Abstract:
The main goal of this thesis was to analyze the process of innovation in Openbravo. Firstly, to
look on what is innovative and where innovation in Openbravo comes from. Secondly, how
innovation is created and implemented into the company, and its outcomes. Next, it was
aimed to analyze the procedure of innovation management in Openbravo – its way of
recognizing potential of innovation, its strategy and organizational structure, and its system of
innovation control. The hypothesis was that the incremental innovation in technology based
startup companies is the main factor of value creation.
The paper consists of two parts – theoretical and empirical. The first two chapters are
theoretical, and the third one is empirical. The first chapter consists of four subchapters. The
first one defines the concept and describes the types of innovation. The second explains where
innovation comes from – the sources of innovation. The third subchapter analyzes the factors
that influence the effectiveness of making an innovative opportunity a real innovation –
transfer of innovation. The last part of the first chapter presents different models that explain
the innovation’s impact on firm’s and market capabilities depending of the innovation’s type.
The second chapter is focused on the process of innovation management, and is divided into
four subchapters. The first one describes how companies recognize the potential of innovation
and what the factors that influence this process are. The second subchapter is focused on
strategic choice of innovation strategy. The third subchapter explains how companies design and organize their innovation portfolios. Finally, the last part of the second chapter analyzes
the innovation system and the process of bringing innovation into market.
The third chapter – the empirical one, is an analysis of the processes of innovation in
Openbravo. First, the goals and methodology of the analysis are described. In the second part,
the business model of Openbravo and its competitive environment is described. The third
subchapter explains all the characteristics of Openbravo’s product and services. The chapter
ends with a broad analysis of Openbravo’s innovation management process. The chapter ends
with conclusion about the analysis, and with suggestions based on personal experience.
The theoretical part of the paper is based on management and economic literature – books,
articles, and internet resources. The empirical part is based on personal experience in
Openbravo during the period of over six months, personal interviews with the members of the
executive team and on conversations with other employees.
