of innovation remains brisk.

How Do You Measure Innovation?

Like art, everyone knows innovation when they see it, but defining and measuring it, says Amit Seru, “is a holy grail” for researchers. Studying patents might be key to answering that question.

Seru and his colleagues used big data techniques to analyze 9 million U.S. patents filed over two centuries. Although the Silicon Valley ethos holds that startups are the wellspring of innovation, the researchers found that established firms were also very innovative, as measured by high-quality patenting activity. They also concluded that both private and public firms contributed to innovation and that universities and some government entities were also quite innovative.

The first step in that analysis was to construct a measure of high-quality innovation. The researchers did so by comparing the texts of all the patents in the database and tabulating the occurrence of important words. If there was little overlap between the text of a patent and its predecessors, the patent was likely a novel innovation. If words in subsequent patents were similar, the subject patent was likely an important innovation that other patents had built upon. Patents meeting both criteria, i.e., novel and important, were considered “high quality,” says Seru, a Stanford GSB professor of finance. As a check, the researchers compared their list of high-quality patents to those already deemed significant by economic historians. The two lists were quite similar, they found. Using this measure of high-quality innovation, the researchers examined which entities contributed to breakthrough innovations over time and what patterns were consistently associated with these events.

Quote If there is a threat to prosperity, it comes from people who believe they are doing good by using the power of the state to decide which innovations are just and which are unjust. Attribution Stephen Haber

“What is consistent is the notion of creative destruction” and the rational reallocation of resources around such events, Seru says. When firms innovate, profits go up, and labor and financing flow to them and away from their competitors, who suffer from this creative destruction. For this to occur, labor and capital markets need to function efficiently. While creative destruction and associated patterns are not a new notion, what is different today is that innovation might occur across different entities — such as government as well as public or private firms — and inventors working across geographic boundaries. Innovation remains brisk, but if markets in the U.S., which have functioned efficiently for centuries, are hindered, innovation could falter, Seru argues.

What Happened to China?

Like Seru, Stephen Haber and his colleagues used big data to analyze economic growth. To build their geographical representation of economically powerful regions, they geocoded every major city in the world and, using a variety of sources, researched the level of economic activity at 100-year intervals. The study took three years.

During the period when China was economically more advanced than the West, it traded goods like spices, silk, and tea for silver. At the time, the West had little else that the Chinese needed, Haber says. But that changed, and by 1800 the West had pulled ahead. Innovation made the difference — modern chemistry, steam power applied to transportation, and interchangeable parts — but not just innovations in technology. Modern economic growth also came from organizational innovations in the military, transportation, and the legal and financial worlds, Haber says.

One major example: the concept of the patent as a tradable property right.

“Places where people were free to experiment, to simultaneously compete and cooperate through a market where no one was in charge of deciding which technologies would be adopted, which would be rejected, and which would be forbidden, flourished,” Haber says.

Historically, China took the opposite approach: The state wielded the power to reject certain technologies. For example, the development of railroads was drastically slowed by China’s emperor because he feared their spread would undo the agrarian society and threaten his rule, Haber says.

That lesson, he says, should not be lost on today’s leaders. “If there is a threat to prosperity, it comes from people who believe they are doing good by using the power of the state to decide which innovations are just and which are unjust.”

How Are Productivity and Inequality Linked?

There are two ways to achieve economic growth: Add population or make people more productive, says Edward Lazear, a professor of economics at Stanford GSB. Economic growth in the 20th century was tremendous. The standard of living doubled every 33 years, but that made a challenging target for the 21st century. Slower population growth and aging of the current population imply that we will need productivity increases to do more of the work in the future.

Productivity feeds into wage growth, but as productivity has slowed in recent years, so have wages, Lazear says. In the late 1990s, productivity grew by about 3% a year; now it’s only about one-third of that. So it’s no surprise that wages have also been flat. But the pain of flat wages is not shared equally throughout the population.

The productivity — and wages — of highly educated workers has soared over the last 30 years. But the opposite is true for less educated segments of the population.

Making matters worse, the industries that have grown are the ones that employ highly educated workers, while the industries that have shrunk are the ones employing people with less education.

However, artificial intelligence and other technologies are not to blame and will not put everyone out of work, Lazear says. As measured by participation in the labor force, jobs as a whole don’t disappear when new technologies change the nature of work. There was never a transformation as radical as the Industrial Revolution, he notes, yet the labor force grew.

“The concern is not that people won’t be working. The concern is that they will work in crummy jobs,” Lazear says. To alleviate the problem, it will be necessary to rethink education and job training. The key, Lazear says, is this: “Lower the skills gap.”

For media inquiries, visit the Newsroom .

Explore More

The brain gain: the impact of immigration on american innovation, to discover breakthrough ideas, look to the outsiders, how to survive the a.i. revolution, editor’s picks.

• Priorities for the GSB's Future
• See the Current DEI Report
• Supporting Data
• Research & Insights
• Share Your Thoughts
• Search Fund Primer
• Teaching & Curriculum
• Affiliated Faculty
• Faculty Advisors
• Louis W. Foster Resource Center
• Defining Social Innovation
• Impact Compass
• Global Health Innovation Insights
• Faculty Affiliates
• Student Awards & Certificates
• Changemakers
• Dean Jonathan Levin
• Dean Garth Saloner
• Dean Robert Joss
• Dean Michael Spence
• Dean Robert Jaedicke
• Dean Rene McPherson
• Dean Arjay Miller
• Dean Ernest Arbuckle
• Dean Jacob Hugh Jackson
• Dean Willard Hotchkiss
• Faculty in Memoriam
• Stanford GSB Firsts
• Class of 2024 Candidates
• Certificate & Award Recipients
• Dean’s Remarks
• Keynote Address
• Teaching Approach
• Analysis and Measurement of Impact
• The Corporate Entrepreneur: Startup in a Grown-Up Enterprise
• Data-Driven Impact
• Designing Experiments for Impact
• Digital Business Transformation
• The Founder’s Right Hand
• Marketing for Measurable Change
• Product Management
• Public Policy Lab: Financial Challenges Facing US Cities
• Public Policy Lab: Homelessness in California
• Lab Features
• Curricular Integration
• View From The Top
• Formation of New Ventures
• Managing Growing Enterprises
• Startup Garage
• Explore Beyond the Classroom
• Stanford Venture Studio
• Summer Program
• Workshops & Events
• The Five Lenses of Entrepreneurship
• Leadership Labs
• Executive Challenge
• Arbuckle Leadership Fellows Program
• Selection Process
• Training Schedule
• Time Commitment
• Learning Expectations
• Post-Training Opportunities
• Who Should Apply
• Introductory T-Groups
• Leadership for Society Program
• Certificate
• 2024 Awardees
• 2023 Awardees
• 2022 Awardees
• 2021 Awardees
• 2020 Awardees
• 2019 Awardees
• 2018 Awardees
• Social Management Immersion Fund
• Stanford Impact Founder Fellowships and Prizes
• Stanford Impact Leader Prizes
• Social Entrepreneurship
• Stanford GSB Impact Fund
• Economic Development
• Energy & Environment
• Stanford GSB Residences
• Environmental Leadership
• Stanford GSB Artwork
• A Closer Look
• California & the Bay Area
• Voices of Stanford GSB
• Business & Beneficial Technology
• Business & Sustainability
• Business & Free Markets
• Business, Government, and Society Forum
• Get Involved
• Second Year
• Global Experiences
• JD/MBA Joint Degree
• MA Education/MBA Joint Degree
• MD/MBA Dual Degree
• MPP/MBA Joint Degree
• MS Computer Science/MBA Joint Degree
• MS Electrical Engineering/MBA Joint Degree
• MS Environment and Resources (E-IPER)/MBA Joint Degree
• Academic Calendar
• Clubs & Activities
• LGBTQ+ Students
• Military Veterans
• Minorities & People of Color
• Partners & Families
• Students with Disabilities
• Student Support
• Residential Life
• Student Voices
• MBA Alumni Voices
• A Week in the Life
• Career Support
• Employment Outcomes
• Cost of Attendance
• Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program
• Yellow Ribbon Program
• BOLD Fellows Fund
• Application Process
• Loan Forgiveness
• Contact the Financial Aid Office
• Evaluation Criteria
• GMAT & GRE
• English Language Proficiency
• Personal Information, Activities & Awards
• Professional Experience
• Letters of Recommendation
• Optional Short Answer Questions
• Application Fee
• Reapplication
• Deferred Enrollment
• Joint & Dual Degrees
• Entering Class Profile
• Event Schedule
• Ambassadors
• New & Noteworthy
• Ask a Question
• See Why Stanford MSx
• Is MSx Right for You?
• MSx Stories
• Leadership Development
• How You Will Learn
• Admission Events
• Personal Information
• Reference Letters
• GMAT, GRE & EA
• English Proficiency Tests
• Career Change
• Career Advancement
• Daycare, Schools & Camps
• U.S. Citizens and Permanent Residents
• Requirements
• Requirements: Behavioral
• Requirements: Quantitative
• Requirements: Macro
• Requirements: Micro
• Annual Evaluations
• Field Examination
• Research Activities
• Research Papers
• Dissertation
• Oral Examination
• Current Students
• Education & CV
• International Applicants
• Statement of Purpose
• Reapplicants
• Application Fee Waiver
• Deadline & Decisions
• Job Market Candidates
• Academic Placements
• Stay in Touch
• Faculty Mentors
• Current Fellows
• Standard Track
• Fellowship & Benefits
• Group Enrollment
• Program Formats
• Developing a Program
• Diversity & Inclusion
• Strategic Transformation
• Program Experience
• Contact Client Services
• Campus Experience
• Live Online Experience
• Silicon Valley & Bay Area
• Digital Credentials
• Faculty Spotlights
• Participant Spotlights
• Eligibility
• International Participants
• Stanford Ignite
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Operations, Information & Technology
• Organizational Behavior
• Political Economy
• Classical Liberalism
• The Eddie Lunch
• Accounting Summer Camp
• Videos, Code & Data
• California Econometrics Conference
• California Quantitative Marketing PhD Conference
• California School Conference
• China India Insights Conference
• Homo economicus, Evolving
• Political Economics (2023–24)
• Scaling Geologic Storage of CO2 (2023–24)
• A Resilient Pacific: Building Connections, Envisioning Solutions
• Adaptation and Innovation
• Changing Climate
• Civil Society
• Climate Impact Summit
• Climate Science
• Corporate Carbon Disclosures
• Earth’s Seafloor
• Environmental Justice
• Operations and Information Technology
• Organizations
• Sustainability Reporting and Control
• Taking the Pulse of the Planet
• Urban Infrastructure
• Watershed Restoration
• Junior Faculty Workshop on Financial Regulation and Banking
• Ken Singleton Celebration
• Marketing Camp
• Quantitative Marketing PhD Alumni Conference
• Presentations
• Theory and Inference in Accounting Research
• Stanford Closer Look Series
• Quick Guides
• Core Concepts
• Journal Articles
• Glossary of Terms
• Faculty & Staff
• Researchers & Students
• Research Approach
• Charitable Giving
• Financial Health
• Government Services
• Workers & Careers
• Short Course
• Adaptive & Iterative Experimentation
• Incentive Design
• Social Sciences & Behavioral Nudges
• Bandit Experiment Application
• Conferences & Events
• Reading Materials
• Energy Entrepreneurship
• Faculty & Affiliates
• SOLE Report
• Responsible Supply Chains
• Current Study Usage
• Pre-Registration Information
• Participate in a Study
• Founding Donors
• Location Information
• Participant Profile
• Network Membership
• Program Impact
• Collaborators
• Entrepreneur Profiles
• Company Spotlights
• Seed Transformation Network
• Responsibilities
• Current Coaches
• How to Apply
• Meet the Consultants
• Meet the Interns
• Intern Profiles
• Collaborate
• Research Library
• News & Insights
• Program Contacts
• Databases & Datasets
• Research Guides
• Consultations
• Research Workshops
• Career Research
• Research Data Services
• Course Reserves
• Course Research Guides
• Material Loan Periods
• Fines & Other Charges
• Document Delivery
• Interlibrary Loan
• Equipment Checkout
• Print & Scan
• MBA & MSx Students
• PhD Students
• Other Stanford Students
• Faculty Assistants
• Research Assistants
• Stanford GSB Alumni
• Telling Our Story
• Staff Directory
• Site Registration
• Alumni Directory
• Alumni Email
• Privacy Settings & My Profile
• Success Stories
• The Story of Circles
• Support Women’s Circles
• Stanford Women on Boards Initiative
• Alumnae Spotlights
• Insights & Research
• Industry & Professional
• Entrepreneurial Commitment Group
• Recent Alumni
• Half-Century Club
• Fall Reunions
• Spring Reunions
• MBA 25th Reunion
• Half-Century Club Reunion
• Faculty Lectures
• Ernest C. Arbuckle Award
• Alison Elliott Exceptional Achievement Award
• ENCORE Award
• Excellence in Leadership Award
• John W. Gardner Volunteer Leadership Award
• Robert K. Jaedicke Faculty Award
• Jack McDonald Military Service Appreciation Award
• Jerry I. Porras Latino Leadership Award
• Tapestry Award
• Student & Alumni Events
• Executive Recruiters
• Interviewing
• Land the Perfect Job with LinkedIn
• Negotiating
• Elevator Pitch
• Email Best Practices
• Resumes & Cover Letters
• Self-Assessment
• Whitney Birdwell Ball
• Margaret Brooks
• Bryn Panee Burkhart
• Margaret Chan
• Ricki Frankel
• Peter Gandolfo
• Cindy W. Greig
• Natalie Guillen
• Carly Janson
• Sloan Klein
• Sherri Appel Lassila
• Stuart Meyer
• Tanisha Parrish
• Virginia Roberson
• Philippe Taieb
• Michael Takagawa
• Terra Winston
• Johanna Wise
• Debbie Wolter
• Rebecca Zucker
• Complimentary Coaching
• Changing Careers
• Work-Life Integration
• Career Breaks
• Flexible Work
• Encore Careers
• Join a Board
• D&B Hoovers
• Data Axle (ReferenceUSA)
• EBSCO Business Source
• Global Newsstream
• Market Share Reporter
• ProQuest One Business
• Student Clubs
• Entrepreneurial Students
• Stanford GSB Trust
• Alumni Community
• How to Volunteer
• Springboard Sessions
• Consulting Projects
• 2020 – 2029
• 2010 – 2019
• 2000 – 2009
• 1990 – 1999
• 1980 – 1989
• 1970 – 1979
• 1960 – 1969
• 1950 – 1959
• 1940 – 1949
• Service Areas
• ACT History
• ACT Awards Celebration
• ACT Governance Structure
• Building Leadership for ACT
• Individual Leadership Positions
• Leadership Role Overview
• Purpose of the ACT Management Board
• Contact ACT
• Business & Nonprofit Communities
• Reunion Volunteers
• Ways to Give
• Fiscal Year Report
• Business School Fund Leadership Council
• Planned Giving Options
• Planned Giving Benefits
• Planned Gifts and Reunions
• Legacy Partners
• Giving News & Stories
• Giving Deadlines
• Development Staff
• Submit Class Notes
• Class Secretaries
• Board of Directors
• Health Care
• Sustainability
• Class Takeaways
• All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions
• If/Then: Business, Leadership, Society
• Grit & Growth
• Think Fast, Talk Smart
• Spring 2022
• Spring 2021
• Autumn 2020
• Summer 2020
• Winter 2020
• In the Media
• For Journalists
• DCI Fellows
• Other Auditors
• Academic Calendar & Deadlines
• Course Materials
• Entrepreneurial Resources
• Campus Drive Grove
• Campus Drive Lawn
• CEMEX Auditorium
• King Community Court
• Seawell Family Boardroom
• Stanford GSB Bowl
• Stanford Investors Common
• Town Square
• Vidalakis Courtyard
• Vidalakis Dining Hall
• Catering Services
• Policies & Guidelines
• Reservations
• Contact Faculty Recruiting
• Lecturer Positions
• Postdoctoral Positions
• Accommodations
• CMC-Managed Interviews
• Recruiter-Managed Interviews
• Virtual Interviews
• Campus & Virtual
• Search for Candidates
• Think Globally
• Recruiting Calendar
• Recruiting Policies
• Full-Time Employment
• Summer Employment
• Entrepreneurial Summer Program
• Global Management Immersion Experience
• Social-Purpose Summer Internships
• Process Overview
• Project Types
• Client Eligibility Criteria
• Client Screening
• ACT Leadership
• Social Innovation & Nonprofit Management Resources
• Develop Your Organization’s Talent
• Centers & Initiatives
• Student Fellowships

• Skip to main content
• Skip to secondary menu
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer

Data and Technology Insights

Open Innovation: 9 Benefits, 12 Case Studies and 12 Books

Datafloq AI Score: 83

Datafloq enables anyone to contribute articles, but we value high-quality content. This means that we do not accept SEO link building content, spammy articles, clickbait, articles written by bots and especially not misinformation. Therefore, we have developed an AI, built using multiple built open-source and proprietary tools to instantly define whether an article is written by a human or a bot and determine the level of bias, objectivity, whether it is fact-based or not, sentiment and overall quality.

Articles published on Datafloq need to have a minimum AI score of 60% and we provide this graph to give more detailed information on how we rate this article. Please note that this is a work in progress and if you have any suggestions, feel free to contact us .

Today we hear a lot Open Innovation , but there are a lot of people who are not sure what it means exactly. As this topic is important nowadays, we decided to write an article about it to clarify all your doubts.

What is Open innovation?

Open innovation is about combining internal resources with external ones to boost innovation culture in the company .1 For example, big companies like GE, Cisco or Microsoft , etc. tend to have 8-12 different value pools, for instance, think suppliers , startups, customers or universities, etc. to consider for their open innovation efforts.

In other words, open innovation is a business model that encourages you to connect with outside sources so you can profit from exciting new startups and product opportunities, get a broader pool of talent, collaborate with others to come up with innovation that you could never do just by yourself.

Now, large multinationals including Kraft, KLM, Pfizer, and Siemens actively and openly participate in collaborative, online innovation communities where seekers and solution providers work together. Much the way tech companies use hackathons to get outsiders to contribute to their goals, OI-committed businesses announce proudly that they’re taking full advantage of the global innovation community. That transparency demonstrates to the market that they have a clear strategy for the future and they’re aggressively pursuing it out in the open.

Open innovation may seem to be for big business. But it is an approach that can be used by all companies, especially start-ups and small businesses. It may be as simple as inviting a trusted supplier to help you develop ideas or launching a website , etc.

So, find the right collaborators! One of the most visible open innovation actions these days are suggested websites or special places on the web that invite customers and the general public to submit ideas on how to improve a company’s products and services. And then, on these websites companies publish a hackathon info to find the right partner with the most brilliant idea.

9 Benefits of Open Innovation

1. creating new products and services.

Especially when you’re a startup, there’s nothing more exciting than getting your first product out on the market. But it’s easy to get stuck, focusing all your efforts on selling your first product rather than thinking of what else you could provide for your customers. It can be scary to invest time and resources into creating a new product, especially taking into account that startups have a limited budget. Yet, by investing your resources and the resources of the third parties into creating something new, that you know will bring value to your community. This move may help you increase your profits and create buzz around you.

2. Innovating old products and services

Sometimes, you don’t need to create new products. Sometimes, your older service has a potential to be better, has potential to attract a lot of clients. This is when you need to get a creative team together to improve your idea. One of the benefits of open innovation is that the process never ends. You’re always thinking about how you can make your organisation better.

