Since 90s of the 20th Century, the trend of economic globalization and networking became more apparent, and the new S&T revolution based on the IT technology and Internet technology forced the enterprise undergoing the fundamental change about the survival and technology environment, business objectives and mode (Xu Qingrui, 2007). Information technology is given more attention and information and knowledge will play important role for economic development. Information and knowledge-intensive high-tech industry will be the crucial and strategic industries in 21st century (Sung T.Y., 2009). With the popularization of information technology, how to make use of information technology to enhance corporate capability is became the focus (Fu Ruicheng, Bi Kexin, 2009). What's more, facing the increasingly customized demand and short product life cycles, company needs to change the original innovation mode and achieve comprehensive synergistic innovation with the technology elements and non-technology elements. Therefore, in information technology, the establishment and improvement Innovation Management system is the core of enterprises development.
Scholars have carried out extensive research about total innovation management (TIM), such as the theory system of TIM (Xu Qingrui, 2007), the synergistic mechanism among the elements of TIM (Zheng Gang, 2009; Wang Fangrui, 2004), the influence of TIM on innovation performance (Shui Changqing,2009, Fu Xiaozhou, 2008, Mao Wuxing, 2006, Zheng Gang ,2004). On the other hand, the research about IT gradually increased, such as the adoption of ICT (Lal, K., 2008), the diffusion of information technology and knowledge (Song, M., H. Berends, et al., 2007ï¼›Papastathopoulou, P., G. J. Avlonitis, et al., 2007). Information technology provided a powerful enabling tool for enterprise innovation. Information process and innovation process were gradually integrated. At the same time, Information technology must be guided by a sound management system and TIM provided direction for the information process.
Total Innovation Management (TIM), is the new paradigm of innovation management, which was explored and developed by the Research Institute of Innovation and Development (RCID in brief) of Zhejiang University based on the heavy study of successful innovative firm in China and abroad, in the end of last century, and first introduce to the academia in the beginning of this Century, exactly 2002 in Hangzhou, China (Xu Qingrui, et al, 2003). The general path of indigenous innovation of Chinese firms is Secondary innovation, Portfolio innovation and Total innovation Management. Secondary innovation means firm introduces advanced technology and re-innovation after assimilation and absorption. Portfolio innovation includes the portfolio and integration of technology innovation and non-technology innovation. TIM is a big step beyond Portfolio innovation, and integrates time-space innovation and all innovators.
Information technology, in the core of computer technology and communication technology, completed the information production, transmission, storage, processing, recycling and utilization (ZHANG Tongjian, SHAO Guohua, 2009). Currently, information construction obtained huge development in our country. Through utilizing the information technology, enterprise got great changes, from intelligent production control to management information, from information silos to information sharing, from individual applications to overall plan, form technology department pushing to application department pulling. The core of application of information technology is the information capability (including knowledge). From different perspectives, many research defined the information capability, such as " the capability of enterprise acquiring, processing, analyzing and utilizing information from social information resources", "development and utilization capability form environment and internal information resources, and the capability of acquiring information, selecting and adsorbing information, and transforming and sending information". Information capability means enterprises acquire, processing and applying information resources and technology in the division of production, operation, management, distribution and so on. Information process effectively enhanced the organization capability, social capability, technical skills and marketing capability, and achieved strategy capability and performance. This research argues that information capability is that firms acquire, process, share information and information materialization based on information and communication technology.
