Dear reader,
The analytics of this blog constistenly show approximately 50 readers per month, which is stimulating. Thank you all for your feedback & valuable contributions.
I need more insights via one last small survey: Practices When Managing Innovative Suppliers.
The first survey and two roundtable discussions give industry insights from over 120 NZ organisations. It identified a number of procurement best practices. This is helpful for the industry and researchers alike. I am still working on analysing the results, see the previous blogs for some of the results.
You might also check a recent posting onthe BravoSolution blog on supplier enabled innovations in larger US corporations. Although my first survey showed that smaller organisations behave differently from larger organisations, readers could use some of the findings from the US blog.
I now want to validate when the industry uses a particular best practice.
Hence please complete this brief survey (4 main questions). Practices When Managing Innovative Suppliers.
Again two people will receive a copy of the Business Model Generation handbook.
All respondents receive a copy of the survey results.
(BTW: I have finally changed the title of my blog. Entrepreneurial companies and green-tech innovations are still an important part of my research, but for a long time the research focus has been broader.)
Best regards,
astaal@aut.ac.nz
Anne Staal
From the 120 completed surveys, some interesting findings have appeared. The picture below suggests that smaller companies (less than 100 employees) in the built environment benefit from their interactions with innovative suppliers. The small company respondents WITH supplier interaction (n=64) indicated more often that their innovations yield better company results and better results for the natural environment. The (control) group of larger organisations (n=35; more than 250 staff) reported similar benefits from their supplier interaction. This was confirmed when analysing the intensity of the supplier relations (Question 8). Smaller and larger organisations report similar medium-high intensities in their supplier relations, both mostly with innovative companies providing services. Managing external partners takes resources and poses risks.
Resources in smaller companies are smaller and risks are often bigger. Small company respondents in the survey consider managing their supplier risks equally important (Question 7) as large organisations. When taking size into consideration, small companies hence take a relatively greater effort, and according to the survey can be equally successful. But then the small companies also score higher on entrepreneurship than larger organisations (again Question 8). [The relationship of entrepreneurship and success still needs to be analysed].
Put simply: also for small companies, it seems a good thing to involve suppliers in construction innovations. To some this may seem logical though others would prefer to develop innovations more 'in house'. The overall academic debate is still out, but at least the survey respondents suggest to successfully cooperate with innovative suppliers.
The question of course then is what to do in a particular situation.
A recent roundtable discussion with representatives of larger organisations suggests what best procurement practices these professionals would use when managing their innovative suppliers.
A set of seven contrasting situations had been selected from the survey. The participants could chose from 2 sets of 5 procurement best practices (also from the survey). The discussions confirmed that best practices are context-related, and are not always applied. The Figure below shows some partial results. (Guess copy-pasting the entire spreadsheet would be a bit too boring ...).
The practices were discussed in 2 groups of 4 participants. Participants could individually select 1 or max 2 practices. All practices which were selected (in 2 rounds) at least 5 times, have been indicated below with YES. When all participants did not choose a particular practice, that has been indicated with NO. In some instances participants would like to use two best practices (two YES on one row), or only less than 4 participants agreed on a particular practice, which has been indicated with a ??.
As the NO is inherently stronger (none of the participants chose to use this practice) than the YES, the Figure gives the NO in bold. Likewise the practices the participants would mostly use, are also shown in bold.
[As more often in research, this TOP 2 of practices from these 8 participants does not totally align with the TOP 3 as suggested earlier in the survey (see an earlier blog). In part this is because the discussion wanted a max of 2 best practices in a certain situation. It part it may be due the small number of participants. Nevertheless the discussion has given a deeper insight in the applicability of the best practices].
And finally: when to use what procurement practice? For example, when dealing with incremental supplier innovations, the participants suggested they would more often use contracts (TOP 1 in survey). When dealing with radical supplier innovations, the participants suggested they would manage relations based on trust and mutual goals (TOP 3 in survey). They did not suggest using suppliers early in the innovation process (TOP 2 in survey). Likewise, in the case of radical innovations only the TOP 2 from the survey (managing risks) was partly found applicable. Rewarding innovative suppliers in case of incremental innovations ranked low in the survey.
The complete set of practices will be discussed in one more round table discussion later this week. Please complete the survey if you want to contribute to this meaningful New Zealand research! We've made seven people happy with the draw on the Business Model Generation book. Stay tuned for more updates.
You might also check a recent posting onthe BravoSolution blog on supplier enabled innovations in larger US corporations. Although my first survey showed that smaller organisations behave differently from larger organisations, readers could use some of the findings from the US blog. 