3. Building a strong community

Lego is a great example of how a company can engage their fans on a wide scale by using open innovation. No matter the size of your organisation , a great benefit of open innovation is taking the time to get in touch with your fans and your soulmates, news talents. Get to know what your community wants, and then give it to them. In the process, you will find that enthusiastic community members are willing to dedicate their time and ideas to help you create something better. These relationships are key and will help your company build a strong community dedicated to your project.

4. Keeping your employees engaged

One of the main sources of employee dissatisfaction is a lack of feeling of ownership on the projects they work on. Sometimes, your team may have some great ideas but might not feel comfortable bringing them forward. By bringing an open innovation initiative to your workplace, your team can get involved in big picture planning, make it their project. When people feel more invested in the bigger goals of the organisation, it makes them more excited to come to work in the morning and put their heart and their soul in it.

5. Staying ahead of the competition

By keeping your team and your community engaged and on the lookout for new ideas, you make sure that your organisation stays helpful and relevant to your community. Using open innovation can help you find your niche that makes your organisation uniquely valuable to the community.

6. Costs reduction

When you work with other companies, you split the costs. Moreover, you become more efficient because of each company; each member works on what he is good at.

7. Time-to-market acceleration

Instead of figuring out how to make the desired product, train your people, buy equipment, etc., you just start a collaboration with a company that already has all this, that allows you to bring a product to market faster.

8. New revenue streams

Did you know that some businesses get more revenue from secondary products rather than from the primary ones? Working with other companies will allow you to enter a new market with an idea and product you have.

9. Innovation risk reduction

Any innovation has risks, but if you work with experts, you minimise your risk of failure, especially if you agile and get feedback from your target on a regular basis.

Let’s look at open innovation case studies

GE is one of the leading companies implementing different open innovation models. Their Open Innovation Manifesto focuses on the collaboration between experts and entrepreneurs from everywhere to share ideas and passionately solve problems. Based on their innovation Ecomagination project that aims to address environmental challenges through innovative solutions, GE has spent $17 billion on R&D and received total revenues of $232 billion over the last decade. GE is famous for their open innovation challenges and initiatives on their open innovation page. Through these challenges, GE familiarises itself to future potential talents.

For example the Unimpossible Missions: The University Edition challenge is targeted for students that are creative, have a certain level of technical skills and a clear recruitment motivation. Through the challenge, GE aims to get three smart and creative students to have their internship at GE.

Another example is GE’s project First Build, a co-create collaboration platform, which connects designers, engineers, and thinkers to share ideas with other members who can discuss it together. It is one of the open innovation models that aims to provide a platform that can help both external and internal individuals to collaborate in terms of ideas sharing and manufacturing to reach innovative ideas for products and services.

Open innovation was also adopted by NASA to build a mathematical algorithm that can determine the optimal content of medical kits for NASA’s future manned missions. To reach an innovative software who can solve this problem, NASA collaborated with TopCoder, Harvard Business School, and London Business School. The application of open innovation created a cost-effective and time-effective solution that could not be reached using the internal team alone.

Currently, the company is adopting open innovation models on levels between the team and other entrepreneurs from one side and the company and its consumers from the other. The Coca-Cola Accelerator program aims to help start-ups in eight cities around the world; Sydney, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, Singapore, Istanbul, San Francisco, and Bangalore. Those start-ups aim to think in innovative ways to build a the Happiness Coca-Cola brand.

Another open innovation model presented by Coca-Cola is the Freestyle dispenser machine that allows users from around the world to mix their flavors and suggest a new flavour for Coca-Cola products. The new product records the consumer flavour so they can get it from other Freestyle machines located around the world using the Coca-Cola mobile application. This model of open innovation puts the consumers in the heart of the production process as the company uses the suggested flavours as part the external ideas that can be evaluated and processed as a new product line.

The new LEGO strategy aimed to focus on the consumer by linking both business and creativity. This strategy was known as, LEGO’s Shared Vision. To innovative new LEGO sets that can achieve success in the market, LEGO started the LEGO Ideas, an initiative based on a co-create open innovation model. In this online website, LEGO consumers can design their own LEGO sets either using LEGO bricks or computer 3D applications. Other users start to discuss the idea and vote for it, once the idea reaches a targeted vote, LEGO can consider it as a new product with giving a small part of the revenues to the creator of the set. This model contributes putting the consumer at the heart of the innovation process and help the team to target sets that can achieve success based on the LEGO Ideas votes and comments. This co-create platform can also contribute reducing the risk of innovation as these feedback from the website can give business analysts idea about the viability of the new product.

Another great open innovation step LEGO did was building a partnership between the company and MIT Media Lab to deliver programmable bricks, which was introduced as LEGO Windstorm.

Samsung adopts an open innovation to build their external innovation strengths through Samsung Accelerator program. The initiative aims to build a collaboration between designers, innovators, and thinkers to focus on different solutions. The program provides office spaces, statical capital, and product support to entrepreneurs to help them to build software and services. Samsung does open innovation collaboration, especially with startups.

Interested in what the future will bring? Download our 2024 Technology Trends eBook for free.

The distinctive part of Samsung’s open innovation collaboration is that Samsung divides it into four categories: partnerships, ventures, accelerators, acquisitions. Typically Samsung partnerships aim for new features or integrations within Samsung’s existing products. Ventures can be described as investments in early-stage startups. These investments can bring revenue in case of exits, but also provide access to new technologies that Samsung can learn and benefit from. For example, Samsung has invested in Mobeam, a mobile payment company.

Accelerators provide startups with an innovative and empowering environment to create new things. Samsung offers these startups an initial investment, facilities to work in, as well as some resources from their vast pool. The idea is that the products coming from the internal startups could become a part of Samsung’s product portfolio over time or just serve as learning experiences for the company. Acquisitions aim to bring in startups working on innovations that are at the core of Samsung’s strategic areas of the future. These acquisitions often remain independent units and can even join the Accelerator program.

As an example of Samsung’s collaboration with startups, Samsung has acquired an IoT company called SmartThings to gain an IoT platform without having to spend the money, and more importantly, time on R&D. Samsung sees potential in the IoT industry and views it as a strategically important part of their future business and thus an area where they want to be the forerunner. For Smart Things, it continues to operate as an independent startup fueled with the resources of a big company. With the investment potential and home electronics of Samsung, SmartThings can be developed into an integral part of Samsung products, by creating new IoT possibilities for homes.

By collaborating with startups, Samsung aims to benefit from the variety of innovations that smaller companies have already come up with. These companies often have products that can complement or be integrated into Samsung’s products, creating value for both parties.

The Entrepreneurs in Residence program allows Cisco to invite early-stage entrepreneurs with big ideas for enterprise solutions to join their startup incubation program. This includes access funding from Cisco, potential opportunities to collaborate with their product & engineering teams, co-working space in Silicon Valley and much more.

Wayra by Telefonica has been around for three years, and today, it is present in 11 countries across Latin America and Europe. It seems to be very well organised, and it is very active with more than 300 startups engaged so far.

Hewlett Packard

It is one company in particular that has embraced the ideals of open innovation. It has developed labs where open innovation thrives. It has created an open innovation team that links collaborators that are researchers and entrepreneurs in business, government and academia, to come up with innovative solutions to hard problems with a goal of developing breakthrough technologies.

Peugeot Citro”n

The French car manufacturer has launched a collaborative project to design the cars of the future and aimed at multiplying the company’s partnerships with scientific laboratories all around the world. This project materialised into the creation of a network of OpenLabs. These structures are designed to allow the encounter between the group’s research centres and the external partners. They have a goal of thinking about the future of the automotive industry, particularly according to scientific advances.

P&G’s open innovation with external partners culminates in their Connect+Develop website. Through this platform, P&G communicates their needs to innovators that can access detailed information related to specific needs and submit their ideas to the site. P&G recruits solutions for various problems all the time. Connect+Develop has generated multiple partnerships and produced relevant products.

The idea for Nivea’s B&W deodorant was coined together with Nivea’s users through social media. The way Nivea collaborated with its users throughout the R&D process is very interesting. They pretty much said that okay, we know that our current product can be connected to stains in clothes. Could you share your stories and home remedies so that we can develop a better product? Nivea then partnered up with a company they found via pearl finder and developed, together with the users, the B&W deodorant. This admittance of issues in their product could have been seen as a sign of weakness. However, users were very active in collaborating with Nivea, and the end-product ended up being a great success.

Telegram is a messenger application that works on computers and smartphones very much like WhatsApp and Line. However, what makes Telegram different is how much users can contribute to its content openly. Users with any developing skills can create their stickers and bots on the Telegram platform. Telegram also promotes the best stickers updating an in-app list of the trending stickers.

Open Innovation Books

To learn more about Open Innovation, I recommend you to read these interesting books about open innovation.

1. A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing: Advice from Leading Experts in the Field by Paul Sloane

Open innovation is one of the hottest topics in strategy and management today. The concept of capturing ideas in a hub of collaboration, together with the outsourcing of tasks is a revolution that is rapidly changing our culture. A Guide to Open Innovation explains how to use the power of the internet to build and innovate to introduce a consumer democracy that has never existed before. With corporate case studies and best practice advice, this book is a vital read for anyone who wants to find innovative products and services from outside their organizations, make them work and overcome the practical difficulties that lie in the way.

2. Open Business Models: How To Thrive In The New Innovation Landscape by Henry W Chesbrough

In his book, the author demonstrated that because useful knowledge is no longer concentrated in a few large organisations, business leaders must adopt a new, open innovation model. Using this model, companies look outside their boundaries for ideas.

3. Open Services Innovation: Rethinking Your Business to Grow and Compete in a New Era by Henry Chesbrough

Chesbrough shows how companies in any industry can make the critical shift from product- to service-centric thinking, from closed to open innovation where co-creating with customers enables sustainable business models that drive continuous value creation for customers. He maps out a strategic approach and proven framework that any individual, business unit, company, or industry can put to work for renewed growth and profits. The book includes guidance and compelling examples for small and large companies, services businesses, and emerging economies, as well as a path forward for the innovation industry.

4. Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm by Henry Chesbrough, Wim Vanhaverbeke and Joel West

Authors describe an emergent model of innovation in which firms draw on research and development that may lie outside their boundaries. The book will be key reading for academics, researchers, and graduate students of innovation and technology management.

5. The Open Innovation Revolution: Essentials, Roadblocks, and Leadership Skills by Stefan Lindegaard, Guy Kawasaki

This practical guide reveals that, without the right people to drive innovation processes, your odds of success shrink dramatically. And as open innovation becomes the norm, developing the right people skills networking, communicating with stakeholders, building your brand and the ability to sell ideas is essential for your innovation leaders and intrapreneurs.

6. The Open Innovation Marketplace: Creating Value in the Challenge Driven Enterprise by Alpheus Bingham and Dwayne Spradlin

Authors Alpheus Bingham and Dwayne Spradlin draw on their own experience building InnoCentive, the pioneering global platform for open innovation. Writing for business executives, R&D leaders, and innovation strategists, Bingham and Spradlin demonstrate how to dramatically increase the flow of high-value ideas and innovative solutions both within enterprises and beyond their boundaries.

7. Online Communities and Open Innovation: Governance and Symbolic Value Creation by Linus Dahlander, Lars Frederiksen, Francesco Rullani

This book brings together distinguished scholars from different disciplines: economics, organisation theory, innovation studies and marketing to provide an improved understanding of how technological as well as symbolic value is created and appropriated at the intersection between online communities and firms. Empirical examples are presented from different industries, including software, services and manufacturing. The book offers food for thought for academics and managers to an important phenomenon that challenges many conventional pearls of wisdom for how business can be done.

8. Motivation in Open Innovation: An Exploratory Study on User Innovators by Robert Motzek

Robert Motzek’s study investigates most important factors controlling user innovators’ motivation and will derive suggestions on how manufacturers can address these points to tap the full potential of user innovation for their new product development.

9. Constructing Openness on Open Innovation Platforms: Creation of a Toolbox for designing Openness on Open Innovation Platforms in the Life Science Industry by Emelie Kuusk-Jonsson, Pernilla Book

The work benchmarks a model for designing Open Innovation Platforms and takes a theoretical standpoint in the socio-legal approach, viewing regulatory interventions and constructions of contractual and intellectual property law as the legal framework enabling the creation of openness, which in turn affects the choices made in the business arena.

10. SMEs and Open Innovation: Global Cases and Initiatives by Hakikur Rahman, Isabel Ramos

Open innovation has been widely implemented in small and medium enterprises with the aim of influencing business promotion, value gain, and economic empowerment. However, little is known about the processes used to implement open innovation in SMEs and the associated challenges and benefits. This book unites knowledge on how SMEs can apply open innovation strategies to development by incorporating academic, entrepreneurial, institutional, research, and empirical cases. This book discusses diverse policy , economic, and cultural issues, including numerous opportunities and challenges surrounding open innovation strategies; studies relevant risks and risk management; analyses SMEs evolution pattern on adopting open innovation strategies through available measurable criteria; and assists practitioners in designing action plans to empower SMEs.

11. Open Innovation Essentials for Small and Medium Enterprises: A Guide to Help Entrepreneurs in Adopting the Open Innovation Paradigm in Their Business by Luca Escoffier, Adriano La Vopa, Phyllis Speser , Daniel Stainsky

Small and Medium Enterprises have to approach open innovation differently than large companies. This practical guide to open innovation is expressly for entrepreneurs and managers in SMEs. The authors provide strategies, techniques, and tricks of the trade enabling SMEs to practice open innovation systems profitability and enhance the long-term value of their company.

12. Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating And Profiting from Technology by Henry W Chesbrough

This book represents a powerful synthesis of that work in the form of a new paradigm for managing corporate research and bringing new technologies to market. Chesbrough impressively articulates his ideas and how they connect to each other, weaving several disparate areas of work R&D, corporate venturing, spinoffs, licensing and intellectual property into a single coherent framework.

About Ekaterina Novoseltseva

I am a cmo at Apiumhub . Apiumhub is a software development company based in Barcelona that transformed into a tech hub, mainly offering services of mobile app development, web development & software architecture.

• 5 Reasons Why Modern Data Integration Gives You a Competitive Advantage
• 5 Most Common Database Structures for Small Businesses
• 6 Ways to Reduce IT Costs Through Observability
• How is Big Data Analytics Used in Business? These 5 Use Cases Share Valuable Insights
• How Realistic Are Self-Driving Cars?

Dear visitor, Thank you for visiting Datafloq. If you find our content interesting, please subscribe to our weekly newsletter:

Did you know that you can publish job posts for free on Datafloq? You can start immediately and find the best candidates for free! Click here to get started.

Thanks for visiting Datafloq If you enjoyed our content on emerging technologies, why not subscribe to our weekly newsletter to receive the latest news straight into your mailbox?

• Privacy Overview
• Necessary Cookies
• Marketing cookies

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

This website uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages.

Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website.

Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences!

CASE STUDY: Successful Innovation – How IKEA Innovates

The simplest way to understand business innovation is to see it as a process of focused change. It means putting your creative ideas into effective use, in order to improve your products, services, and your overall business processes. However, oftentimes this practice is easier said than done. Many companies fail at managing this change and sustaining their competitiveness and growth. On the other hand, there are companies that make the most out of innovation. What’s their secret? Well, I think it’s best to explain it through a successful innovation case study.

Why do some companies fail with innovation?

When it comes to innovation, people tend to get overwhelmed by the process of generating great ideas and do not focus enough on their realisation. What they often forget is that ideas are only one small part of business innovation. New ideas can be found anywhere, even at patent offices. Every idea that solves a customer’s pain point is good enough to become a part of the innovation process.

The key element of innovation is the way you implement it in your organisation. You need to focus on putting your ideas into practical processes, creating products and services that customers need. Innovation must be implemented in the very core of the organisation – in its culture, its management processes and the way in which employees are motivated and inspired.

Innovation comes with change. And there’s no way to make positive changes without openness to new business approaches and calculated risks . That being said, keeping an open mind and having the courage to take risks are a must for a truly innovative organisation.

However, very few people are eager to take risks when it comes to business, although we all know that it’s the only way to experience progress. Trying to protect themselves and their companies, they create strict rules and boundaries. The more silos they put their ideas through, the less the chance to fully reap the benefits of innovation.

Companies have to be open to new opportunities and be ready to drop the rules sometimes. This also applies to the funding of innovative ideas. Annual funding cycles rarely match up with the real needs. In fact, you can never know when a great idea may strike. Always be ready to make some changes to the already established budget to fund an idea that can fuel your business growth.

What is more important, be open to take into consideration ideas that come from your employees. Managers should have in mind that the employees are the ones that know the business processes the best. They are the ones that are most likely to come up with better solutions.

Encourage employees to share their ideas clearly and concisely so everyone can understand them and give immediate feedback. Ensuring proper communication within the company, through proper channels, is one of the bases for success in innovation.  

What makes IKEA a successful innovation case study?

Today, you can find a lot of successful innovation case studies, but you can learn best from IKEA. Here’s why. Founded in Sweden in 1943, IKEA is a Swedish company that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture and home accessories. It is known for its modern architectural designs, as well as its attention to continuous product development, operational details, and cost control.

It operates more than 350 stores in around 50 countries which makes it the world’s largest furniture retailer. In the 2014 fiscal year, the company generated a global revenue which exceeded 31 billion USD.

IKEA is undoubtedly one of the world leaders in business innovation . It carries innovation deep within its philosophy, constantly looking for ways to improve or come up with new service propositions. The interest in its customer buying habits helps this company constantly improve its levels of innovation. This is how IKEA managed to stay on top of innovation and continue changing and adapting even after 70 years on the market.

IKEA excels in 3 basic aspects of innovation:

1. communication.

IKEA communicates widely about its innovation strategy, both with employees and customers. It innovates with its core strength in mind – offering something appealing to everyone at a low price, while maintaining good quality. It saves on costs through transportation and assembly with its flat packaging.  

2. Openness to new ideas and approaches to innovation

IKEA partners virtually everyone in developing its innovation strategy – from top management to internal innovation experts. This is how it manages to apply innovation in everything it does, not only in product development. In fact, IKEA is very popular for its innovative ways of promotion and marketing. Popup advertising, popup lounge, storage balconies, and a moving showroom are only some of the many innovations by IKEA.

3. Innovation management

IKEA has a well-defined organisational and governance structure to manage innovation. Although innovation exists within every pore of the organisation, the founder Ingvar Kamprad drives the entire innovation culture. All the changes related to innovation come directly from the top management. Furthermore, IKEA has operative key performance indicators that measure the innovation achievements and milestones. It has a well-established value system to support innovation.

How can you stimulate innovation in your own company?

Start from the core – create a culture of continuous improvement and creativity. Always be open to new ideas from employees, customers, suppliers, partners, or any other source. Then, open opportunities for every idea to be challenged and enhanced through discussion. Seriously consider every idea, no matter where it comes from. You never know which seed will turn into the biggest tree.

However, keep your eye on the most creative and thoughtful people around you. Sometimes, you can get some much needed help from them only by asking what they would do if they had to make the final decision. But, you’ll have to know who these people are so you can turn to them directly for advice.

Don’t be afraid to take risks. They are your chance to find that groundbreaking idea for your business. Just, make sure you are ready for failures, too. If you have never failed, it means you haven’t taken enough risks. Learn from your failures and don’t take them too seriously. Remember to have fun along the way. It will help you increase the potential for creative insight and encourage those around you to keep looking for the right solutions.  