In the stage of demand generation, information technology application increased enterprise accessing to related product demand. (1) The channels of accessing to information increased. Through information technology platform, the Internet, specialized databases, browsing related sites, the enterprises can obtain more information about product technology and product demand concept, so as to facilitate more accurate product demand. (2) The way that enterprises acquired customers' information changed. Traditional enterprises obtained customer information mainly through surveys and customer feedback. In the context of information technology, the means of gaining customer information got more advanced and accurately. Online companies like Yahoo record every click made by visitors to their websites, collecting billions of bytes of data daily. Information collection and identification devices like store cards and radio-frequency identification (RFID) devices enable organizations to collect accurate information on the purchasing behavior of customers (Awazu, Y., P. Baloh, et al, 2009). In addition, many enterprises created the toolkit for customer by information technology and allowed users to development their own products, so, manufacturers learned about the needs of customers (Pr ¨ ¹ gl, R. and M. Schreier, 2006). Therefore, information acquiring capability based on information technology helped enterprises understand the more extensive product information and increase the success rate of product development.
Concept selection phase is mainly about information analysis and processing. Demand information can quickly be delivered in the firm to make R&D department, marketing, production and others functions fully understand via modern information technology. Concept screening can integrate the opinions of various departments and increase the market success. With information technology, the capacity of acquiring information increased, the capability of information processing strengthened. By the appropriate hardware and software, enterprises can enhance information processing and analyzing to got the corresponding conclusions.
In the product development stage, the utilization of information technology can help companies shorten product development cycle and improve the controllability of product development process. Since 2005, Focused Photonics Inc.(FPI) introduced the PACE idea and adopted the process of integrated product development (IPD) and Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) 2 level certification. FPI instituted range of processes and templates to guide product development and implementation to achieve the seamlessly connecting the whole process of product development, and also all stages can be controlled. Finally, the product development speed and success rate got enhancement. The cycle of early core product development was about 2 years. The cycle of post-core product development is generally about six months to 1 year, and the products possessed strong competition.
In summary, the information acquiring, sharing and processing capability based on ICT improve the product development capability.
Leveraging marketing innovation capability
Firstly, based on ICT, many firms have launched Internet marketing, Through Internet marketing, the customer scope and released information increased. Comparing to traditional marketing tools, this means at lower cost with high efficiency. Thus they win higher satisfaction and higher earnings.
Secondly, via information network, companies can reach more new customers. By dialogue via voice, video conferencing, e-mail, instant messaging, chat or a combination of various methods, customer representatives are able to carry out more rich communication with their customers. Wherever they are, virtualized IT resources across all locations enabled enterprises to better allocate resources according to demand dynamically and provide consistent information and services.
Leveraging other innovation capability
Recent progress of communication and information technologies, such as the emergence and swift expansion of the Internet and the rapid decline in computing and communication costs, allowed the development of new ways to create and deliver value, which have offered scope for the creation of unconventional exchange mechanisms and transaction architectures (Amit and Zott, 2001), and accentuated the possibilities for the design of new boundary-spanning organizational forms. Information technology has a great impact on the traditional business model, business value proposition and value capture must undergo fundamental changes that strategic direction need to re-consider in the context of information technology. In addition, the firm's strategic decision-making needed to integrate a lot of technical information and market intelligence. Information acquiring and information processing capability provided more objective guidance for the enterprise strategic decision-making and help to specify the right strategy.
In the aspects of organization innovation, first of all, information technology has changed the organization's information infrastructure and become the most important intrinsic motivation and means to promote organizational change and innovation. Development of information technology provided powerful hardware platform function for the enterprise operation and communicated organization components to maintain the blood (information) flows in the body tissues. Every adjustment of organizational structure was inseparable from the support of information technology. Some scholars believed that the application of advanced IT technologies will strengthen information processing capability and efficiency, thereby reduce the number of middle management (Huber, 1990). Secondly, information technology affected the organizations interface. Wu Xiaobo et al (2001) believed that information technology had changed the communication way of the corporate sector, the enterprises, enterprises and customers, and caused the change of their organizations interface both inside and outside: one is to strengthen the interface, for example, the application of IT will promote the information communication strength and density between R&D and sales, and narrow the distance between them; on the other hand, the weakening of the interface, such as the application of IT made some departments functions will gradually be done by computer and the network, resulted in the weakening interface between the department and other departments. Finally, IT technology implementation had close relationship with business process reengineering. T.H. Davenport (1994) spoke highly of IT for promoting the role of process reengineering that IT is both a process innovation enablers, is also the implementer of the new process. IT and ERP implementation had a very close relationship, but by no means equivalent. BPR is an idea, but IT is a technology. Implementation of the ERP is not simply technical problems, but a way of thinking change and organization revolutionary innovation (Dinning, 2001). The key factor is to consider how the business process reengineering and how to integrate core process into ERP system.
