Knowledge and continuous innovation - The CIMA methodology

Competition today is forcing companies to increase their effectiveness thro ugh exploiting synergy and learning in product innovation. Literature, howe ver, is still mainly focused on how product development projects, seen larg ely as isolated efforts, should be organised and managed. This article prop oses a model to describe and explain how companies can gain a substantive c ompetitive advantage by extending their innovation efforts to other phases of the product life cycle and by facilitating knowledge transfer and learni ng both within the company and with other partner organisations. The model is based in collaborative research by the authors, based in their involveme nt in the Euro-Australian co-operation project CIMA (Euro-Australian co-ope ration centre for Continuous Improvement and innovation MAnagement).