Recent posts

• Frequently Asked “Local SEO” Questions by Paul Shepherd | June 01, 2022
• The Simple Guide to Optimal Health for Entrepreneurs by Paul Shepherd | May 15, 2022
• The Surprising Cause of Headaches, Sore Eyes, and Low-Quality Sleep by Paul Shepherd | May 15, 2022

Connect with me on:

Sales Funnel

Discover Your Life Purpose

Personalised Health

Free Resources

Privacy Policy

Terms and Conditions

Industry and innovation case studies

Labs to riches  is the Society’s flagship industry event that celebrates the Royal Society’s commitment to innovation in science and technology. This event brings together senior leaders from industry, academia, finance and government. Each year has a different theme and includes a keynote talk and a selection of case studies about the chosen theme. 

Case studies

The translation of scientific breakthroughs into commercial success can lead to economic and societal benefits. This process can take a number of routes, sometimes involving the formation of spin-outs and long-term collaborations between universities, and the flow of ideas from industry back into academia can inspire new directions in research.

As part of the Society’s Science and Industry programme , we are collating case studies demonstrating successful translation and innovation in the UK.

Creating an impact booklet (PDF)

Manufacturing stories booklet (PDF)

Creative futures booklet (PDF)

Innovation through collaboration booklet (PDF)

Entrepreneur in Residence case study booklet (PDF)

Turning research into commercially successful products and services is one way science can bring meaningful improvements to people’s lives. This process requires support and long-term planning but is the lifeblood of a thriving economy.

Email updates

We promote excellence in science so that, together, we can benefit humanity and tackle the biggest challenges of our time.

Subscribe to our newsletters to be updated with the latest news on innovation, events, articles and reports.

What subscription are you interested in receiving? (Choose at least one subject)

• DOI: 10.1002/bse.3848
• Corpus ID: 270602091

How do companies adopt open innovation to enable circular economy? Insights from a qualitative meta‐analysis of case studies

• Armando Calabrese , Roberta Costa , +2 authors Luigi Tiburzi
• Published in Business Strategy and the… 18 June 2024
• Environmental Science, Business

136 References

Trust (in)congruence, open innovation, and circular economy performance: polynomial regression and response surface analyses., fostering circular economy through open innovation: insights from multiple case study, the pathway towards circular economy: measuring circular advantage of eco‐innovations, using artificial intelligence to tackle food waste and enhance the circular economy: maximising resource efficiency and minimising environmental impact: a review, towards implementation of circular building components: a longitudinal study on the stakeholder choices in the development of 8 circular building components, determinants of circular business model adoption—a systematic literature review, towards a dynamic value network perspective of sustainable business models: the example of recup, merging two revolutions: a human-artificial intelligence method to study how sustainability and industry 4.0 are intertwined, open strategy and dynamic capabilities: a framework for circular economy business models research, developing dynamic capabilities for the circular economy in the textile and clothing industry in italy: a natural‐resource‐based view, related papers.

Showing 1 through 3 of 0 Related Papers

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Int J Health Policy Manag
• PMC10425658

Employee-Driven Innovation in Health Organizations: Insights From a Scoping Review

Stephanie b.m. cadeddu.

1 Health Hub: Politics, Organizations, and Law (H-POD), University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada

2 University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre (CRCHUM), Montreal, QC, Canada

Labante Outcha Dare

3 School of Public Health, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada

Jean-Louis Denis

4 Department of Health Management, Evaluation and Policy, School of Public Health, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada

Associated Data

Background: Employee-driven innovation (EDI) occurs when frontline actors in health organizations use their firsthand experience to spur new ideas to transform care. Despite its increasing prevalence in health organizations, the organizational conditions under which EDI is operationalized have received little scholarly attention.

Methods: This scoping review identifies gaps and assembles existing knowledge on four questions: What is EDI in health organizations and which frontline actors are involved? What are the characteristics of the EDI process? What contextual factors enable or impede EDI? And what benefits does EDI bring to health organizations? We searched seven databases with keywords related to EDI in health organizations. After screening 1580 studies by title and abstract, we undertook full-text review of 453 articles, retaining 60 for analysis. We performed a descriptive and an inductive thematic analysis guided by the four questions.

Results: Findings reveal an heterogeneous literature. Most articles are descriptive (n = 41). Few studies are conceptual and empirical (n = 15) and four are conference papers. EDI was often described as a participatory, learning innovation process involving frontline clinical and non-clinical staff and managers. Majority EDI were top-down, often driven by the organization’s focus on participatory improvement and innovation and research-based initiatives. Five categories of methods is used in top-down EDI, two thirds of which includes a learning, a team and/or a digital component. Hybrid EDI often involves a team-based component. Bottom-up EDI emerged spontaneously from the work of frontline actors. Enablers, barriers, and benefits of EDI are seen at macro, organizational, team and individual levels; some benefits spread to other health organizations and health systems.

Conclusion: This scoping review provides a comprehensive understanding of the organizational conditions under which EDI is operationalized. It offers insights for researchers, health organizations, and policy-makers about how and why frontline actors’ involvement is crucial for the transformation of care.

Innovation in healthcare refers to “those changes that help healthcare practitioners focus on the patient by helping healthcare professionals work smarter, faster, better and more cost effectively.” 1 The concept of employee-driven innovation (EDI) follows the same tenets, yet leverages the role of “employees close to where services are delivered,” 2 creates a context and deploys mechanisms in health organizations that can be described as “frontline staff-led” 3 and “open and collaborative.” 4 While entrepreneurial doctors have historically driven clinical and technological innovations, 5 EDI concentrates on the role of a broader set of health professionals, health workers and managers of health organizations that deliver care in shaping health innovations. These innovators are often referred to as “front-line innovators,” 6 “healthcare insiders” 7 or “street-level bureaucrats.” 8 They play a crucial role in the healthcare sector 9 and their involvement in innovation processes of health organizations can positively impact the quality of healthcare. 10 , 11

Innovations in public and private healthcare sectors are traditionally driven and developed by “upper organizational levels,” 12 are characterized as top-down and demanding, 2 , 13 and are often privileged over other types of innovation. 14 Top-down processes reflect “a compliancy-driven approach” to innovation, 15 that may be associated with “the hierarchical nature” of healthcare. 16 Alternate approaches to innovation are recognized as having an important role to play in leveraging all sources of knowledge within an organization. 17 For this reason, EDI is encouraged by national and local initiatives to involve frontline actors in healthcare improvement. Examples are the Robert Foundation programme ‘Transforming Care at the Bedside,’ 18 Kaiser Permanente’s Garfield Innovation Center, 19 the Boston Children’s Hospital, 20 and the Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montreal’s (CHUM’s) organizational and cultural transformation to stimulate bottom-up innovation.

These endeavors are justified by the many advantages associated with the development of EDI in health organizations. Notably, EDI can address resource constraints in health organizations by allowing frontline workers to engage in processes of “appropriation and repurposing” the resources at hand. 21 The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted frontline workers to improvise and innovate, for instance, on pedagogy and post-mortem protocols, which enabled greater health system responsiveness. 8 , 22 EDI also takes shape in small scale interventions, such as competitions, for rapid discovery and testing of new ideas by frontline employees. 4 , 23 As well, support for EDI can encourage frontline actors to become leaders in transforming care, 24 , 25 addressing structural inequalities in health organizations. 7 Subsequently, EDI is increasingly relevant in the context of health systems striving to optimize patient care, professional well-being and health system performance while reducing costs (ie, objectives that refer to the Quadruple Aim framework 26 ). More recently, the “Quintuple Aim” promotes the idea of health equity. 27 This evolution reveals the constant challenge facing health system authorities and micro-system actors to review, adapt and innovate, and emphasizes the importance of EDI in this endeavour.

There are a number of challenges to creating this dynamic of innovation within organizations to bring about the benefits of EDI. 28 For example, if rapid discovery competitions lack organizational support, EDI stemming from them tends to result in “short-lived project ideation but no sustainable solutions.” 29 Local innovations that provide quick fixes without impacting organizational processes 30 can remain poorly documented and leave the precise value of EDI unclear. EDI stemming from spontaneous and uncoordinated employees’ ideas can be unpredictable, which can undermine the order of the system in place. 31 Implementing and sustaining innovation in healthcare also remains difficult 32 , 33 and the health sector is often considered as a change-resistant environment. 34 Consequently, when complex organizations like health organizations commit to a new dynamic of innovation, a main challenge is to bring about organizational and institutional change, 35 and create “…new structures within a given organization[…].” 6

Questions remain regarding how to organize and enable EDI within organizations. 31 There are, as yet, few studies to guide EDI practices and the creation of organizational conditions in which EDI can be operationalized. This scoping review thus seeks to assemble available evidence to inform these efforts in the context of healthcare. An exploratory scan of bottom-up innovation and particularly EDI literature revealed diverse sectors where these concepts have been studied, including the military, 36 public, and private service organizations 37 and the health sector. 5 Studies looking at the structural, organizational, and individual determinants of bottom-up approach to innovation including EDI are rare (eg, 37 , 38 ). Terms to describe EDI are also diverse, such as “service encounter-based innovation,” 37 “frontline innovation” 39 or “employee involvement in … innovation.” 11

This lack of consensus on terms, definitions and models in the healthcare context motivated this scoping review. It follows a systematic approach to provide definitional and conceptual clarity to EDI, and broadly map the conditions within which EDI is deployed in health organizations. The exercise also hopes to clarify why it is important for health organizations to support EDI. Scoping reviews are suitable for looking at emerging innovation fields. 40 This one takes an innovation management perspective, and seeks to answer four questions: (1) What is the definition of EDI and who is involved? (Definition level); (2) What are the characteristics (sources, drivers and methods) of the EDI process (from idea generation to development)? (Process level); (3) What are the contextual enablers of and barriers to EDI? (Contextual factor level); and (4) How does EDI contribute to health organizations and under what circumstances is it beneficial for health systems? (Intra and extra-organizational benefits level). Finally, the review highlights key gaps in the field. 41

This scoping review focuses on the research questions mentioned above and follows the four steps proposed by the Johanna Briggs Institute 42 : (1) Search strategy; (2) Screening and selection of sources of evidence; (3) Data extraction; and (4) Data analysis.

Search Strategy

The research team began by searching and reviewing some 15 articles to grasp the vocabulary commonly used to refer to bottom-up innovation and EDI. Several trial searches were then undertaken to identify, refine and reduce keywords used in various databases. For example, bottom-up innovation was not a popular term, so keywords stemming from the literature on frontline innovation, employee-driven innovation and employee participation were added. The team had the assistance of a librarian specialized in public health, who advised on word iterations and conceptual planning, validated the final set of keywords and verified the resulting list of articles.

Several combinations of keywords were developed, stemming from three key concepts: bottom-up, innovation and health organization (for more details, see Supplementary file 1 , Table S1). 11 , 16 , 43 After testing the keywords in several databases, the final search was undertaken in seven multidisciplinary databases: Proquest Central, EMBASE, Scopus, Business source complete and Academic Search Complete (EbscoHost), Medline and Web of Science (see an example of research equations in Supplementary file 1 , Table S2). As no timeframe was indicated when searching for the articles in these databases, studies published from the 1980s to 2019 were included. Article search and selection was accomplished in December 2019.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

Inclusion and exclusion criteria for this scoping review are shown in Table 1 . Records included all types of peer-reviewed literature and grey literature. Although various sorts of knowledge could enrich the answer to the research questions, the use of peer-reviewed publications acted as a proxy for science integrity, and ensured that evidence reported by studies were suitable for publication. Languages were limited to English and French, but there were no restriction regarding studies’ country of focus. Other key inclusion and exclusion criteria were based on the three concepts mentioned above: bottom-up, innovation and health organization; they are described below.

The concept of ‘bottom-up’ considers two main characteristics: (1) the source of the innovation – frontline actors whose everyday responsibilities are outside innovation, sometimes in collaboration with other stakeholders; and (2) the involvement of frontline actors in the appropriation of projects at the start of the innovation process – at least in idea generation and development activities. This is different from being involved temporarily by participating in one or a few stages of a process.

The concept of ‘innovation’ can be considered as both a process and an outcome. As a process, innovation refer to the ideation, design or development (production) of a new idea, eventually resulting in the “adoption, assimilation, and exploitation” 44 of the idea. The resulting innovation can consist of an organizational, technological, social, product/service, practice, system or process innovation. Particular to health innovation, innovation outcomes can be “new or improved health policies, systems, products and technologies, and services and delivery methods that improve people’s health and wellbeing.” 45 An innovation can thus be considered as an improvement to healthcare professionals’ practices and the organizational environment in which they evolve. Disruptive and non-disruptive innovations as well as incremental and radical innovation are considered. Papers addressing concepts that relate to innovation, such as change management, quality improvement and leadership agency, were excluded when health organizations did not use these concepts to generate and develop innovation. Studies were excluded, for instance, when quality improvement methods served as a tool to collecting ideas from employees without involving them further in the process nor without mentioning notable changes or innovation.

Finally, ‘health organization’ refers to healthcare providers, that are organizations that deliver care, such as hospitals, clinics, mental healthcare facilities, pediatric centres and more, involving physicians, clinicians, nurses, patients and other stakeholders. Studies looking at private organizations such as pharmaceutical companies were excluded. The quality of the extracted studies was not explicitly assessed according to the criteria of the scoping review approach.

Screening and Selecting Sources of Evidence

The Covidence software was particularly helpful in screening and selecting articles based on the abovementioned criteria. Duplicates were automatically eliminated. Two of the three authors undertook screening and selection, following a rigorous two-step process informed by PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews). 46

The first step involved screening articles based on their title and abstract. Two trial runs were undertaken. In the first, 50 articles retrieved from Business Source Complete were screened to ensure that the two reviewers came to a consensus with the third researcher on which articles to select, thereby refining their understanding of the literature as well as the inclusion and exclusion criteria. This is a key step to reinforcing the rigor of a scoping review. 47 Once consensus was achieved between the three reviewers on that sample, another sample of 100 articles retrieved from the Scopus database was screened to see whether inter-reviewer differences diminished, which was the case. This allowed the two reviewers to proceed with screening the titles and abstracts of the remaining articles. Full-text paper was retrieved if the abstract did not contain enough details to decide whether to include it. A total of 453 articles were retained.

The second step involved screening the full text articles retained in the previous step. The three authors read 10 randomly selected articles to achieve consensus on what articles should be included in the scoping review. Once agreement was reached, two reviewers then screened the 453 full-text articles, based on the previously mentioned inclusion and exclusion criteria, along with a further exclusion criterion: articles that mentioned EDI but did not provide information related to any of the scoping review’s four research questions. A total of 58 articles were retained at this stage. Two articles identified in references of other papers were added, for a total of 60 articles.

Data Extraction

A data chart was developed to ensure that researchers extracted similar information from the 60 studies around the four research questions. An Excel file was created to record information pertaining to three broad domains: (1) the article citation (authors, title, year), methodology, objectives, country and health organization targeted (when applicable) and nature of the article categorized as either of the following three categories: descriptive ( a . without evaluation of the intervention; b . with poor evaluation [eg, measures only satisfaction]; c . with strong evaluation [eg, using quantitative or qualitative methods]), analytical ( a . theoretical or b . theoretical and empirical) and conference paper; (2) the EDI topic majorly addressed in the article categorized as one or more of the four research questions; and (3) quotes pertaining to the four research questions. This data chart was modified in research team meetings several times throughout the extraction process to achieve consensus on the extracted data.

Thematic Data Analysis

The 60 full text papers were analyzed based on the data chart described above, using inductive thematic analysis. The four research questions were used to create four level of analysis: (1) definition of EDI in health organizations and the type of frontline actors involved, (2) the characteristics of the EDI process, (3) contextual factors such as the system, organizational, or individual enablers and barriers that underpin the emergence and development of EDI, and (4) EDI benefits. This study did not inventory EDI outcomes, but rather sought to understand how the body of research defines EDI and maps EDI conditions of success in health organizations. Based on an initial reading of the extracted studies, three common elements of the EDI process were identified: the source of the EDI process (ie, top-down, hybrid or bottom-up), 48 the driver behind the initiation of the EDI and the key methods to operate the EDI process (from idea generation to development). We did not focus on each method used for each stage of the process, such as when brainstorming for idea generation was cited. Also, a study could report more than one method.

Scoping Review

Figure 1 exhibits the PRISMA-ScR screening and selection process. We extracted 2397 articles from which 817 duplicates were removed. The title and abstract of 1580 articles (identified using the search strategy described above) were screened, and 1127 were excluded as not relevant, leaving 453 articles eligible for full-text screening. Of these, 395 were excluded for the following reasons: 169 were not relevant, 149 did not primarily address EDI, 45 did not fit into one of the included categories of articles (eg, conference abstracts, non peer-reviewed articles), the full text was unavailable for 16, 14 were duplicates, and two were in a language other than English or French. Snowballing led to the addition of two articles, leading to a total of 60 articles.

PRISMA-ScR Screening and Selection Process. Abbreviation: PRISMA-ScR, Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews.

Of the 60 articles, 41 were descriptive, 15 were analytical, and four were conference papers (see Supplementary file 2 – Table S3, Table S4, and Table S5 3 , 11 , 12 , 15 , 16 , 20 , 24 , 25 , 35 , 39 , 43 , 49 - 97 for an overview of the extracted literature).Descriptive articles referred to non-theoretical empirical case studies published in peer-reviewed journals. The descriptive studies included no evaluation of the EDI initiative (n = 21), while others included evaluation that ranged from poor (n = 8) to strong (n = 12). Descriptive studies focused mainly on the EDI process (n = 31), with some articles also exploring enablers (n = 14) and benefits (n = 7). Analytical articles published in peer-reviewed journals were either strictly conceptual (n = 2) or both conceptual and empirical (n = 13), relying on primary research using qualitative, quantitative or mixed methodologies. Analytical studies focused mainly on enablers of EDI (n = 11); only five looked into the EDI process and three explored EDI benefits. Finally, conference papers only targeted the EDI process (n = 3) and enablers (n = 2).

Of these 60 articles, the journal in which the most studies were published was Nursing Administration Quarterly (n = 4), followed by Harvard Business Review (n = 3), Journal of Advanced Nursing (n = 3), Nursing Management (n = 2), the Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety (n = 2), European Journal of Innovation Management (n = 2), Journal of Nursing Management (n = 2) and Journal of Nursing Administration (n = 2). However, these journals were not representative of all fields in which studies were published, as we found 36 different journals that were mostly highly specialized or professionals. Of these, nursing and healthcare topics were the most represented, followed by innovation management and information system fields.

The predominant jurisdictions where studies were conducted were the United States (n = 26), distantly followed by Canada (n = 4), the UK (n = 4), Norway (n = 4), Australia (n = 3), Netherlands (n = 2), Italy (n = 2), Israel (n = 2) and Finland (n = 2). Only three studies related to middle-income countries, including Brazil, 82 Pakistan, 60 and Thailand 49 and no studies focused on low-income countries. Three studies were theoretical or did not relate to a specific jurisdiction (ie, 53 , 58 , 87 ). Overall, the health organizations studied were most often hospitals and medical centers (n = 46), including six academic health centres, distantly followed by care homes (n = 4) and clinics (n = 3). More than half of the studies were published in 2015 or after.

Thematic Analysis

Few of the studies were analytical, however information was extracted to appreciate the scope of EDI definitions, processes, enablers/barriers and benefits discussed by the broader literature. It is important to remember that the prominence of each of these can fluctuate from one context to another and thus results are not generalizable to all health organizations, units, or medical sectors.

Definitions of Employee-Driven Innovation

To answer the first research question, two aspects were isolated: definitions linked to EDI and frontline actors involved in EDI. While 42 articles offered specific boundaries to the concept, they did not offer a formal definition of EDI. As no two definitions of EDI were the same, we assembled the variety of definitions into three dimensions, based on an inductive analysis: EDI as a participatory innovation process, EDI as a learning process, and EDI as an innovation outcome. Examples in each of these dimensions are presented in Table 2 . Although the extracted definitions sometimes fell into several categories, classifying dimensions highlight differences between their key focus.

