Organizations face diverse challenges in navigating their less-structured business processes (LSBPs). These LSBPs are characterized by an unpredictable and often knowledge-intensive nature, unlike structured processes that have standardized actions. Conventional business process management approaches often encounter difficulties to foster innovation within organizations that are primarily dealing with LSBP characteristics, resulting in managers facing difficulties in identifying and evaluating their innovation efforts in an LSBP-environment. To help these managers, this study iteratively develops and validates a brainstorming tool designed as a practical guide for assessing an organization’s current (A-IS) and desired capabilities (TO-BE) and prioritizing improvement actions for innovating LSBPs.
This research follows a design-science research (DSR) methodology by integrating build-test iterations through expert evaluations, real-life case studies and workshops across multiple industries.
The findings extend knowledge in business process management and innovation management by offering a practical tool for assessing and improving an organization’s innovation capability in LSBPs. Ample empirical evidence demonstrates that the tool allows revealing distinct capability distributions across different areas, highlighting specific strengths in each capability area.
The study is limited to qualitative evaluation methods. Others limitations relate to the specific terminology and thus complexity of certain questions, which may affect accessibility for users. The tool is intended for content-specific workshops, not as a replacement for existing systems.
The tool helps organizations with a systematic approach to assess their AS-IS and define TO-BE capabilities. It facilitates a critical gap analysis, prioritization of resources using effort impact matrix and implementation tracking.
This study introduces a novel brainstorming tool designed for innovating in LSBPs.
