Managing Risk in the Innovation Project

Abstract

Due to the diversity of opinion and theory over the nature of risk, reaching an agreement about risk management is difficult. This will be a major problem if any effort is made to proactively manage ‘risk’ in naturally ‘risky’ areas such as innovation. Some risk management could be valuable, but perhaps too much, or inappropriate risk management might stifle innovation. It is necessary and valuable to consider the process of innovation from conceptualization to commercialization, how uncertainties are formed, how they are managed in that context, and how the techniques of risk management can be further deployed to enhance the success rate of innovation projects. The object of this research is to identify the sources of risk in innovation projects and to determine whether they could be managed better. Various approaches have been proposed to risk management in general, however the extent to which they are relevant for managing innovation is uncertain. Thus, during this paper, the general model of innovation (with considering that there are different models presented in the literature for innovation projects) and the process of risk management for managing the parameters which create the risk in these projects are explained.