Note : n.a. stands for not available.

To involve employees in the innovation process, the first dimension designates a participatory component in the identification of problems, the generation of new solutions, followed by their development and implementation in frontline actors’ work context (eg, 25 , 62 , 93 ). Studies explicitly reported the importance of collaborating with either a minority, or some or all employees in innovation efforts. In the dimension of EDI as a learning process, definitions placed a strong emphasis on empowering frontline workers to innovate through learning, discovering, and testing new ideas (eg, 20 , 78 ). EDI can be useful to frontline actors as they can obtain mentoring as well as leverage their innovative capacities or “innovative work behavior” (eg, 49 , 60 ). Finally, the dimension of EDI as an innovation outcome focused on the product, service, process, practice or organizational innovation resulting from frontline actors’ ideation and innovation development. These were variously called “bottom-up solutions by frontline providers,” 16 “solutions at the point of care” 67 or “frontline staff-led improvement efforts.” 3 Examples of EDI outcomes include new “policy on siblings visiting the labour ward after a delivery,” 51 the redesign of a nursing-staff schedule, 65 the development of pain boards, 52 or process redesign around chemotherapy delivery. 89

In addition to these three definitional dimensions, the analysis extracted details on the type of actors involved in EDI. In all studies, it was clear that EDI stemmed from a single employee or the joint efforts of two or more employees or collaborators who generated, developed and implemented new ideas. Three key findings emerged regarding frontline actors involved in EDI in health organizations.

First, the majority of studies reported both clinical and non-clinical staff members; clinical staff are direct care staff, whereas non-clinical staff refer to actors involved in a patient’s trajectory of care who are not involved in clinical work. The most frequently reported frontline staff were nurses, physicians, administrators, caregivers and unit clerks. Other staff also involve in EDI include “hospital employees from the IT department and the Kitchen section to different departments within Medicine, Surgery and Health-care” 94 as well as “cleaning ladies.” 70

Secondly, frontline actors are not only those providing patient care; managers of frontline staff, along with other middle managers also figure in groups involved in EDI (eg, “[n]urse executives and bedside nurses” 52 ). According to Høyrup, 98 the focus of EDI is on ordinary employees at all organisational levels who are not tasked with innovation activities but who yet have valuable contributions to make. While frontline actors drove innovation projects, management also initiated projects that enabled frontline employees to innovate. 57 , 67 , 79 Shiparski and Authier 87 define frontline managers in healthcare as “the keepers of culture, the gateway to evoking a grassroots intelligence network, and they hold a pivotal role in advancing innovation at the point of care.”

Finally, the groups involved in EDI also often include other stakeholders such as patients and family caregivers, university staff, senior hospital management, university students and external stakeholders such as members of trade unions (eg, 79 , 80 , 90 ). The choice of which staff and stakeholders to involve in EDI depends on the area of improvement and innovation an organization hopes to pursue.

Characteristics of the Employee-Driven Innovation Process

Regarding the second research question, in the 43 studies that described the EDI process, three characteristics were identified: sources and drivers of the initiative, and key methods used. Studies that were informative but not specifically focused on the EDI process were included, however studies that only briefly described the process were not.

Sources and Drivers of Employee-Driven Innovation

The source ofEDI was most often top-down (n = 32 studies), following a management decision to undertake an initiative. Top-down EDI’s drivers included the organization’s desire to involve employees and use their knowledge to foster improvement and innovation (n = 16) (eg, 50 , 88 ). For example, Eriksen and Tollestrup 94 reported a Danish hospital’s implementation of an “Employee-Driven Innovation in the Health Care sector” initiative. Another driver was research-based initiatives (n = 10) (eg, 35 , 51 ). These were most often launched by upper management or outside researchers; the latter were considered top-down as we assumed they required the approval of senior management (and ethics committee). Other top-down EDI were initiated to address challenges and ultimately improve care (n = 6). For example, Rotenstein 20 described how “increasing financial pressures, fluctuating payment models, and an increasing prevalence of clinician burnout” (p. 1) led to the development of “an internal investment program […] to improve care and reduce cost” (p. 3).

Hybrid EDI (n = 7) were characterized by bottom-up initiatives launched by frontline actors (managers, staff, researchers), that were formalized by upper management early in the innovation process (eg, 15 , 86 ). All studies except one reported that employees initiated the process to address a specific problem and improve care (n = 6). At the Montreal Children’s Hospital, for instance, three physicians observed that the lack of communication between patients and carers could be improved with a patient safety campaign. To move ahead, they sought the “green light by the executive of the hospital.” 68 One study was driven by a researcher employed at the health organization. 82

When EDI was bottom-up (n = 4), initiatives emerged from the work of frontline actors in an unstructured or spontaneous way to improve a situation. In this context, the organization did not plan or allocate resources for EDI. For example, two information technology employees worked “under the radar” 96 to enact an infrastructural innovation for patient communication, which spread across the organization over the next 10 years. Similarly, Knoff, 25 a telephone triage nurse in a pediatric hospital, understood that parents managed their children’s care differently at the hospital than at home. She thus developed a tool to help parents time their child’s pain medication, showed it to colleagues, and only later approaching the hospital pain committee. Her innovation was implemented 6 years later in the hospital.

Methods of Employee-Driven Innovation

Several methods to operationalize the EDI process were used and more than half the studies mentioned learning, team and digital components (see Supplementary file 3 , Table S6, Table S7, and Table S8). 3 , 15 , 20 , 24 , 25 , 35 , 43 , 50 , 51 , 55 , 59 , 61 , 63 - 65 , 68 - 73 , 75 , 77 , 78 - 83 , 85 , 86 , 88 - 97

Five categories of method were reported when the source of EDI was top-down . Studies mentionned participatory approaches (n = 10), related to social sciences methods such as focus group, 92 or a “deliberative approach” offering “a space of debate.” 35 Most EDI driven by research employed a participatory approach. Other studies mentioned design tools (n = 8) such as user-centered collaborative design 63 or design-thinking (eg, 65 , 71 ). Studies also described use of competition-based approaches (n = 7), such as innovation tournaments (eg, 43 ) and grant-funded initiatives (eg, 20 ) to encourage staff to develop and submit ideas. This method entails financial and intellectual support to materialize employees’ innovation proposals once ideas are selected. Mentioned less often were quality improvement methods (n = 5) (eg, 3 , 72 , 93 ) such as rapid-cycle improvement tools (eg, Plan Do Act Study cycle) and Knowledge Translation Toolkits, as well as techniques such as social entrepreneurship (n = 1) 24 and change management (n = 1). 69

Three components structured methods used in top-down initiatives. There was a learning-based component (n = 10), which integrated an ‘innovating while learning’ element in the EDI process (eg, 77 , 66 , 94 ). All methods, except the competition-based method included a learning component. For example, a children’s hospital in the United States launched two pilot “Innovation Units” to train both managers and frontline staff to lead and develop “local improvement portfolios” using quality improvement tools. 72 Also, all five categories of methods included a team-based component (n = 7) to tap into the collective intelligence of employees. While many methods (eg, participatory approach, design tools) naturally involved forming groups, these studies reported deliberate establishment of a group dedicated to innovation efforts. For example, a “frontline innovation group” 66 which “provided a forum to enhance empowerment … while seeking solutions to operational failures” (p. 75). Finally, a digital component was mentioned (n = 6) to promote the collection, brainstorming and visibility of employees’ ideas (eg, 51 , 75 ). For instance, a touchscreen computer was developed as “a platform for workers’ findings, initiatives, ideas and solution proposals to develop services” 97 or provide a platform for discussion (eg, 51 ).

For hybrid EDI processes , only participatory (n = 2) (eg, 61 , 82 ) and quality improvement methods (n = 1) ( eg, 64 ) were reported. Studies unrelated to methods mentioned learning-based (n = 1) (eg, 68 ) and team-based components (n = 5) along with an inductive process, such as the creation of a “Nursing Practice Committee as a vehicle for staff involvement in planning and implementing change.” 73 Looking at bottom-up EDI , one descriptive study 78 recommended a team-based component along with the use of quality improvement tools to increase clinical staff analytical and change capacities. Two studies (ie, 55 , 96 ) described more experimental innovation processes; Knoff 25 associated the experience with social innovation theory.

Only a few studies reported the duration of EDI initiatives (from idea generation to implementation); top-down EDI processes were often completed between six months or less and two years; hybrid processes took between 1 to 3 years, and bottom-up EDI after 6 years.

Contextual Enablers and Barriers of EDI

Concerning the third research question, enablers of and barriers to EDI in health organizations were found at three levels: macro, organizational and individual. No particular recipe for enabling EDI within health organizations emerged. Also, enabling and hindering factors were generally intertwined, affecting each other before, during and after the innovation process. As an example, promoting collaboration between staff and management (organizational level) enabled individuals to develop trust in their organization (individual level). Across the three levels, 15 enablers were extracted from 58 studies, while 11 barriers were identified in 23 studies.

Macro-level enablers and barriers refer to the various actors and forces that prompt health systems, health organizations and individuals to innovate. Four macro-level enablers were identified. Health system programs (n = 5) sought to drive EDI at local or broader level. Four studies in this category were evaluations of the Transforming Care At the Bedside program (eg, 52 , 67 ), while one focused on Unit-Based Training. 79 Other macro-level enablers included government initiatives (n = 2) such as South Australia’s “State policy initiative on improving care of older people,” 93 educational institution’s innovation curriculum (n = 1) and private and government funding (n = 1). Only one macro-level barrier was identified: government’s changing commitment to valued-based reimbursement had a direct influence on the financial priorities of a health organization’s incubator, limiting the scope of its innovative initiatives. 20

Organizational enablers and barriers reflect health organizations’ support for or (unintentional) obstruction of innovation initiated by frontline actors. Six organizational enablers were identified: the availability of organizational resources (n = 24), organizational culture supporting frontline workers’ creativity, entrepreneurial thinking and willingness to improve their workplace (n = 24) and management support (n = 22). For instance, providing frontline actors with resources could require the allocation of human resources (eg, 88 , 93 ), funding (eg, 63 , 89 ) or time for innovation (eg, 72 ), or investing in training of frontline actors (eg, 81 , 87 ). Also, systems that facilitate and stimulate EDI were a noteworthy organizational enabler, found in 18 studies. Systems to support EDI involved eliminating barriers to EDI, such as bureaucracy, hierarchy or fear of risk-taking (eg, 25 , 87 ); creating a dedicated department for EDI such as an innovation laboratory or incubator (eg, 20 , 63 ); or senior management partnering with a design company to initiate EDI (eg, 70 , 97 ). Another organizational enabler referred to mutuality between employer and employee values, goals and collaboration (n = 9) (eg, 12 , 97 ). Lahtinen et al 97 revealed that frontline actors were more willing to be involved when the EDI process was “…based on meaningful and practical frames which matter to healthcare professionals.”

Organizational barriers were mainly the absence of enablers, such as a lack of resources (n = 10), mutuality (n = 3), managerial support (n = 2) and EDI support system (n = 1). Mutuality was lacking when there was disharmony between organizational, employees and managerial goals and values, and poor responsiveness to employee frustrations (eg, 11 , 49 ). Other organizational barriers were a lack of multi-disciplinary teams (n = 2) and ill-adapted incentives for EDI iniatives (n = 2) (eg, 43 , 50 ).

Individual enablers and barriers represent frontline workers’ personalities, capacities, values and attitudes, which influence their approach to innovation. Five categories of individual enabler were identified. The most mentioned (50% of the individual enablers) related to a proactive personality (n = 15), reflecting an individuals’ capacity to recognize problems and drive EDI efforts (eg, 39 , 55 ). This personality trait is also described as self-leadership (eg, 54 , 56 ), innovation champion (eg, 12 , 57 ), and commitment to EDI projects (eg, 52 ). Innovation champions can be informal and self-nominated, implying that they “initiat[e] and implement […] innovation beyond the direct, routine treatment of the patients he or she is responsible for.” 12 While their position does not specify innovation, they initiate improvements in their environment without waiting for the organizations’ support. Four other individual enablers of EDI were a favorable work context (n = 5) (eg, 60 ), such as support from co-workers and management and boundary integration in their work environnement 60 ; frontline actors’ feeling of entitlement (eg, gender, empowerment) to being involved in innovative activities (n = 4) (eg, 50 ), their capacities for innovation (n = 4) (eg, 15 ) and willingness to share knowledge among colleagues (n = 2) (eg, 49 ).

The four individual-level barriers identified show that staff can become reluctant (n = 12) to participate in EDI initiatives. They may lack confidence in their own leadership, be afraid of taking risks or of a lack of buy-in from the organization (eg, 20 , 89 ). The attitudes of managers can impact staff participation in new EDI projects (eg, 71 , 80 ), leaving them feeling abandoned early in the innovation process. 71 Other barriers were a lack of information for staff on EDI projects (n = 3) (eg, 89 ), and their feeling of doing extra-work (n = 3) (eg, 68 ).

Benefits of Employee-Driven Innovation

The final research question concerned benefits resulting from EDI initiatives. These were classified according to similarities in the level at which benefits appeared.

Intra-organizational benefits are positive proximal consequences of an intervention and can occur at three levels: organizational, team and individual. At organizational level , we observed six types of benefits. Changes in institutional and organizational practices (n = 19) were the most mentioned, such as creation of new care spaces, organisational structures, environments, objects, ways of doing things (eg, methodology) and their dissemination (eg, 35 , 63 , 69 , 75 ). This type of benefit decreased resistance to change (eg, 73 ) and to the integration of EDI into hospital practices as a standard (eg, 25 ). Second, the effiency, productivity and improvement of practice (n = 11) involved interventions that changed the staff work habits (eg, 50 , 55 ). A third benefit (n = 11) was improved quality and safety of care. Additionally, EDI brought opportunities for future innovation in the organization (n = 9) (eg, 65 ). The least mentioned benefits were cost savings (n = 4) (eg, 76 ) and the sustainability of an innovation over time (n = 4) (eg, 75 ).

Team level benefits refer to the advantages an intervention offers to a group. At this level , we observed that EDI fostered closer collaboration (n = 11), increasing interprofessional collaboration across departments (eg, 70 ), and collaboration between project teams and other programs to gain experience that they could apply to future improvements (eg, 75 ). It could also mean involving staff from other health disciplines and managers in solving problems (eg, 15 ) by sharing better ways of conducting frontline activities. 81 A second team-level benefit was a team approach to problem solving (n = 2), which stimulated discussion, innovation and changed the way employees saw and solved problems by creating a sense of common purpose (eg, 39 , 85 ).

Finally, individual level benefits to frontline staff and patients were grouped into three categories: staff improvement including capacity building, leadership, confidence, self-esteem and meaning creation (n = 18); and staff satisfaction (n = 6) and patient satisfaction and trust (n = 6). For example, employees had a greater sense of belonging to the organization, and more specifically the EDI intervention, and of being appreciated for their ideas and participation (eg, 43 ). Moreover, as frontline employees were involved in the experimentation and implementation of changes in their units, there was an increase in their vitality, satisfaction (eg, 3 ) and empowerment (eg, 39 ). Similarly, several studies showed that patient satisfaction and confidence improved after EDI interventions (eg, 58 , 84 ).

While our research questions concerned health organizations, nine studies mentioned broader benefits such as the transferability of the innovation project (n = 6) and the diffusion of innovation and creation of further opportunities for innovation in the health system (n = 5). For example, nurses redesigned the procedure for shift changes, an innovation that spread to several departments and was implemented across the Kaiser system. 65 Similarly, a new hospital-patient communication platform was then rolled out to other departments and eventually other hospitals in Norway. 55 , 96

Discussion: The Conditions of EDI in Health Organizations

Figure 2 proposes a map of the conditions for EDI in health organizations, that is the processes, enablers, barriers, and benefits of EDI found in the literature. This map is a non-normative guide, representing a simplified version of the heterogenous, dynamic and complex reality of innovation management practices. 99

Synthesis of Employee-Driven Innovation Conditions in Health Organizations. Abbreviation: EDI, employee-driven innovation.

This section summarizes findings on the four research questions, and discusses research gaps and opportunities. Starting with the first research question on EDI definition, organisations have different views of EDI and who should be involved. EDI in health organizations emerged as a participatory and learning innovation process leading to innovation outcomes developed by frontline clinical and non-clinical staff and managers. This is similar to EDI in non-healthcare contexts, as EDI “can emerge from “ordinary” employees, from shop-floor workers and professionals to middle managers across the boundaries of existing departments and professions.” 31 Additionnally, findings show that EDI in health organizations include diverse stakeholders in patient care trajectories.

To respond to the second research question on the EDI process’ characteristics, three sources of EDI emerged and aligned with the broader literature 48 : a bottom-up process, a mix of top-down and bottom-up processes, and a top-down process. The findings that most EDI were initated top-down suggest that upper management and scholars increasingly recognize the significance of frontline actors in the transformation of care. Hybrid and bottom-up EDI processes were often initiated by frontline staff and managers experiencing problems. In top-down EDI processes, employees responded to leadership expectations and demands, rather than issues they experienced directly in their workplace.

When organizations adopted top-down approaches to encourage bottom-up innovation, participatory, design-led, competition, and quality improvement methods aimed to increase employee adherence and participation, and organize the development and implementation of ideas. Learning-based components gave employees the autonomy to apply what they learned from the EDI initiative to their everyday job and thus enhanced employee capabilities and willingness to address issues they faced. 98 Methods that enhance employee innovative capacity can sustain EDI efforts in the long run. 49 The prevalence of team-based components illustrated the collective nature of EDI. Given the plurality of leadership in innovation teams, and the dynamics of collaboration (eg, designation of formal and informal team leaders), their impact on the effectiveness of team-based EDI methods could be however better understood. 100 Teglborg-Lefèvre 101 suggested exploring the multiple strategic intentions and modes of regulation of social relations employed by organizations to support and sustain EDI practices. Finally, few studies on top-down EDI concerned technologies to stimulate or enable EDI emergence and development, 102 despite the growing presence of digital health and artificial intelligence in health organizations.

Bottom-up EDI methods involved what ressembles ‘bricolage,’ a creative technique leveraging ongoing interactions with users as well as resources at hand to address particular needs in the workplace. Organizations and frontline actors might benefit from combining bricolage with management-driven (top-down) or management-mediated (hybrid) processes. 103 Employees who directly experience situations that need to be improved could benefit from managers’ knowledge and competencies in framing and supporting their innovation efforts. Solutions stemming from employees have demonstrated their effectiveness in some urgent contexts when resources become scarce (eg, COVID-19 8 ); it would thus be interesting to explore how top-down methods can enable more hybrid and bottom-up EDI to address more immediate issues confronting frontline actors.

Looking at the third research question, macro level contextual enablers and barriers were poorly explored despite the fact that reforms and government pressure exert considerable influence on the management and organization of innovation broadly and particularly of EDI. An important knowledge gap remains around macro-level factors supporting health organizations’ EDI efforts. This is in line with Chaudoir and colleagues’ 104 systematic review, which found that studies of implementation frameworks rarely reported on structural factors (eg, policies, socio-economic context, local infrastructure). Policy-makers must remain responsive to the needs of health systems, and the findings of this scoping review may help them decide whether and how to support EDI in health organisations (eg, through funding policies or skills development 77 ).

