“What customers think about companies’ ability to innovate is more important to uncover than what their managers and employees think”

NHH Norwegian School of Economics has today, 15^th December 2020, signed an agreement with the University of Aarhus, Department of Management, for a national measurement of Danish consumers'
perception of how innovative important Danish industries and companies are - Danish Innovation Index (DII), says professor and head of research center Digital Innovation for Growth (DIG), Tor W. Andreassen.

Earlier this year, we signed a similar agreement with the Hanken School of Economics, Finland, for the Finnish Innovation Index (FII). In 2019, we entered into a similar agreement with Karlstad Business School for the Swedish Innovation Index (SII). In the US, Fordham University, New York has been responsible for the American Innovation Index (AII) since 2018. Other countries have shown interest.

With a research collaboration between leading business schools for measuring perceived innovativeness, NHH has laid the foundation for an international database for comparison between industries and companies where customers' voices are highlighted in a number of important innovation areas. This will also be important and useful for our students in our various study programs, including NHH Executive, says Andreassen.

At the end of the day, it's not so important what employees or managers think about how innovative their business is. The customers are the ones who choose whether to use the company's services. In practice, this means that customers are companies’ only natural source of financing.

How innovative the customers experience the companies to be is therefore important to uncover in order to be able to estimate the effects of the companies' various innovation investments, says Andreassen. The methodology, which in Norway is known as the Norwegian Innovation Index (NII), was developed in connection with NHH's Center for Service Innovation (CSI) – Research Council Norway's first SFI with a business school as a host institution. NII-findings for 2020 will be published on 3 February 2021 in collaboration with DIG partner BEKK.

It is a compliment to the NII-research team that international research is based on NHH's research. The fact that a number of companies are in the process of implementing the methodology, is a testament that NHH's innovation research is not only interesting, but relevant to companies, Andreassen concludes.

For more information about the Norwegian Innovation Index, visit the website.

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