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“Instead of being really good at doing some particular thing, companies must be really good at learning how to do new things”. This ability to do new things involves both the identification and the mastery of the next ‘new thing’ as well as the ability to align the rest of the company with this new direction. This paper focuses on the alignment of innovation activities with the overall business strategy and infrastructure. An innovation strategic alignment model is presented that supports alignment in a company by identifying the driver of change and its impact on other areas of the business.

The South African fruit export industry is a key contributor to the country's economy, and must be managed efficiently to that ensure its vital role is maintained. Significant increases in reefer freight rates have placed substantial pressure on the fruit export industry to find new and innovative ways of improving the space / volume use of fruit in these reefer containers. Improvements must adhere to key constraints to ensure that fruit quality and shelf life are not compromised. This paper analyses the current potential for increasing the mass of stone and pome fruit that is exported in reefer containers. The study indicates that pome fruit has the greatest opportunity for improvement, whereas stone fruit has less room for improving the use of space / volume. Proposed improvement methods are: optimal packing arrangements of fruit; improved packaging and pallet dimensions (special pallet sizes); improved stacking arrangements of cartons on pallets and pallets in reefers; and lastly, the use of slip sheets instead of pallets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Successful innovation projects require an adequate innovation management capability in organisations. This means a sufficiently rigorous, continuous, and goal-oriented management of innovation processes. The literature research demonstrates that an integrated innovation methodology requires highly qualitative processes that are both flexible and customer-specific in their design. This work focuses on the FuGle® innovation process model, which is applied at the Industrial Engineering Department of Stellenbosch University. The enhanced FuGle® innovation process model presents flexible processes that are supported by methods and techniques that guide the user to drive innovation projects. This paper presents an innovation approach that enables organisations proactively to manage customer needs and trends. Thus the enhanced FuGle® innovation process model aims to turn an innovation project into a marketable product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's competitive environment, organisations cannot afford to focus only on effectiveness and efficiencies - they also need to innovate. This is evident from most literature sources on innovation. Innovation topics, such as the innovation process and the drivers, barriers, principles, and success factors for innovation, have received a lot of attention in the literature. What is still lacking, however, is a consolidated view of the core requirements for building an innovation capability within an organisation. This paper lays the foundation for an innovation capability reference architecture by identifying those innovation success factors or requirements described in the literature, and consolidating and structuring it within an easy-to-use enterprise architecture framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]