The organizational enablers we find are similar to traditional determinants of innovation. 13 , 105 Establishing a support system for EDI appeared as an enabler that particularly attested to an organization’s readiness to change and willingness to eliminate structural and administrative barriers to EDI “beyond what might be accomplished by programs that foster innovations in individuals.” 106

The proactive personality of employees with a problem-solving orientation was recognized as a driving force and such people are a valuable resource for hybrid and bottom-up EDI. Management’s role in supporting social relations and the apparent benefits of genuine interpersonal efforts to increase frontline staff confidence in the leadership team (eg, 18 , 97 ) are in tune with Hansen and colleagues’ 107 empirical findings in a study of 20 Norwegian organizations that successfully upheld EDI initiatives. For these authors, “managers should adopt an informal and cooperative style of leadership.” 107 Exploring different modes of coordination may also address agency-related problems, 101 which touch upon “authority to make decisions about innovations” in organizations, and the “extent and level of the […] decision rights” 31 for employees and managers. In this endeavor, Saari et al 108 raised the important role played by middle and top managers in facilitating a “bridging agency” during the EDI process to respond to agency-specific issues. It seems evident that macro, organizational and individual cannot be considered in silos; studies should explore their interwoven impacts at different stages of the EDI process.

Looking at the fourth research question, findings on the intra-organizational benefits of EDI in health organizations were sparse but align with the Quadruple Aim in healthcare, a framework at the forefront of health sytems reforms to optimize patient care, professional well-being and health system performance while reducing costs. 26 Morever, some benefits extended beyond organizational walls. Further analytical research is yet needed. This finding supports Lehoux and colleagues’ international scoping review of health-system challenges, which highlights the sparsity of studies on health innovations supporting health system. This is surprising given the number of existing EDI efforts identified in this scoping review, the health system’s need for health innovation 109 as well as the role of frontline innovators in health system performance. 33 Given the discrepancies between government reforms and local organizations’ context and challenges, 110 exploring how an EDI initiative benefits health systems would help better aligning macro-level support.

This scoping review reveals knowledge gaps and opportunities for further research. Despite the significant role employees play in driving innovation, EDI in health organizations is still understudied, which is consistent with findings about EDI in more general contexts. 38 , 111 Studies included inconsistent or poor information on the cost and time required to undertake an EDI initiative in health organizations as well as on idea selection and evaluation. 111 Most studies provided snapshots of an EDI initiative, with cross-sectional description and evaluation of EDI activities. Longitudinal research would offer greater insight into how EDI initiatives evolve and are sustained through time. The high proportion of studies published in journals related to nursing attests to greater recognition of the role nurses play in the transformation of care (eg, 112 , 113 ), though studies rooted in innovation management contributed robust analysis of individual enablers of EDI. Interdisciplinary studies have a contribution to make to this stream of literature. 111

Strengths and Limitations

To our knowledge, this review is the first attempt to map the conditions that underpin EDI initiatives in health organizations. Several strengths and limitations should be mentioned. First, this review focused on the emergence and development stages of the innovation process, and not its implementation (despite findings of this scoping review briefly reporting on this phase). Given the disparate literature, it was important to create a strong foundation to understand the environment in which EDI can flourish. Innovation deployment is another topic that deserves its own review article. Second, due to its exploratory nature, the scoping review design may lack the rigour of systematic reviews; therefore, three mitigation measures were taken: including peer-reviewed articles, collaborating with a university librarian following Briggs’ steps, and using the PRISMA-ScR framework. This ensured that the identification and selection of studies was transparent and replicable. The authors are also a multi-disciplinary research team, with three experts in innovation management, public health and quality improvement in international health systems, as encouraged by Anderson et al 41 who recognize that scoping reviews tend to cross multiple fields. Third, this scoping review offers a timely and distinctive contribution by addressing the state of knowledge and practices on EDI in the context of health organizations in diverse countries. By going beyond the use of the key word “employee-driven” such as using “bottom-up” and “employee involvement” in the search strategy, this scoping review gathered diverse studies that would have otherwise been missed. However, despite exploring seven databases, the United States was over-represented while only three studies occurred in middle-income countries, and none in low-income countries, this despite these countries’ increasing production of health innovations. 114 One plausible explanation for their underrepresentation in this scoping study is the limitation to French and English languages in our search approach.

This scoping review assembles a heterogenous literature to synthesize knowledge on EDI in health organizations. It provides definitional clarity to the EDI concept, maps the conditions within which EDI initiatives flourish, and helps to understand the potential value of EDI for health organizations. This review also provides the “how-to” support for carrying out EDI in health organizations.

Implications for Research

Findings from this review suggest an agenda for further research. First, innovative practices are critical given the limited budgets and resources of local government and private and publicly funded health organizations. 1 Considering the paucity of studies focusing on hybrid and bottom-up EDI studies and their effectiveness in some contexts (eg, COVID-19), further research should explore the characteristics of this innovation process. 111 In certain resource-constrained contexts, frugal solutions are becoming more relevant to the healthcare sector 115 - 117 ; it would be interesting to explore how bottom-up or hybrid EDI can produce such innovations. Second, this scoping review could also be extended by exploring the processes involved in achieving EDI outcomes. Once an innovation appears to work at project level, challenges remain in supporting its spread, sustainability and scale-up. 32 , 97 Third, the gap in analytical studies should be addressed to create a consensus on the definition and characteristics of EDI. Doing so would create a strong foundation on which disparate studies and theoretical insights could be gathered to inform empirical studies. Such studies will also be valuable to understand how the macro-level context such as health system policies and government bodies can be supportive of EDI. Further research could also explore how EDI can contribute to the “Quintuple Aim” of health organzations, which include the notion of health equity. 118

Acknowledgements

We thank Susan Usher for providing professional writing services.

Ethical issues

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests nor conflict of interests. Regarding authors’ relationships, SBMC was a postdoctoral research fellow at Health Hub: politics, organizations and law (H-POD), the research center where JLD is the co-director. SBMC and JLD are also affiliated to the Research Center of the Montreal University Hospital Center (CRCHUM). LOD was a doctorate student at the School of Public Health of the University of Montreal where JLD is Professor.

Supplementary files

Supplementary file 1. Search Strategy.

Supplementary file 2. Overview of the Extracted Literature.

Supplementary file 3. Overview of EDI Methods.

Citation: Cadeddu SBM, Dare LO, Denis JL. Employee-driven innovation in health organizations: insights from a scoping review. Int J Health Policy Manag . 2023;12:6734. doi:10.34172/ijhpm.2023.6734

How Innovative Is China in Nuclear Power?

Though China built upon a foreign base of technology, it has become the world’s leading proponent of nuclear energy. Chinese firms are well ahead of their Western peers, supported by a whole-of-government strategy that provides extensive financing and systemic coordination.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Key takeaways.

Key Takeaways 1

Executive Summary 3

Background and Methodology 4

Importance of Nuclear Power and the U.S. Role . 5

China’s Nuclear Power Industry 6

How Innovative Is China’s Nuclear Industry? 8

Innovation Inputs to China’s Nuclear Sector 12

Company Case Studies 18

China’s Government Policies Supporting the Nuclear Sector 20

What Should America Do? 22

Endnotes 26

Executive Summary

As Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), observed, “China is the de facto world leader in nuclear technology.” [1] Indeed, China likely stands 10 to 15 years ahead of where the United States is in nuclear power (referring especially to the ability to field fourth-generation nuclear reactors). China’s government has assigned considerable priority to domestic nuclear reactor construction as part of Beijing’s broader energy strategy. Looking ahead, China appears likely to use this established domestic capacity as a foundation for competitive reactor exports, much as its “dual-circulation” strategy has accomplished in other areas, such as electric vehicles and batteries.

Indeed, China has embarked on a rapid buildout of its nuclear industry, with 27 nuclear reactors under construction (more than two and a half times more than any other country) complementing the existing fleet of 56. The country expects to build 6 to 8 new nuclear power plants each year for the foreseeable future, with the country surpassing the United States in nuclear-generated electricity by 2030. In total, China intends to build a total of 150 new nuclear reactors between 2020 and 2035. Moreover, in December 2023, China commenced operation of the world’s first fourth-generation nuclear power plant, the 200 megawatt (MW)-producing, gas-cooled Shidaowan-1, in China’s northern Shandong province. China’s Nuclear Energy Administration has asserted that “90 percent of the technology in the new plant was developed within China.” [2] China is also leading development and deployment of a new fleet of cost-competitive small modular reactors.

China likely stands 10 to 15 years ahead of the United States in nuclear power.

However, this does not necessarily mean that China’s largest nuclear power companies—notably the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) and the China National Nuclear Power (CNNP)—are exceptionally innovative technologically. Indeed, the bulk of China’s current fleet of nuclear reactors consists of “third-generation” nuclear reactors that were initially designed by the U.S. company Westinghouse Electric (its AP1000) in the late-1990s and whose technology and designs Westinghouse transferred to China in 2008 as part of a contract to build four Chinese reactors based on the AP1000’s 2005 design. And while China is certainly to be credited for deploying the world’s first operational fourth-generation reactor, as one expert commentator noted at an ITIF roundtable, “That technology has actually been known to the world for decades; it’s just that China took the actions required to build and deploy it.” [3] It’s also of note that China’s second-largest nuclear power operator, CNNP, notes on its website that “innovation and research and development (R&D) are not the primary emphases of the company … Instead, the company primarily focuses on safety, stability, optimization, and sustainability.” [4]

Where China has thrived, however, regarding nuclear power innovation more pertains to systemic and organizational innovation. This especially refers to the country’s coherent national strategy toward nuclear power—at both federal and provincial levels—which entails a range of supportive policies from low-interest financing, feed-in tariffs, and other subsidies that make nuclear power generation cost competitive to streamlined permitting and regulatory approval (i.e., of safety and environmental impact assessments), to coordinating supply chains in an effective fashion. Indeed, as industry analyst Kenneth Luongo commented, “They don’t have any secret sauce other than state financing, state supported supply chain, and a state commitment to build the technology.” [5] That said, China’s rapid deployment of ever-more modern nuclear power plants over time produces significant scale economies and learning-by-doing effects, and this suggests that Chinese enterprises will gain an advantage at incremental innovation in this sector going forward.

Nuclear fusion—the process by which two light atomic nuclei combine to form a single heavier one while releasing massive amounts of energy—represents a potentially transformative, disruptive nuclear energy innovation. [6] In January 2024, the Chinese government launched a new national industrial consortium, led by the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), and composed of 25 organizations, to promote the development and advancement of nuclear fusion technology. [7] However, industry analysts observed that nuclear fusion technology remains very nascent, and commented that China and the United States are probably on par with regard to development of the technology. Those analysts also observed that China would be likely to adopt a fast-follower approach with regard to nuclear fusion and probably seek advantage when it comes to rapidly scaling deployment of nuclear fusion reactors, once they become technically viable.

The United States, with 94 operational nuclear reactors, remains the world’s leader in nuclear energy output, accounting for one-third of nuclear power generated globally. However, the country has only launched two new nuclear reactors in the past decade, with the newest, the Vogtle Unit 4 plant in Georgia, coming online this year (with its construction originally begun by Westinghouse but completed by Bechtel). [8] If the United States is to again become a leader in the nuclear reactor industry, it will need to likewise adopt a coherent national strategy and a “whole-of-government” approach. Among other steps, this would entail sufficient staffing at federal R&D and regulatory agencies to support the innovation, down-selection, regulatory approval, and deployment of new reactor types; incentives, tax credits, or attractive financing that facilitate the production of cost-competitive nuclear energy; and policies such as streamlined export credit programs that facilitate exports from U.S. nuclear reactor producers. Civilian nuclear energy represents yet another industry the United States and its enterprises pioneered, but which has experienced a significant (and potentially permanent) loss of U.S. capabilities. [9]

Background and Methodology

The common narrative is that China is a copier and the United States the innovator. That narrative often supports a lackadaisical attitude toward technology and industrial policy. After all, the United States leads in innovation, so there is nothing to worry about. First, this assumption is misguided because it is possible for innovators to lose leadership to copiers with lower cost structures, as we have seen in many U.S. industries, including consumer electronics, semiconductors, solar panels, telecom equipment, machine tools, and, as noted here, quite possibly, nuclear power. Second, it’s not clear that China is a sluggish copier and always destined to be a follower.

To assess how innovative Chinese industries are, the Smith Richardson Foundation provided support to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) to research the question. As part of this research, ITIF is focusing on particular sectors, including commercial nuclear energy.

To be sure, it’s difficult to assess the innovation capabilities of any country’s industries, but it is especially difficult for Chinese industries. In part, this is because, under President Xi Jinping, China discloses much less information to the world than it used to, especially about its industrial and technological capabilities. Notwithstanding this, ITIF relied on three methods to assess Chinese innovation in nuclear power. First, we conducted in-depth case study evaluations of two Chinese nuclear power companies selected from nuclear power companies listed on the “2023 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard.” Second, ITIF conducted interviews and held a focus group roundtable with global experts on the Chinese nuclear power industry. And third, ITIF assessed global data on nuclear power innovation, including scientific articles and patents.

Importance of Nuclear Power and the U.S. Role

Enrico Fermi and his team at the University of Chicago constructed the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor, known as Chicago Pile-1, under the school’s football stadium in November 1942. [10] In 1946, Congress passed the Atomic Energy Act, which established the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. [11] The commission subsequently designated Argonne National Laboratory as the first and primary national laboratory for nuclear research. [12] The United States commissioned the first commercial electricity-generating plant powered by nuclear energy, located in Shippingport, Pennsylvania, in 1957. [13] The majority of America’s nuclear power plants were built in the 1970s and early 1980s, although construction of new facilities plummeted after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and almost all were launched by 1990. [14]

By the 1990s, Westinghouse Electric Company LLC and General Electric became America’s leading suppliers of commercial nuclear power plants. Driven by the interest in designing safer nuclear reactors in the post-Chernobyl era, in 1999, Westinghouse introduced designs for the AP1000, which became the first Generation III+ reactor to receive final design approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in 2004. [15] In 2007, Westinghouse (acquired by Japan’s Toshiba in 2006) won a CNNC bid for four AP1000 reactors, although this also included a major technology transfer agreement that significantly accelerated the advancement of China’s commercial nuclear power industry. [16] This would become the main basis for China’s move to Generation III technology. For its part, the slowing pace of nuclear power plant approvals over the past-quarter century (and notably, the inability to find a robust domestic market for the AP1000) led to Westinghouse declaring bankruptcy in 2017, with its assets now possessed by Brookfield Renewable Partners and Cameco. [17] Today, Bechtel is an important player in the industry, alongside a range of start-ups including NuScale, TerraPower, X-energy, and others that are attempting to design and build innovative fourth-generation nuclear reactors.

As of May 2024, the United States remains the global leader in nuclear energy production. America’s 94 plants in operation account for 31 percent of global nuclear power production, and in the United States, one-fifth of its energy production and one-half of its clean energy production. (See figure 1.) However, this represents almost entirely the effect of a previously fielded install base, as the United States has completed only two nuclear power plants in the last decade. In contrast, as this report illustrates, China’s commitment to commercial nuclear power is growing rapidly, with the country fielding 56 operational nuclear reactors, with 27 under construction, and the country on pace to overtake the United States as the nation with the largest nuclear-generating power capacity by 2030. Overall, China has nearly tripled its nuclear capacity over the past 10 years; it took the United States nearly 40 years to add the same nuclear power capacity as China added in the last decade. [18]

Figure 1: Nuclear power plants in operation or under construction as of May 2024 [19]

China’s Nuclear Power Industry

As the Breakthrough Institute’s Seaver Wang explained, China’s “[n]ational policy has long prioritized both conventional and advanced reactor technology as a strategically important domestic capability and as a promising growth sector with export potential.” [20] In December 2011, China’s National Energy Administration committed to making nuclear energy the foundation of China’s power-generation system over the next “10 to 20 years,” promising to add as much as 300GWe (GWe means one billion watts of electric capacity) of nuclear energy over that period. [21] However, by 2022, nuclear energy still accounted for only 3.8 percent of Chinese power generation, in part because the Chinese government slowed approval and deployment of new reactors in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear plant incident.

However, China’s commitment to nuclear power increased significantly with the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–2025), released in March 2021, which called for a buildout of some 150 new nuclear reactors over the ensuing 15 years to reach a production goal of 200 GW of nuclear energy by 2035 (enough to power more than a dozen cities the size of Beijing). Analysts estimated that adding an additional 147 GW (to the 53 GW of nuclear energy China produced at the time) would entail an investment of $370 billion to $440 billion over that 15-year timeframe. [22] By 2050, China wants nuclear to provide at least 15 percent of its electricity generation (which China envisions as its third overall source of energy by that year, behind wind and solar). [23]

Some analysts have observed that “climate policies have [had] the most significant impact on accelerating [China’s] nuclear policy development.” [24] They note that nuclear energy will be crucial to meeting Chinese president Xi Jinping’s goal of making China’s economy carbon neutral by mid century. However, certainly economic and national security considerations also represent key drivers in China’s push toward nuclear, especially with regard to the country’s historic dependence on oil imports (which the United States would certainly seek to impede in case of a conflict). China’s plans to produce 200 GW of nuclear energy by 2025 “could prevent about 1.5 billion tons of annual carbon emissions, more than what’s generated by the U.K., Spain, France, and Germany combined.” [25] The country seeks to replace all 2,990 of its coal-fired generators with clean energy solutions by 2060.

As noted, China is moving forward rapidly with its nuclear buildout, with 27 nuclear reactors now under construction, and the country aiming to install between 6 and 8 new nuclear reactors each year going forward. [26] (See figure 2.) That represents an additional 5,000–8,000 MW of new nuclear generating capacity per year. [27] Moreover, nearly every Chinese nuclear project that has entered service since 2010 has achieved construction in seven years or less. [28] Since the start of 2022, China has completed an additional five domestic reactor builds, with their completion times ranging from just under five years to just over seven years.

Figure 2: Locations of China’s nuclear power plants [29]

China’s main nuclear operators are CGN and CNNP, with SPIC (via its nuclear power business, State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation (SNPTC)) being the third largest. As of mid-2023, CGN operated 27 nuclear power units (accounting for 53 percent of the country’s nuclear power generation) and was constructing 7 more. CNNC’s 25 nuclear reactors account for 42 percent of China’s nuclear energy generation, with 9 more facilities under construction. China’s 56 existing nuclear plants (mainly located in coastal regions) produce 53.1 GW of electricity, while the 24 nuclear plants now under construction have the capability of generating over 23.7 GW of electricity. [30]

How Innovative Is China’s Nuclear Industry?

China approved the construction of its first nuclear power station only in 1981, 18 years after France (the last of the first four nuclear-armed states) had begun producing nuclear electricity. [31] But it wasn’t until 2005 that “China dramatically magnified its nuclear construction program.” [32] And a key catalyst in the Chinese industry’s growth was the 2008 agreement for Westinghouse to license its AP1000 technology to China’s SNPTC, which became the basis for China’s CAP1400 reactor. This was followed in 2014 (and again in 2018) with further SNPTC/Westinghouse agreements to deepen cooperation in relation to AP1000 and CAP1400 technology globally and “establish a mutually beneficial and complementary partnership.” [33] As a condition of the agreement, Westinghouse handed over thousands of documents on nuclear power plant design. But it wasn’t only voluntary tech transfer, as Robert Lighthizer writes in No Trade Is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America’s Workers, “What China could not get from Westinghouse through this deal, it simply stole.” [34] In 2010, hackers working with the Chinese military penetrated Westinghouse’s computer systems and stole confidential and proprietary technical and design specifications for Westinghouse’s AP1000. [35]

And although “The Westinghouse AP1000 was to be the main basis of China’s move to Generation III technology,” important nuclear “technology has [also] been drawn from France, Canada and Russia.” [36] In fact, only in 2020 did CNNP and CGN collaborate to bring online the Hualong One, which was the first Chinese third-generation reactor developed with homegrown technology and materials (though still based on Western designs). [37] However, China’s progress with nuclear technologies has advanced rapidly since then.

