Understanding corporate innovation readiness and frequency factors with the Democratic Survival, Mirrored and Compulsive (DSMC) Framework
Authors: Markopoulos Evangelos , Ofori Kwame , Vanharanta Hannu 
Published: June 2022

Innovation, and technological innovation in particular, seems to be the driving force in the modern entrepreneurial revolution that stated at the beginning of this century. The .net phenomenon with the rise of the internet active users made the word flat, increased the business opportunities but also decreased the success rate. Blue oceans strategies have been replaced by Green and Pink oceans strategies in a continuous effort to stay current with the global innovation trends, needs and expectations. Most of the businesses across all industries seek micro-innovations to improve their product or services delivery but not necessarily to make a breakthrough. However, their innovation rate and pace differ from one another ranging from a year to five years. The distance to deliver innovation is related with the distance organizations have from democratic organizations cultures that ignite and utilize internal knowledge contributions which can lead to innovative processes, products, and services. The company’s DNA and philosophy is primarily responsible for the innovation pace and effectiveness, but this is also affected by internal and external factors. The ability or inability to create democracy organizational cultures has positive and negative consequences that need to be assessed in relation to the company’s’ finances, workforce knowledge and maturity, industry readiness and openness, and other factors. To understand the reasons and the business innovation frequency, an academic and critical literature review has been conducted. The results led to the formulation of a framework taking into consideration several weighted internal and external factors. Furthermore primary research has been conducted to better understand their innovation motives innovation frequency by gathering and analysing data from 66 individuals such as university innovation hub coordinators, entrepreneurs and product developers.This paper introduces the Survival, Mirrored and Compulsive (SMC) Framework, a step-by-step guide to help businesses understand their innovation readiness status. The framework calculates several attributes and plots the results on a graph indicating the factors to be considered in at the company’s innovations strategy. The primary findings indicate factors that impact the innovation frequency such as the available R&D facilities, financial position and stability, cumulative organizational knowledge, policy direction, and the industry the organizations operate, among others. The analysis of these factors in the SMC framework revealed that survival mode is what impacts organizational innovation frequency. Organizations tend to either reduce or postpone innovation initiatives until they feel comfortable for their existence or learned from their mistakes, neglecting however the fact that innovation driven by democratic internal development and utilization of the human intellectual capital costs less, is more likely to succeed, and can be attempted continuously. Therefore, the paper extends the SMC framework to the Democratic SMC (DMSC) that aligns the SMC phases with the Company Democracy Model innovation evolution levels by relating and categorizing the SCM innovation factors to the CDM levels. This helps to understand the organizational innovation DNA and also the culture and philosophy that impacts the company’s human intellectual capital production frequency and the utilization frequency of this capital as well. The paper refers limitations on both the SMC framework and DSMC model at their current development stages and identifies areas of further research for their maturity through applications and optimization.