Purchasing Managed Innovation

Innovation is by far one of the most important competitive priorities in the current business context. Like every other top-level objective, it has to be drilled down into sub-objectives for all the organizational units of a given company. Among others, the Purchasing Department plays a critical role: it is the firm interface with the supply network and it is able to affect the firm output innovativeness in several ways: by selecting the most innovative suppliers and by managing the relationships with them; by involving suppliers into new product development; by internally coordinating contributions of various actors (such as R&D, Quality or Marketing Departments) and so on. This paper aims at investigating – through a multiple case study approach – how the Purchasing Department could foster and manage innovation. In particular, two aspects are taken into consideration: the choice of the most suitable Technological Collaboration agreement with suppliers and the organizational structure of the department.