Indeed, from these austere beginnings, China and its nuclear power enterprises have rapidly developed their capabilities, to the point where MIT’s Buongiorno observed that, “China is the de facto world leader in nuclear technology at the moment.” [38] That sentiment is echoed by David Fishman, a Shanghai-based senior manager at the energy consulting firm Lantau Group, who has contended that, “China is arguably peerless in actually building and commercializing next generation nuclear power technology.” [39] Francois Morin, China director of the World Nuclear Association, concurs, observing that China’s new reactors put it “ahead of other countries in terms of nuclear technology research and development.” [40]

As noted, the flagship of China’s nuclear fleet has since become the CNNP-constructed Shidaowan-1 power plant, the world’s first fourth-generation nuclear reactor to come online. The facility features two high-temperature, helium gas-cooled modular pebble bed (HTR-PM) reactors that can produce 250 MW each, alongside a steam generator with an installed capacity of 200 MW. [41] CNNC asserts that 93.4 percent of the materials used in the $16 billion facility (which began construction in 2012) were domestically sourced. [42] Fourth-generation reactors such as the Shidaowan feature passive systems (meaning they don’t need to rely on electricity or pumps to shutdown in case of failure); use coolants other than water (such as helium); can operate at higher temperatures than most other reactors (permitting them to generate both electricity and hydrogen (via electrolyzers), the latter useful toward a number of industrial applications); and generate less waste. [43]

China has also led construction of the world’s first multipurpose SMR demonstration project, known as the Linglong One. SMRs represent advanced nuclear reactors that have a power capacity of up to 300 MW(e) per unit (compared with typical third-generation reactors, which have generating capacity above 1000 MW(e)) and are marked by the modular nature of their assembly, making it possible for systems and components to be factory-assembled and transported as a unit to a location for installation. [44] Linglong One constitutes a multipurpose pressurized water reactor (the ACP100) whose design was “developed by CNNC following more than 10 years of independent research and development.” [45] CNNC contends that “the design and construction of Linglong One are revolutionary and groundbreaking” and notes that “through standardized design, single module production, and mass production, the construction period is shortened and costs reduced.” [46] The Linglong One was the first SMR to receive approval from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). When it enters service (scheduled for year-end 2025), engineers expect the Linglong One to generate 1 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, enough to service over 525,000 homes. [47]

Elsewhere, later in 2024, the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics is slated to launch the world’s first molten salt and thorium nuclear reactor, the TMSR-LF1, in China’s Gansu province. While thorium-based reactors are not entirely novel, what differentiates this reactor is its utilization of thorium as a fuel source within a molten salt reactor. [48]

In December 2021 China became the third country to develop a floating nuclear reactor, the ACPR50S, which has been designed to endure a once-in-10,000-years weather catastrophe. [49] The 60 MW floating reactor is being built to power oil rigs and islands off the east coast of China in the Bohai Sea. [50]

China is in the process of deploying each of the six types of fourth-generation nuclear reactors identified by the Generation IV International forum.

China is also building fast neutron reactors (FNRs), another type of fourth-generation reactor, whose design more deliberately uses the uranium-238 as well as the fissile U-235 isotope used in most reactors. [51] If FNRs are designed to produce more plutonium than the uranium and plutonium they consume, they are called fast breeder reactors (FBRs). [52] CNNC connected a 600 MW FBR to the grid in 2023 and expects to launch a second by 2026. China is also considering whether to build a commercial 1,000 MW FBR in the coming years. [53] (Of note is that FBRs represent a dual-use technology: Analysts expect that each FBR reactor China builds could yield up to 200 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium annually, enough for 50 nuclear warheads.) It should also be noted that China has received considerable assistance from Russia in designing and building these two FBRs, and also that the world’s first FBR was launched in 1969, so the design for such facilities has been known for some time. [54]

Ultimately, the Generation IV International forum—a cooperative international endeavor among 13 countries seeking to develop the research necessary to test the feasibility and performance of fourth-generation nuclear systems and to make them available for industrial deployment by 2030—has identified six different reactor types as “Gen IV.” These are: the gas-cooled fast reactor (GFR), the lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR), the molten salt reactor (MSR), the sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR), the supercritical-water-cooled reactor (SCWR), and the very high-temperature reactor (VHTR). [55] Notably, across various projects, China is trying to build reactors of each of these types. [56]

Beyond nuclear reactors themselves, China has long been dependent on other nations, notably Kazakhstan and Russia, for the uranium that fuels nuclear reactors. Overall, “China has stated it intends to become self-sufficient not just in nuclear power plant capacity, but also in the production of fuel for those plants.” [57] This requires sourcing uranium, enriching it, and manufacturing fuel.

Part of China’s strategy for building different types of fourth-generation reactors is to build new designs that do not rely on uranium in order to reduce this dependency. At present, analysts have noted that, “China aims to produce one-third of its uranium domestically, obtain one-third through equity in mines and joint ventures overseas, and to purchase one-third on the open market.” [58]

China is also looking to become self-sufficient in its ability to enrich uranium and manufacture nuclear fuel. Accordingly, CNNC’s Shaanxi Uranium Enrichment Co. Ltd. subsidiary introduced in March 2018 a next-generation uranium enrichment centrifuge for large-scale commercial application. [59]

Nuclear Fusion

Nuclear fusion, which seeks to replicate the nuclear fusion reaction at the core of a star, refers to the energy released from fusing two hydrogen nuclei, with the process requiring a reactor that can withstand extreme temperatures, in excess of 100 million degrees Celsius, and one that can allow the nuclei to collide with each other. [60] In theory, nuclear fusion technology would be able to generate energy equivalent to that produced by eight tons of oil from just one gram of fuel (tritium or deuterium, which are isotypes of hydrogen and which in theory could be attained readily from seawater). [61]

The Chinese government has set a goal of building the first industrial prototype fusion reactor, which it has dubbed an “artificial sun,” by 2035, with officials hoping to begin large-scale commercial production of fusion energy by 2050.

Nuclear fusion has become a national priority for China. Indeed, China’s State Council made it clear in a recent meeting that “controlled nuclear fusion is the only direction for future energy.” [62] On January 9, 2024, the Chinese government launched a new national industrial consortium, led by CNNC, to promote the development and advancement of nuclear fusion technology. [63] The consortium will include 25 primarily government-owned companies, four universities, and one private company, with much of the technological know-how for the project derived from research conducted at the CNNC-affiliated Southwestern Institute of Physics and the Chinese Academy of Sciences-affiliated Institute of Plasma Physics. [64] The Chinese government also announced that it would create a new enterprise, the China Fusion Corporation, in an attempt to lead the industry’s development. [65] China also participates as a member of the 35-nation $25 billion nuclear fusion power research project, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.

Heretofore, the main locus of China’s government-funded fusion research has been based at the Institute of Plasma Physics at the Hefei Institute of Physical Science, where scientists operate the $900 million Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST). [66] In 2021, EAST attained several world records, including maintaining a plasma temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds and 160 million degrees Celsius for 20 seconds. [67] Following on EAST, in 2017 China commenced engineering design on the China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR), a magnetic confinement fusion device, construction of which is planned for the late 2020s as a demonstration of the feasibility of large-scale fusion power generation. [68] The Chinese government has also launched new fusion education programs in China, with a goal of training 1,000 new plasma physicists to support these initiatives. [69]

Ultimately, the Chinese government has set a goal of building the first industrial prototype fusion reactor, which it has dubbed an “artificial sun,” by 2035, with officials hoping to begin large-scale commercial production of fusion energy by 2050. [70] Industry analysts ITIF interviewed for this report observed that China appears to be roughly on par today with U.S. (and other foreign) efforts to develop nuclear fusion technologies. They noted, however, that China is likely to adopt a fast follower approach in this sector (once commercially viable nuclear fusion technologies are realized) and differentiate themselves by rapidly scaling production and deployment of fusion reactors.

Other Chinese Nuclear Power Innovations

The start-up Beijing Betavolt New Energy Technology Company Ltd., established in April 2021, claims to have developed a miniature atomic energy battery that can generate electricity stably and autonomously for 50 years without the need for charging or maintenance. [71] Such atomic energy batteries, which are also known as nuclear batteries or radioisotope batteries, utilize energy released by the decay of nuclear isotopes and converts it into electrical energy through semiconductor converters. [72] Betavolt has asserted that its battery “combines nickel-63 nuclear isotope decay technology and China’s first diamond semiconductor (4th generation semiconductor) module to successfully realize the miniaturization of atomic energy batteries.” [73] Such batteries can provide long-lasting power supply in multiple scenarios such as aerospace, AI equipment, medical equipment, micro-electromechanical systems, advanced sensors, small drones and micro-robots.

Innovation Inputs to China’s Nuclear Sector

This section examines indicators assessing China’s nuclear competitiveness at the industry level, considering such factors as R&D intensity, scientific publications, and patenting levels.

R&D Intensity

A study by the IAEA estimates that private R&D in China’s nuclear industry is steadily increasing, at least among globally listed companies. Estimated private R&D reached about $1.3 billion in 2020, compared with only about $436 million in 2015. (See figure 3 .)

Figure 3: Nuclear R&D investment by globally listed companies headquartered in China, 2015–2020 (millions) [74]

In terms of nuclear power companies’ levels of R&D investments (as reported in the “2023 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard”), China placed 7 of the top 22 enterprises in the study. CGN Power was the leading Chinese company, with an R&D intensity of about 4.5 percent of its revenue. That is an even higher R&D intensity than Orano, one of the leading nuclear power companies in the European Union. (See table 1 .) (Note: NuScale’s R&D intensity is so high because it’s a (mostly) pre-revenue startup enterprise.)

Table 1: Leading nuclear power generation investors on the “2023 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard” [75]

Scientific Publications

As of 2022, China ranked third in terms of nations with citations among the top 10 percent of highly cited publications in nuclear science and engineering, with 339 such publications, compared with EU-27 nations with 457 such publications and American ones with 399. China’s number of such publications increased four-fold between 2008 and 2021, while European publications declined by nearly one-quarter and the number of American ones declined by one-fifth. (See figure 4.)

Figure 4: Number of top 10 percent most-cited publications in nuclear science and engineering, 2008-2022 [76]

Research from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) confirms that China has become a world leader in scientific publications on nuclear energy. In 2023, Chinese publications had a weighted share of 20 percent of all scientific publications in the field. Similarly, Chinese publications had a weighted share of about 27 percent of all publications in the top-cited journals. (See figure 5 .) Similarly, China ranks first in the H-index, a commonly used metric for measuring the scholarly impact of journal publications, for nuclear energy. (See figure 6 .) In sum, China is a leader not only in the quantity of nuclear energy publications, but also in “high-quality” publications.

Figure 5: Weighted shares of scientific publications in nuclear energy by country, 2023 [77]

Figure 6: H-Index for scientific publications in nuclear energy, 2023 [78]

The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) framework allows for innovators to seek protection for an invention simultaneously in each of a large number of countries by filing an “international” patent application. [79] From 2008 to 2023, Chinese entities increased their levels of PCT nuclear patents awarded from 5 to 83, exceeding France’s and South Korea’s counts by 2023. While China’s increase from 5 to 83 over that period represents an astonishing 1,560 percent increase (albeit from a low starting point), the number of patents being awarded to U.S. filers increased by only 78 percent. (See figure 7 .)

Between 2008 and 2023, China’s share of all nuclear patents increased from about 1.3 percent to about 13.4 percent. That constitutes a 12.1 percentage point increase, in contrast to an increase of only about 1.9 percentage points for the U.S. global share. By contrast, the EU’s global share fell by about 12.3 percentage points over that same period. (See figure 8 .)

Figure 7: Number of PCT patents granted in nuclear science and engineering, 2008–2023 [80]

Figure 8: Global shares of PCT patents granted in nuclear science and engineering, 2008–2023 [81]

Patent applications can be a problematic metric, especially because countries such as China have been known to provide generous incentives for patent filers, which can incentivize the number, though not the quality, of patents filed. Nevertheless, patent applications can be an indicative metric, and on this score, between 2011 and 2022, China filed more patents in fusion technology than any other country. [82]

The Tokyo-based research company Astamuse has examined the strength and quality of countries’ nuclear fusion patent application portfolios by considering the 1,133 nuclear fusion patent applications filed by entities from 30 countries from 2011 to 2022 and scoring them based on measures including the number of patents filed, the feasibility of each innovation, and the remaining period of exclusivity. [83] Astamuse ranked China first in its national nuclear fusion patent portfolio ranking, followed by the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan. In terms of the strength of organizations’ patent filings, Astamuse ranked the Chinese Academy of Sciences second followed by the Southwestern Institute of Physics, an affiliate of China National Nuclear Corp., third. [84] (British startup Tokamak Energy ranked first). To be sure, Astamuse considered patent filings, not grants, but still it noted several impressive Chinese fillings, such as one by the Chinese Academy of Sciences for a ceramic composite material that can be used in the wall of a nuclear fusion reactor, which outside experts indicated appears to represent a significant technological breakthrough. [85] It’s also worth noting that China’s significant increase in nuclear energy patent application filings over the past decade does correspond well with the significant increase in patent grants in the field to Chinese entities over that timespan.

Company Case Studies

This section provides case study analyses of several Chinese nuclear power companies; as there are a very small number of leading nuclear power entities in China, these two were intentionally selected from Chinese nuclear power companies included on the “2023 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard” report.

CGN Power is an SOE that represents one of the two main participants in China’s nuclear power industry, operating 27 nuclear power units (generating 30.6 MW) and constructing 7 more (to generate a total of 8.4 MW) as of mid-2023, accounting for about 54 percent of the total nuclear power installed capacity in China. The company operates five types of reactor units, including the independently developed, third-generation, 1,200 MW Hualong One reactor. The company’s operations span the entire nuclear power industry value chain, with nuclear power generation and electricity sales contributing over 72 percent to its total revenue, and nuclear engineering design and construction services accounting for 28 percent.

The company was initially founded as Guangdong Nuclear Power Joint Venture Company in Guangzhou in 1985, and it achieved a significant milestone with the successful operation of the Daya Bay nuclear power station in 1994, marking the start of large-scale commercial nuclear power stations in China. CGN benefitted greatly from French technology transfer and guidance. In the first four years after its establishment, the nuclear power station’s operational management personnel were all from EDF France. In 2007, CGN Power imported third-generation pressurized water reactor EPR (European Pressurised Reactor) technology from France and Germany, began construction in 2009, and completed it in 2015, making it the first globally operated reactor using EPR technology. As the company matured (notably into the 2000s), it began focusing on R&D activities toward developing proprietary third-generation nuclear power technology.

CGN’s R&D motto is “Introduce, Digest, Absorb, Innovate.” The company’s R&D efforts are concentrated in mainland China, where it has a national-level engineering technology center, a national key laboratory, five national technology R&D centers, and three major R&D bases located in Shenzhen, Yangjiang, and Zhongshan. As of year-end 2022, the company employed approximately 19,000 people, 91 percent of whom are technical personnel, including over 4,700 full-time R&D staff, which comprised one-quarter of the company’s workforce.

In 2022, the company’s R&D expenditures were 3.85 billion RMB (approximately $539 million), representing an R&D expense rate of 4.65 percent, an increase of 26.5 percent from 2021. (Its R&D intensity in 2023 was about 4.5 percent.) CGN Power’s R&D expense rate has consistently been within the range of 3.5 to 5 percent for several years, benefiting from stable and rapid revenue growth, allowing the company to maintain a steadily increasing R&D budget. [86]

In terms of patents, CGN Power Group has applied for 15,467 patents, of which 10,058 have been granted (mostly in China). Of these 15,467 patents, over 80 percent are active. Since 2003, the number of patents applied for by CGN Power Group has been on an upward trend, with 2,126 patents applied for in 2021 alone. Out of these 15,467 patents, 15,003 are in China, 40 in the United Kingdom, 18 in Germany, and 61 in other European countries. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, CGN Power has made five patent applications in the United States, four of which have been granted. [87] The company has received some international recognition, including the 2020 Inno ESG Prize from Hong Kong and the 2019 Sino-French Corporate Social Responsibility Award, though most of its awards have been won from within China.

China National Nuclear Power

CNNP is a subsidiary of the state-owned CNNC. As of year-end 2023, CNNP operated 25 nuclear reactors with an installed capacity of 23.8 GW and 9 reactors (10.1GW) under construction. The company holds a 42 percent share of China’s nuclear energy market and contributes 2.04 percent of the country’s annual electricity production. Nuclear power generation accounts for 90 percent of the company’s $9.8 billion annual revenues (the remainder from other renewables).

Like CGN, CNNP’s development history has also involved extensively replicating existing technologies from abroad while transitioning toward applying more advanced and technologically complex innovative systems in the future. Indeed, CNNP has extensively absorbed and replicated existing foreign technologies. This has included introducing second- and third-generation reactor designs from French nuclear companies (shared with CGN), importing the AP1000 reactor from Westinghouse and optimizing it to develop the CAP1400, and adopting heavy water reactor technology from Canada’s CANDU reactors. It was not until the end of 2014 that CNNP and CGN jointly introduced the Hualong One, China’s first third-generation nuclear reactor.

Key areas of R&D investment include the indigenization of critical equipment, enhancing equipment reliability, intelligent operation of nuclear power stations, and maintenance and overhauls of units. Currently, the company has three R&D centers located in Shanghai, Qinshan, and Liaoning, with no overseas R&D branches or cooperative projects. [88]

In 2022, CNNP invested $196 million in R&D, a 5 percent increase in expenditures over the previous year, giving the company a 2.7 percent level of R&D intensity. That year, CNNP reported having 3,984 R&D personnel, which constituted about 23.3 percent of its total workforce. Among them, 3,200 held undergraduate degrees, while the remaining staff had master’s degrees or higher. [89]

It appears that a significant proportion of patents have been applied for in the name of CNNC or one of its subsidiaries, the China Nuclear Energy Research Institute, suggesting that there may be collaborative aspects to the R&D projects, although no reports specifically mention this. Considering only the patents under the name CNNP, the company applied for 96 new patents in 2022. As of 2023, according to data from China’s official patent platform, the company holds a total of 308 valid patents and has applied for 490 additional ones. According to data from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the company has applied for 322 patents and holds 266 valid patents. All of these patents were applied for and are registered within mainland China. [90]

Overall, CNNP lags behind global peers such as Électricité de France (EDF) in terms of R&D centers, R&D funding, and the number of patents, but surpasses them in R&D intensity and the proportion of R&D personnel.

China’s Government Policies Supporting the Nuclear Sector

From framing the economics of the sector, to coordinating ecosystem actors, to streamlining regulatory and permitting procedures to supporting R&D investments in the sector, China’s state guidance has been critical in driving China’s nuclear sector; and that’s setting aside the reality that China’s nuclear companies are themselves SOEs. Indeed, China has benefited greatly from a coherent national strategy and whole-of-government approach to promoting nuclear energy. As Luongo observed, China doesn’t “have any secret sauce other than state financing, state supported supply chain, and a state commitment to build the technology.” [91]

About 70 percent of the cost of Chinese reactors are covered by loans from state-backed banks at rates as low as 1.4 percent, far below rates nuclear power companies can receive in other nations.

The role of China’s government has been particularly important in framing the economics of the industry. In particular, China’s government has supported the sector with inexpensive financing as well as subsidies, known as feed-in tariffs, that decrease the cost of consumption. These factors have driven down the price of nuclear power in China to about $70 per MW-hour, compared with $105 in America and $160 in the European Union. [92] About 70 percent of the cost of Chinese reactors is covered by loans from state-backed banks, at rates as low as 1.4 percent, far lower rates than companies in other nations (outside Russia) can secure. [93] According to analysts at BloombergNEF and the World Nuclear Association, in part thanks to these low financing costs, China can build plants for about $2,500 to $3,000 per kilowatt, about one-third of the cost of recent projects in the United States and France. [94] Chinese provincial governments often also provide free or discounted land, further lowering operating costs in China.