3.2 ICT leveraging All innovators innovation and All time/space innovation
From the perspective of all involvement innovation (HII), information technology is the basis of HII. Most employees involved in the business innovation process, two bases were necessary (1) employees had full understanding the enterprise; (2) Enterprises provided learning platform for employees. Information construction accelerated the information flows within the enterprises and enabled employees to quickly learn and master, and then propose their valuable suggestions. Information technology help employees to quickly access business-related information, build a learning platform. Secondly, the information technology is the mean of achieving AII. Advises employees proposes for enterprise development came into business decisions, this needed good information analysis and filtering mechanisms. Because of the capacity of the recommendations of the staff, rapid analysis and processing must rely on information technology in order to pass gradually from the bottom to the top decision-makers。Finally, AII presented new challenges for information technology. Haier's "Individual-order combination development pattern" built accounting system with the main body of autonomous bodies. In the rapidly changing environment, the information processing capability was the challenge to implement TIM.
From the perspective of the all space-time innovation, the networking formation between companies with external innovation network is based on the rapid development of modern network and communication technology. Without information technology, it is difficult to obtain the required information of all kinds, communication between enterprises and enterprises also lacked the necessary technical support (LI Longyi LI, TAO Lihua, 2009).
Fig. 1 IT leveraging TIM competence
â…£ TOTAL INNOVATION MANAGEMENT ON THE BASIS OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
In the open innovation era, according to the policy "Information technology stimulates industrialization while industrialization promotes information technology", Honyar's innovation changes from the single mode which focuses on the internal technology to total innovation mode which is cross business boundary, interacting within and outside the enterprise network. Information technology helps Honyar combined internal and external networks, promoting open and total innovation. Table 1 is the key events summary of information technology construction of Hanyar.
TABLE 1 Honyar's key events of IT construction
4.1 Information technology of Honyar promotes all-element innovation
Building up Honyar's total innovation management system, the base of company's innovation capability is information technoligy. The first information technology application of Honyar is in technology innovation field, then promoted to management process and organization. Step by step, it promoted to the field of external network. The successful implementation of SG-CIMS-1 project not only made the company's computer application level upgrade, but also trained a system R&D team which had both practice working ability and high theoretical level.
After that, development and implement team which is based on company's information center, sucessfully implemented SG-CIMS-2 and SG-CIMS-3 engineering according to Honyar strategy. The engineering's success increases company's information application level, promotes company's internal fine management. With continuing expansion, Honyar makes use of superior resources-marketing channels, begins to integrate suppliers, processing plants and dealers by means of "Internet Virtual Factary". By effectively data collecting method and advanced information analysis mechanism, it increases Honyar's basic management level and information capability.
4.2 Information technology of Honyar promotes all-involvement innovation
Honyar has established information management platform to collect, process and share company's all knowledge, data and resources. All these helped to improve storage management which includes a large number of programs, achievements, experience and knowledge, and to promote learning, training, sharing, reusing and innovation. The establishment of knowledge management system helps employees to learn working skill conveniently and by using network to learn on-line. A "learning organization" appears.
By information center, personnel accomplish two dimensions interaction, seen at table 2.
TABLE 2 Personnel communication approach
â…¤ HAIER'S CONSTRUCTION OF TIM SYSTEM THROUGH ICT
On the basis of Business Process Reengineering, Haier Group gradually forms the information integration model, with order flow as the center, which can be called "Individual-order combination development pattern (I-OCDP, inshort)". By using I-OCDP, Haier Group raises its information capacity and as a result its innovation capacity is leveraged.