China’s nuclear operators also benefit considerably from value added tax (VAT) rebates. The policy involves initially collecting VAT and then refunding it, with the refund rate decreasing over three phases: 75 percent refund during the first 5 years of official commercial operation, 70 percent during the 6th to the 10th year, and 55 percent from the 11th to the 15th year, with no VAT refund after 15 years. For example, for CGN, in most provinces where CGN Power’s nuclear power stations operate, the original VAT rate is 13 percent. Conservatively estimated, under the VAT refund policy for nuclear power projects, CGN Power reduces its operational costs by over 6 percent annually. Based on cost estimates for 2022, this equates to a government subsidy of about $532 million, nearly 40 percent of the net profit, significantly enhancing CGN’s profitability and competitiveness. [95] Similarly, VAT rebates reduce CNNP’s operational costs by over 5 percent annually, equating to a subsidy of over $360 million in 2022.

Beyond finance, China’s nuclear power companies also benefit from coordinated ecosystem development. Indeed, Beijing has worked hard to foster localized supply chains for reactor components. As Breakthrough’s Wang explained:

The large-scale growth of industrial and civil infrastructure countrywide in past decades has cultivated considerable megaproject management experience and construction capacity. In particular, private and public-sector projects have learned to target construction economies of scale by planning and co-locating multiple identical units or manufacturing lines at the same site, organized in successive phases of site development and expansion. [96]

The Chinese government envisions nuclear as a key future export sector for the country, particularly to countries participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (although China remains well behind Russia, which is still the world’s leader in the export of nuclear products and services). Nevertheless, Chinese officials have set a goal of selling 30 overseas nuclear reactors to Belt and Road partners by 2030. [97] Chinese officials anticipate that “Belt and Road” nuclear projects could earn Chinese firms as much as 1 trillion yuan ($145.5 billion) by 2030. Indeed, the director of China’s National Energy Administration has stated that the sale abroad of one nuclear power plant is worth “the export of one million Volkswagen Santana cars.” [98] China has placed a bid to build Saudi Arabia’s first civilian nuclear power plant at a price 30 percent lower than competing French and South Korean tenders. [99] Notably, China (like Russia) is not bound by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) guidelines on minimum interest rates and loan repayment terms, which is already enabling it to offer more attractive export financing packages (affording it a distinct advantage) in competing for overseas business in nuclear markets. [100]

There’s no question the development of China’s capabilities in nuclear energy were in part a significant result of U.S. technology transfer and knowledge sharing.

But China still has a long way to go here, as it trails the leading exporters of nuclear reactors, notably Russia, which as of 2022 held an 18.1 percent share ($545 million) of nuclear reactor exports, followed by the United States with a 16.4 percent share ($492 million) and Sweden with a 16.3 percent share ($488 million). (See figure 9 .) That’s followed by Germany, Spain, and France, while Japan’s share has fallen to just 3.34 percent and China’s is still getting off the ground at 1.5 percent.

Figure 9: Leading exporters of nuclear reactors, country share of global market (2022) [101]

Thus, with regard to the eight S’s ITIF has framed as part of its “Is China Innovative?” research series — S cience and engineering talent, a head S tart, S cale, S peed, local S uppliers, S ubsidies, S ize, and S pecialization — China’s nuclear energy policy and strategy hits upon most of these. As noted, China is rapidly approving and building nuclear facilities (six to eight new approvals a year and building them within about seven years or so each), seeking to build some 150 (so as to achieve scale and decrease cost), leveraging local suppliers, and massively subsidizing the sector. It’s also now getting a head start on deploying the newest fourth-generation nuclear reactors, and, as noted, it has launched training programs to educate at least another 1,000 scientists and engineers in nuclear fusion alone. The eight S’s provide a nice synthesis for how China is seeking to compete in nuclear fission and fusion.

Going forward, the United States will need to determine how much it wishes to collaborate with China with regard to nuclear technologies. There’s no question the development of China’s capabilities in nuclear energy were in part a significant result of U.S. technology transfer and knowledge sharing. As one industry analyst told ITIF, “For a six- to eight-year time period from 2007 to 2015 or so, Chinese researchers formed the largest category of international visitors at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They were making a very systematic effort to vacuum up all the {nuclear] knowledge and research they could possibly get.” [102] This reflected incredible naïveté by U.S. officials, who argued that transferring to the Chinese, for free, incredibly valuable U.S. technology made sense because it would help mitigate global warming. One almost cannot make this up.

What Should America Do?

Unfortunately, as industry analyst Luongo observed, “It is generally agreed the U.S. has lost its global dominance in nuclear energy.” [103] Therefore, the United States needs to develop a coherent national strategy and whole-of-government approach to reanimating the deployment of modern nuclear reactor technology. This should be predicated on the recognition that America’s current nuclear installed base is aging rapidly, and, more importantly, that modern nuclear reactor technologies are substantially safer and more efficient (in producing energy from a given set of fuels) than previous designs. It should also be predicated on a recognition that if the United States is to contribute to global clean energy and decarbonization objectives, an embrace of nuclear energy must be part of an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy. A recent U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) report suggests that if the United States commits more to nuclear, it could triple its nuclear-power generation to 300 GW by 2050 (and make an important contribution toward meeting America’s net-zero emission goals). [104] This would also promote U.S. energy security and the resilience of America’s energy system.

Policymakers will need to both fund the future and provide necessary funding today to appropriately maintain America’s existing fleet of nuclear reactors, building upon Congress’s creation of a $6 billion relief fund in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (BIIJA), whose intent is to preserve America’s existing nuclear fleet and related jobs through 2031. [105] The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act also includes tax credits through 2032 for existing U.S. reactors. ( The advanced nuclear tax credit under Section 45J of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which offers a maximum 1.8 cent per kilowatt-hour credit, continues to be the only currently available federal generation credit for new nuclear electricity generation facilities not yet placed into service.) [106]

DOE’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP), launched in 2020, seeks to speed the demonstration of advanced reactors through cost-shared partnerships with U.S. industry. Since its 2020 launch, Congress has appropriated $3.2 billion to the program, including $2.48 billion in funding through FY 2025 as part of the BIIJA. The agency is extending awards to applicants developing: 1) advanced reactor demonstrations, which are expected to result in a fully functional advanced nuclear reactor within seven years of the award; 2) advanced reactor concepts 2020 (ARC 20), which will support innovative and diverse designs with potential to commercialize in the mid-2030s; or 3) risk reduction for future demonstrations. [107] In total, DOE is supporting 10 U.S. advanced reactor designs to help mature and demonstrate its technologies. [108]

China is years ahead of the United States in even deploying our country’s own technologies.

There are many promising potential U.S. nuclear power innovators. For instance, Bellevue, Washington, and Bill Gates-backed TerraPower is developing a sodium fast reactor combined with a molten salt energy storage system and X-energy is developing a Gen-IV High-Temperature Gas-Cooled reactor. (Bechtel is the engineering, procurement, and construction provider for TerraPower in deploying its Natrium technology.) [109] In June 2024, TerraPower announced it was commencing construction in Wyoming on its advanced nuclear reactor, with an expected launch date of 2030. [110] Elsewhere, NuScale seeks to launch a scaled-down light water reactor (LWR) and Westinghouse is developing the AP300, its own scaled-down LWR. [111] Yet, none of these are expected to enter even the demonstration stage until 2030, at the earliest, which means China has opened a significant lead over the United States in the development of fourth-generation nuclear technology. And even considering the prior generation of reactors, notably the Westinghouse AP1000, China was deploying their versions of them as early as 2017, while as noted the Vogtle Unit 4 has just now come online, meaning that China is years ahead of the United States in even deploying our country’s own technologies.

Policymakers will also need to support the economics of new nuclear technologies. DOE estimates that nuclear reactors will need to cost about $3,600 per kilowatt to be built quickly and scaled around the country, but first-of-their-kind reactors are costing anywhere from $6,000 to $10,000 per kilowatt. [112] The United States will also need to work to develop domestic fuel enrichment capacity for these projects. For instance, DOE is currently trying to enable domestic high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) production capabilities via the HALEU Availability Program, through which DOE will acquire HALEU through purchase agreements with domestic industry partners and produce limited initial amounts of material from DOE-owned assets. [113] Of course, production at scale can reduce per-unit costs, but this requires a sustained commitment to comprehensive buildout. Another challenge pertains to skills: DOE estimates that if the United States is to meet the aforementioned 2050 target of tripling nuclear energy production, America would need an additional 375,000 skilled engineers, technicians, and construction personnel in the sector to support such a buildout. [114]

As such, the United States needs to revamp its approach to supporting next-generation nuclear initiatives. Notably, both ARDP and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) need more resources, in terms of funding and manpower , in part so they can pay market rates to the staff that will be needed to evaluate the wider variety of proposed nuclear designs to come. ARDP also needs a better down-selection process for the demonstration projects it’s currently funding. In particular, it appears that the current DOE approach envisions going from start-up to commercialization immediately; instead, DOE should have grant recipients produce a pilot-scale demo, such as in the 5–10 MW range, as part of the down-selection process, before going full commercial.

If nuclear energy is going to become a considerable export product for the United States again, then U.S. companies well need to be better supported in their efforts to sell into global markets. The United States should develop a “one-stop-shop” approach, including the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM), U.S. State Department, and other relevant agencies so that foreign buyers of U.S. nuclear exports can deal with a single entity rather than multiple agencies to complete deals (as Russia’s Rosatom does). It should also be made clear that nuclear is a qualifying technology for the EXIM’s China and Transformational Exports Program (CTEP), whose intent is to assist U.S. exporters facing competition from China and which makes qualifying companies in the program eligible for reduced fees, extended repayment terms, exemptions to EXIM policy requirements, and other benefits. [115] To its credit, America’s State Department has established partnerships with more than a dozen countries to help them fund and develop nuclear-energy programs and, eventually, SMRs. [116]

Here, the United States could also expand the Foundational Infrastructure for Responsible Use of Small Modular Reactor Technology (FIRST) program, a multiagency U.S. government initiative that provides capacity building support to help partner countries safely and responsibly build an SMR or other advanced reactor program, to include more countries . [117] The United States also has to negotiate civil nuclear cooperation agreements with foreign governments (123 agreements in total) and has been quite slow in doing this; enhanced staffing at DOE and the State Department could better support this, along with making a list of priority countries in the Global South with which to promote U.S. nuclear technology exports.

The United States has historically been a leader in nuclear fusion research, most notably with regard to the National Ignition Facility achieving the first net-energy gain nuclear fusion reaction in December 2022. [118] Still, the United States needs to build a comprehensive nuclear fusion strategy and strengthen investments therein: While the federal government will invest $790 million in fusion science programs in 2024, advocates had sought for at least $1 billion in investment. [119] Moreover, as one commentator observed, “The Biden administration has taken steps in the right direction with its development of a Bold Decadal Vision, recognizing the technology’s potential as a clean energy source, but has not translated this into a large-scale push.” [120] U.S. policy should work to more strongly coordinate government, academic, and private sector efforts in nuclear fusion and empower DOE with a mandate to achieve commercial fusion power as soon as possible. [121] A comprehensive strategy and sustained investment will be needed, for nuclear fusion represents yet one more arena where the technical, scientific, and commercial competition will be fierce between China and the United States in the years ahead.

For this reason, recent administrations have clamped down on the transfer or export of nuclear technologies to China. In January 2019, the Trump administration scuttled a 2015 agreement TerraPower had signed with CNNC to build a prototype 600 MW reactor at Xiapu in Fujian province. [122] Further, in August 2019, the United States placed China General Nuclear Power Group and three of its subsidiaries on its Entity List because they had “engaged in or enabled efforts to acquire advanced U.S. nuclear technology and material for diversion to military uses in China.” [123] And in August 2023, the Biden administration further tightened controls on the export of materials and components for nuclear power plants to China. [124] China has become America’s leading geostrategic competitor, and America needs to completely cease any sharing of its nuclear technologies with the country.

Lastly, the United States needs to be working more closely with its own allies, including France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Sweden (among others), to collaborate on R&D for advanced nuclear technologies and to help promote nuclear exports from techno-democracies to third-party markets. Indeed, considerable collaboration could be achieved in the regulatory, procurement, and contracting spaces. For instance, the United States could allow foreign companies in allied countries to own reactor licenses in the United States in order to promote foreign investment and accelerate domestic deployment. Further, the United States could lean into international efforts to standardize and harmonize design and testing standards, such as those embodied in IAEA’s SMR Platform and Nuclear Harmonization and Standardization Initiative. [125]

NRC should provide limited endorsement of internationally recognized quality assurance standards, testing standards, design methodologies, and safety analysis methodologies for advanced reactors. That would allow U.S. suppliers to learn and assess what allied countries are doing without reinventing the wheel in the United States and open the door for more international collaboration while limiting redundant qualification work.

Nuclear fusion represents yet one more arena where the technical, scientific, and commercial competition will be fierce between China and the United States in the years ahead.

The United States could also further relax import or export control of non-fuel or non-nuclear safety-related components (e.g., vessels, piping, testing services, etc.) to and from allied nations. This could include limited authorizations to be exempt from domestic sourcing on the procurement of systems, subsystems, and components related to advanced reactors from specific allied countries. Further, DOE could forge more bilateral agreements with allied R&D centers (e.g., the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), and the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI)) to provide funding to advance joint small R&D projects and data sharing . The United States could also explore joint financing of projects among allies; for instance, a foreign firm might be the prime contractor on a project, but firms from other countries could be involved too.

That matters, for, ultimately, every nuclear project America, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, or Sweden (or other allied countries) completes instead of China and Russia in developing countries or other third-party markets represents a win for democratic, free-market economies.

Acknowledgments

ITIF wishes to thank the Smith Richardson Foundation for supporting research on the question, “Can China Innovate?” Other reports in this series will cover artificial intelligence, autos/electric vehicles, biopharmaceuticals, chemicals, consumer electronics, and quantum computing. (Search #ChinaInnovationSeries on itif.org.)

The author wishes to thank Paul Saunders of the Center for the National Interest; Harry Andreades, Christina Leggett, and Cheng Xu of Booz Allen Hamilton; and Ian Tufts and Robert Atkinson for their assistane with this report. Any errors or omissions are the author’s alone.

About the Author

Stephen Ezell is vice president for global innovation policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and director of ITIF’s Center for Life Sciences Innovation. He also leads the Global Trade and Innovation Policy Alliance. His areas of expertise include science and technology policy, international competitiveness, trade, and manufacturing.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan research and educational institute that has been recognized repeatedly as the world’s leading think tank for science and technology policy. Its mission is to formulate, evaluate, and promote policy solutions that accelerate innovation and boost productivity to spur growth, opportunity, and progress. For more information, visit itif.org /about .

[1] .     Catherine Clifford, “How China became the king of nuclear power, and how the U.S. is trying to stage a comeback,” CNBC , August 30, 2023, https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/30/how-china-became-king-of-new-nuclear-power-how-us-could-catch-up.html.

[2] .     Sha Hua, “Atomic Power Is In Again—and China Has the Edge,” The Wall Street Journal , December 7, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/world/china/atomic-power-is-in-againand-china-has-the-edge-5f8a8b84.

[3] .     Remark of participant at ITIF roundtable on China’s nuclear power industry, April 4, 2024.

[4] .     ITIF translation of CNNP corporate website, April 24, 2024.

[5] .     Clifford, “How China became the king of nuclear power.”

[6] .     International Atomic Energy Agency, “What Is Nuclear Fusion?” https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/what-is-nuclear-fusion.

[7] .     China launches fusion consortium to build “artificial sun,” Nuclear Newswire , January 9, 2024, https://www.ans.org/news/article-5668/china-launches-fusion-consortium-to-build-artificial-sun/.

[8] .     Jennifer Hiller, “A Massive U.S. Nuclear Plant Is Finally Complete. It Might Be the Last of Its Kind,” The Wall Street Journal , April 29, 2024, https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/a-massive-u-s-nuclear-plant-is-finally-complete-it-might-be-the-last-of-its-kind-0c0f6e44; Bechtel, “Plant Vogtle Units 3 & 4,” https://www.bechtel.com/projects/plant-vogtle-unit-3-4/.

[9] .     Sandra Barbosu, “Not Again: Why the United States Can’t Afford to Lose Its Biopharma Industry” (ITIF, February 2024), https://itif.org/publications/2024/02/29/not-again-why-united-states-cant-afford-to-lose-biopharma-industry/.

[10] .   U.S. Department of Energy, “The History of Nuclear Energy,” https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/history-nuclear-energy.

[11] .   U.S. Department of Energy, “The Atomic Energy Commission” (July 1983), https://www.energy.gov/management/articles/history-atomic-energy-commission.

[12] .   Encyclopedia of Chicago, “Argonne National Laboratory,” http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/66.html .

[13] .   U.S. Department of Energy, “The History of Nuclear Energy.”

[14] .   Cutler Cleveland, “Watch the history of nuclear power in the U.S.,” Boston University Institute for Global Sustainable Energy, October 23, 2023, https://visualizingenergy.org/watch-the-history-of-nuclear-power-in-the-u-s/.

[15] .   Westinghouse, “AP1000 Public Safety and Licensing,” https://web.archive.org/web/20070807115318/http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/AP1000/public_safety_licensing.shtm.

[16] .   World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear Power in China,” https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/china-nuclear-power.aspx.

[17] .   Diane Cardwell, “The Murky Future of Nuclear Power in the United States,” The New York Times , February 18, 2017, http://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/business/energy-environment/nuclear-power-westinghouse-toshiba.html?partner=Bloomberg.

[18] .   Sean Wolfe, “China has nearly tripled its nuclear capacity in 10 years,” Power Engineering , May 6, 2024, https://www.power-eng.com/nuclear/china-has-nearly-tripled-its-nuclear-capacity-in-10-years/#gref.

[19] .   Data compiled from the International Atomic Energy Agency, country profiles.

[20] .   Seaver Wang, “China’s Impressive Rate of Nuclear Construction” (The Breakthrough institute, March 19, 2024), https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/chinas-impressive-rate-of-nuclear-construction.

[21] .   World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear Power in China.”

[22] .   Dan Murtaugh and Krystal Chia, “China’s Climate Goals Hinge on a $440 Billion Nuclear Buildout,” Bloomberg , November 2, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-climate-goals-hinge-on-440-billion-nuclear-power-plan-to-rival-u-s.

[23] .   World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear Power in China.”

[24] .   Sha Ya et al., “The role of nuclear in China’s energy future: Insights from integrated assessment,” Energy Policy Vol. 139 (2020), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421520301014.

[25] .   Murtaugh and China, “China’s Climate Goals Hinge on a $440 Billion Nuclear Buildout.”

[26] .   “China is building nuclear reactors faster than any other country,” The Economist , November 30, 2023, https://www.economist.com/china/2023/11/30/china-is-building-nuclear-reactors-faster-than-any-other-country.

[27] .   Wang, “China’s Impressive Rate of Nuclear Construction,”

[28] .   Ibid.

[29] .   World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear Power in China.”

[30] .   Clifford, “How China became the king of nuclear power.”

[31] .   Mark Hibbs, “The Future of Nuclear Power in China” (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2018), 25, https://carnegieendowment.org/files/Hibbs_ChinaNuclear_Final.pdf.

[32] .   Ibid.

[33] .   World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear Power in China.”

[34] .   Robert Lighthizer, No Trade Is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America’s Workers (Northampton, Massachusetts: Broadside Books, 2023).

[35] .   Jose Pagliery, “What were China’s hacker spies after?” CNN, May 19, 2014, https://money.cnn.com/2014/05/19/technology/security/china-hackers.

[36] .   World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear Power in China.”

[37] .   Shunsuke Tabeta, “China’s first homegrown reactor ready to take on Western players,” Nikkei Asia , November 28, 2020, https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Energy/China-s-first-homegrown-reactor-ready-to-take-on-Western-players.

[38] .   Clifford, “How China became the king of nuclear power.”

[39] .   Ibid.

[40] .   Hua, “Atomic Power Is In Again—and China Has the Edge.”

[41] .   Victoria Bela, “Shidaowan: world’s first fourth-generation nuclear reactor begins commercial operation on China’s east coast,” South China Morning Post , December 6, 2023, https://www.scmp.com/print/news/china/science/article/3244102/shidaowan-worlds-first-4th-generation-nuclear-reactor-begins-commercial-operation-chinas-east-coast.

[42] .   Aaron Larson, “Impressive Milestones Achieved on Chinese Advanced Nuclear Power Projects,” POWER Magazine, December 7, 2023, https://www.powermag.com/impressive-milestones-achieved-on-chinese-advanced-nuclear-power-projects/.

[43] .   Bela, “Shidaowan: world’s first fourth-generation nuclear reactor begins commercial operation on China’s east coast.”

[44] .   IAEA, “What are Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)?” https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/what-are-small-modular-reactors-smrs.

[45] .   Larson, “Impressive Milestones Achieved on Chinese Advanced Nuclear Power Projects.”

[46] .   Ibid.

[47] .   “Digital control system installed at China’s Linglong One,” Nuclear Newswire , April 26, 2024, https://www.ans.org/news/article-5991/digital-control-system-installed-at-chinas-linglong-one/ .

[48] .   Mike L., “China’s Thorium Reactor: Pioneering the Future of Nuclear Energy,” September 28, 2023, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chinas-thorium-reactor-pioneering-future-nuclear-energy-mike-l/.

[49] .   Sakshi Tiwari, “China Becomes Third Country To Develop Floating Nuclear Reactor; Claims It Can Withstand The ‘Rarest Of Rare’ Storms,” The EurAsian Times , December 15, 2021, https://www.eurasiantimes.com/china-becomes-third-country-to-develop-floating-nuclear-reactor/.

[50] .   Stephen Chen, “China’s first floating nuclear reactor may withstand once-in-10,000-years weather event, engineers say,” South China Morning Post , December 14, 2021, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3159566/chinas-first-floating-nuclear-reactor-may-withstand-once-10000.

[51] .   World Nuclear Association, “Fast Neutron Reactors,” https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/fast-neutron-reactors.

[52] .   Ibid.

[53] .   Prachi Patel, “China’s New Breeder Reactors May Product More Than Just Watts,” IEEE Spectrum , December 28, 2022, https://spectrum.ieee.org/china-breeder-reactor.

[54] .   Bill Gertz, “With an assist from Russia, China’s plutonium reactors fuel strategic arms buildup,” The Washington Times , January 23, 2024, https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/jan/23/with-assist-from-russia-chinas-plutonium-reactors-/.

[55] .   Generation IV International Forum, “Welcome to Generation IV International Forum,” https://www.gen-4.org/gif/.

[56] .   Hua, “Atomic Power Is In Again—and China Has the Edge.”

[57] .   World Nuclear Association, “China’s Nuclear Fuel Cycle,” April 25, 2024, https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/china-nuclear-fuel-cycle.

[58] .   Ibid.

[59] .   China Atomic Energy Authority, “The China’s new-generation uranium enrichment centrifuge for commercial use,” news release, March 20, 2018, https://www.caea.gov.cn/english/n6759361/n6759362/c6800629/content.html.

[60] .   Rimi Inomata, “China tops nuclear fusion patent ranking, beating U.S.,” Nikkei Asia , February 22, 2023, https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Science/China-tops-nuclear-fusion-patent-ranking-beating-U.S.

[61] .   Ibid.

[62] .   Dannie Peng, “China’s new Fusion Energy Inc to pool national resources in push to build ‘artificial sun,’” South China Morning Post , January 3, 2024, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3247145/chinas-new-fusion-energy-inc-pool-national-resources-push-build-artificial-sun.

[63] .   “China launches fusion consortium to build “artificial sun,” Nuclear Newswire , January 9, 2024, https://www.ans.org/news/article-5668/china-launches-fusion-consortium-to-build-artificial-sun/.

[64] .   Ibid.

[65] .   “China Seeks Nuclear Fusion Leap Through New R&D Company,” Bloomberg , January 2, 2024, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-02/china-seeks-nuclear-fusion-leap-through-new-r-d-company.

[66] .   Fusion Industry Association, “Chinese Fusion Energy Programs Are A Growing Competitor in the Global Race to Fusion Power,” https://www.fusionindustryassociation.org/chinese-fusion-energy-programs-are-a-growing-competitor-in-the-global-race-to-fusion-power/.

[67] .   Yang Kunyi and Shen Weiduo, “China maintains ‘artificial sun’ at 120 million Celsius for over 100 seconds, setting new world record,” Global Times , May 28, 2021, https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1224755.shtml.

[68] .   Fusion Industry Association, “Chinese Fusion Energy Programs Are A Growing Competitor in the Global Race to Fusion Power.”

[69] .   ITER, “Fusion Education Program in China,” https://www.iter.org/education/national/china.

[70] .   “China launches fusion consortium to build ‘artificial sun,’” Nuclear Newswire .

[71] .   “Nuclear battery: Chinese firm aiming for mass market production,” World Nuclear News , January 16, 2024, https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Nuclear-battery-Chinese-firm-aiming-for-mass-mark.

[72] .   Ibid.

[73] .   Ibid.

[74] .   Analyst’s calculations; International Energy Agency (IEA), Tracking Clean Energy Innovation: Focus on China (Paris: IEA, 2022), https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/6a6f3da9-d436-4b5b-ae3b-2622425d2ae4/TrackingCleanEnergyInnovation-FocusonChina_FINAL.pdf .

[75] .   European Commission (EC), “The 2023 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard” (EC, 2023), https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC135576.

[76] .   OECD Data Explorer, Bibliometric indicators, by field (Fractional counts of scientific publications among the world’s 10% top-cited scientific publications, Nuclear Energy and Engineering, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, 2008, 2022), https://data-explorer.oecd.org/ .

[77] .   Australian Strategic Policy Institute, “Critical Technology Tracker: Nuclear energy” (accessed April 10, 2024), https://techtracker.aspi.org.au/tech/nuclear-energy/?c1=cn .

[78] .   Ibid., 10.

[79] .   WIPO, “Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT),” https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/registration/pct/.

[80] .   World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), WIPO statistics database (6 – PCT publications by IPC class; G21B, G21C, G21D, G21F, G21G, G21H, G21J, G21K; 1995, 2023), accessed March 27, 2024, https://www3.wipo.int/ipstats/ips-search/patent .

[81] .   Ibid., 14.

[82] .   Peng, “China’s new Fusion Energy Inc to pool national resources in push to build ‘artificial sun.’”

[83] .   Inomata, “China tops nuclear fusion patent ranking, beating U.S.”

[84] .   Ibid.

[85] .   Ibid.

[86] .   GCN Power, “2022 Annual Report,” https://static.cninfo.com.cn/finalpage/2023-03-16/1216127809.PDF .

[87] .   Insights by Greyb, “China General Nuclear Power Group Patents – Key Insights and Stats,” https://insights.greyb.com/china-general-nuclear-power-group-patents/ . Author’s analysis of WIPO and USPTO data.

[88] .   China National Nuclear Power, “About,” https://www.cnnp.com.cn/cnnp/index/index.html .

[89] .   China National Nuclear Power, “2022 Annual Report,” https://static.cninfo.com.cn/finalpage/2023-04-27/1216626987.PDF .

[90] .   Author’s analysis of WIPO data, https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/search.jsf ; Search results from China National Intelligence Property Administration, https://www.cnipa.gov.cn/jact/front/mailpubdetail.do?transactId=438222&sysid=12 .

[91] .   Clifford, “How China became the king of nuclear power, and how the U.S. is trying to stage a comeback.”

[92] .   “China is building nuclear reactors faster than any other country,” The Economist .

[93] .   Murtaugh and China, ““China’s Climate Goals Hinge on a $440 Billion Nuclear Buildout.”

[94] .   Ibid.

[95] .   GCN Power, “2023 First half-year Report,” https://static.cninfo.com.cn/finalpage/2023-08-19/1216127802.PDF .

[96] .   Wang, “China’s Impressive Rate of Nuclear Construction.”

[97] .   “China could build 30 ‘Belt and Road’ nuclear reactors by 2030: official,” Reuters , June 20, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1TL0HY/.

[98] .   Hua, “Atomic Power Is In Again—and China Has the Edge.”

[99] .   Ibid.

[100] . Alan Ahn, “Nuclear Export Financing Today and Tomorrow” (Third Way, October 2023), https://www.thirdway.org/report/nuclear-export-financing-today-and-tomorrow.

[101] . OEC, “Nuclear Reactors,” (accessed April 24, 2024), https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/nuclear-reactors. Note: The nuclear reactors category includes exports of “[n]uclear reactors; fuel elements (cartridges), non-irradiated, for nuclear reactors, machinery and apparatus for isotopic separation.”

[102] . Remark of participant at ITIF roundtable on China’s nuclear power industry, April 4, 2024.

[103] . Clifford, “How China became the king of nuclear power.”

[104] . “America aims for nuclear-power renaissance,” The Economist , June 25, 2023 https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/06/25/america-aims-for-nuclear-power-renaissance.

[105] . Daniel Esposito, “How Policy Saved America’s Nuclear Power Plants,” Forbes, November 8, 2023, https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2023/11/08/how-policy-saved-americas-nuclear-power-plants/?sh=6f158be4190e.

[106] . Paul A. Gordon et al., “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 Boosts Nuclear Power With Tax Credits and Funding,” Lawflash , Morgan Lewis, August 16, 2022, https://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/2022/08/inflation-reduction-act-of-2022-boosts-nuclear-power-with-tax-credits-and-funding.

[107] . U.S. Department of Energy, “Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program,” https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-reactor-demonstration-program.

[108] . U.S. Department of Energy, “Infographic: Advanced Reactor Development,” https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/infographic-advanced-reactor-development.

[109] . Bechtel, “Delivering the Future of Nuclear Energy,” https://www.bechtel.com/markets/energy/nuclear-power/.

[110] . Jennifer Mcdermott, “In Wyoming, Bill Gates moves ahead with nuclear project aimed at revolutionizing power generation,” AP , June 10, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/bill-gates-nuclear-terrapower-wyoming-climate-change-electricity-23176f33200b22b9ede7f4ccf4f2ec3b .

[111] . Clifford, “How China became the king of nuclear power, and how the U.S. is trying to stage a comeback.”

[112] . “America aims for nuclear-power renaissance,” The Economist .

[113] . U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, “HALEU Availability Program,” https://www.energy.gov/ne/haleu-availability-program.

[114] . Ibid.

[115] . Export-Import Bank of the United States, “Chian and Transformational Exports Program,” https://www.exim.gov/about/special-initiatives/ctep.

[116] . “America aims for nuclear-power renaissance,” The Economist .

[117] . U.S. Department of State, Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, “FIRST: Foundational Infrastructure for Responsible Use of Small Modular Reactor Technology,” https://www.smr-first-program.net/.

[118] . Department of Energy, “DOE National Laboratory Makes History by Achieving Fusion Ignition,” news release, December 13, 2022, https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-national-laboratory-makes-history-achieving-fusion-ignition.

[119] . Timothy Gardner, “Nuclear Fusion Backers Meet in US Capital as Competition With China Looms,” Reuters , March 20, 2024, https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2024-03-20/nuclear-fusion-backers-meet-in-us-capital-as-competition-with-china-looms.

[120] . Ylli Bajraktari, “What the US needs to do to win the fusion race,” The Hill , February 12, 2024, https://thehill.com/opinion/4463099-what-the-us-needs-to-do-to-win-the-fusion-race/.

[121] . Ibid.

[122] . Jay Greene, “Trump’s Tech Battle With China Roils Bill Gates Nuclear Venture,” The Wall Street Journal , January 1, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-tech-battle-with-china-roils-bill-gates-nuclear-venture-11546360589.

[123] . Elina Teplinsky, Anne Leidich, and Aaron R. Hutman, “Four China Nuclear Industry Companies Added to “Entity List”“ (Pillsbury, August 15, 2019), https://www.pillsburylaw.com/en/news-and-insights/china-industry-entity-list.html.

[124] . Timothy Gardner, “US tightens export controls of nuclear power items to China,” Reuters , August 18, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-tightens-export-controls-nuclear-power-items-china-2023-08-18/.

[125] . IAEA, “The SMR Platform and Nuclear Harmonization and Standardization Initiative (NHSI),” https://www.iaea.org/services/key-programmes/smr-platforms-nhsi.

Editors’ Recommendations

April 15, 2024

How Innovative Is China in the Chemicals Industry?

February 29, 2024

Not Again: Why the United States Can’t Afford to Lose Its Biopharma Industry

August 31, 2020

Competing With China: A Strategic Framework

China is pushing to dominate the global chemical industry through innovation, not just production, new study finds.

December 13, 2016

Energy Innovation Policy: Priorities for the Trump Administration and Congress

February 23, 2024

How to Win the Economic War With China

• Skip to main content
• Skip to search
• Skip to footer

Products and Services

Customer Stories

Financial Services

Accelerating innovation in automotive finance.

Global financial service provider streamlines data center operations to enable new levels of business agility

Central visibility strengthens data security

Migrating workloads to the new, secondary data center allows financial services giant to rethink how data is managed

Financials Service Provider

This customer is a leading financial service provider specializing in the automotive sector, with operations worldwide.

Simplify the migration of workloads to the new, secondary data center to meet industry regulations

• Establish application-centric approach
• Enable proactive maintenance
• Accelerate future infrastructure deployments

Cisco ACI provides a secure, open, and comprehensive software-defined networking (SDN) solution

Streamlines data center operations

Supports business agility and time to market for new services

Segments critical data

Strengthens security and meets regulatory requirements

Establishes consistent visibility

Reduces time to resolve issues

Embracing disruption and a startup mindset

The financial services sector has been transformed over the past decade through the opportunities brought by new, digital workflows. The sector, once characterized as being conservative and slow moving, is now embracing disruptors and startup culture.

Digital touchpoints have made it easier for consumers to compare, buy, or switch accounts. Loan applications can be done in minutes, from a smartphone, and approved in seconds. Tracking devices, willingly adopted by the public, have brought new clarity to the insurance market.

This Cisco customer is one of the world's leading providers of financial services for the automotive sector. Historically, these services would mean arranging loans for car buying; today, the business also provides car subscriptions, digital parking services, fuel cards, and more.

It is a highly competitive, dynamic market. At any one time, and in markets around the world, the business competes with traditional banks, credit card companies, and niche service providers. The automotive industry is also exploring how driverless cars, battery-as-a-service, and fractional ownership may impact future revenues and service innovation.

However, in an uncertain world, some things remain unchanged: the financial services sector continues to be highly regulated; data security is paramount.

"The amount of data we handle is growing each day," says the company's data center network architect. "Data is the new oil. Our challenge is how best to manage that data. Some data is more sensitive, or more urgent, than others."

Reimagining the data center

An opportunity to reevaluate how the company managed this wealth of data was presented by European industry regulators. The regulators determined the customer's two data centers to be too close together and at risk of both being disrupted by a single, local event. Relocating one to a more distant location would strengthen disaster recovery.

The adoption of Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) promised to simplify the migration of workloads to the new, secondary site. By using a secure, open, and comprehensive software-defined networking (SDN) solution, the customer could then optimize and accelerate future infrastructure deployments, with governance across application deployment lifecycle. SDN would enable rolling automation, creating ongoing efficiency.

This implementation was not intended as a "Big Bang" switch to ACI. With workloads too critical to fail, the customer phased in an application-centric approach, continuing to be network-centric when required.

"The goal was to simplify our operations, but switching to an application-centric approach provoked some serious discussion," says the customer spokesperson. "Today, I can say it was the right decision. Cisco ACI has been mind-changing for our network engineers, a totally different approach for us, but it has delivered that speed and flexibility."

Streamlined operations and greater consistency

The switch to Cisco ACI underpins a new level of operational efficiency for the customer. With everything now standardized via APIs, operations are more streamlined. Crucially for a business in the financial services industry, there is better visibility and consistency across operations in both data centers and all applications. This strengthens compliance with the latest regulations.

"If we have a request for a new server, we can deploy the ports with a Python script and it's immediately configured," the spokesperson explains.

This has a profound effect on the way the business moves on new opportunities. Customer-facing digital services can be developed with the assurance that the network team is ready.

"The networking guys used to have a reputation for being slow, for holding things up. But no more. With configuration, there is very little manual effort; action is a click or an item on a drop-down menu. We're now held in high esteem because we can meet the needs of the business quickly."

Data is segmented with the appropriate security settings, critical for a business that operates across multiple countries and involves millions of customers. "The rules are defined in the firewall. The network separates everything," says the spokesperson.

The business recognizes that simplification is a journey, not a destination. It is looking at Cisco Nexus Dashboard to enhance visibility across all cloud and data center networks. "We want to reduce the time we spend investigating issues. We're hoping Nexus Dashboard will allow us to see problems before they impact the customer," he adds

"For us, it's important to have as many solutions as possible with one partner. Cisco's platform approach, with open APIs and integrations, enables us to address our entire infrastructure."

Testimonials

Impacting the way the business moves on new opportunities.

"With configuration, there is very little manual effort; action is a click or an item on a drop-down menu. We're now held in high esteem because we can quickly meet the needs of the business."

Simplification as a journey, not a destination

"For us, it's important to have as many solutions as possible with one partner. Cisco's platform approach, with open APIs and integrations, enables us to address our entire infrastructure." "

More for you

Technology has changed how we live and work.

Leading organizations are innovating with Cisco solutions to connect, secure, and transform.

Organizations like yours rely on Cisco

Each industry has its own challenges that require tailored solutions.

You are a changemaker, innovator, and discoverer

We want to help you share your story. Learn more about how you can build your organization's profile—and your own—as you expand your network.

Let’s build the bridge to possible

Find out more.

Make your network agile. Radically simplify, secure, automate, and accelerate your network deployment.

Featured resources

See how Cisco ACI customers are innovating faster and minimizing downtime.

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

The Innovation Mindset in Action: 3M Corporation

• Vijay Govindarajan and Srikanth Srinivas

How 3M has consistently powered itself through innovation.

In three recent blog posts we looked at the innovation mindset in individuals, profiling game changers Jerry Buss , Peter Jackson , and Shantha Ragunathan . These three innovators share common qualities, which we call the innovation mindset, a robust framework which can be applied at the micro (individual) as well as macro (organizational) levels: they see and act on opportunities , use “and” thinking to resolve tough dilemmas and break through compromises, and employ their resourcefulness to power through obstacles. Innovators maintain a laser focus on outcomes , avoid getting caught in the activity trap , and proactively “expand the pie” to make an impact. Regardless of where they start, innovators and innovative companies persist till they successfully change the game.

• VG Vijay Govindarajan is the Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of International Business at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. He is coauthor of Reverse Innovation (HBR Press, 2012). Srikanth Srinivas is the Senior Vice President of Solution Innovation at Medecision and the author of  Shocking Velocity .

Partner Center