In I-OCDP, individual-order means employees of the company and order does not merely mean the specific orders to do, but the demand market. And the composition of human resource and order means everyone has his own market objective. Under the premise of creating value for customers, value of the employees and the company can also be achieved. This leads to two important changes: (1) Organizational structure of the company changes from "pyramid" to "inverted triangle", which means managers and employees all abbey the orders coming from customers instead of top management. And the role of managers changes from giving orders to employees to providing resources for them in order to satisfy the customers' need. So the "inverted triangle", which is composed of employees, managers and the whole functional apartment, ensures the one target---creating value for the customers; (2) The company creates a new accounting system with the autonomous bodies as the main body, changing the traditional financial statements to "three statements/tables" for each autonomous body: Income statement, Nissin table and salary table.
In the internet era, Haier' I-OCDP merges visual and real networks to satisfy customers' need in the first time with zero inventory, which creates a matchless competitiveness. Visual network is the internet. Not being a promotion place, the internet provides a communication basis for the customers through online community in order to form user viscosity. For example, Haier puts all proposals on the internet, whenever the customers need to find their own favorable ones, they just need to input the customized needs no. acreage, direction, décor and color of their house. With the needs of customers through visual network, real network is employed to satisfy them by delivering service to their houses in the first time. Real network includes marketing network, logistics network and service network. Haier sets up more than 1000 community shops, 5000 county stores, 24000 rural networks and 100000 village-level focal points in major cities of China. And it also builds distribution stations in more than 2500 counties and 17000 service outlets throughout China. This real network helps Haier realize the goal, which is called "sales to village, delivery to door and service to home ", to fulfill customers' needs in the first time.
It not only satisfies customers' needs, but also strengthens its management innovation that Haier achieves the support of information technology on I-OCDP by using visual and real networks. Through information technology, accounting system of staff innovation can be set up, which includes the communication between employees and customers, the store of creative ideas on products from customers, company's database of creative ideas and information database of market. After learning the needs of customers, it is convenient to follow every procedure from product idea to product molding by using information technology, which not only ensures the realization of customers' requirements, but also helps perfect the company's quality management and improve service quality. After several years' hard work, Haier's information capacity grow, some conclusions can be drawn as follows:
Information technology improves Haier' innovation capacity, in following ways: (1) R&D capacity. Information technology ensures that information of technology can be fetched by Haier quickly, which can also be frequently disused and shared among R&D personnel all over the world. Creative ideas from employees, dealers and customers accelerate the speed of R&D, so that it raises the company's R&D capacity. (2) Marketing capacity. The high capacity of producing and obtaining information guarantees Hair' rapid response to the market news and translates it into requirement information quickly, so that the improving response speed helps raise its marketing capacity. Response speed to customers' needs is reduced from 36 days to 10 days. More than 800 products from 23 types of Haier Group are directly sold through internet and customers who order online can enjoy star service around the clock in every major city in China, best meeting market demand. (3) Manufacturing capacity. The high ability to utilize information brings Haier the special e-manufacturing process: Flexible Production +JIT+ Agile Manufacturing+ Mass Customization, which increases its manufacturing capacity. When a customer from Harbin wanted a left door refrigerator, it took Haier 7 days from receiving order to making the delivery. That's Haier's evident strong manufacturing capabilities. Thus, "One model of man and order" improves the companies' information capacity. The integration of visual and real network and information construction promote companies' comprehensive innovation.
This study discussed the improvement of total innovation management system via information and communication technology. Innovation process is the process of information and knowledge flowing. ICT in the core of information capability improved TIM competences. Information capability is that firms acquire, process, share information and information materialization based on information and communication technology. This study explored the transmission mechanism from information technology to total innovation management. Finally, this relationship between information technology and innovation elements was elaborated through taking Haier and Honyar as examples.
