Process innovation in Novozymes
concentrate our research on the process development from 1999 to 2004 in the protease discovery department.
1.2 Research Question From the introduction above it should be clear that we are facing a successful company operating in an innovative business environment. Instead of focussing on a deliberate problem in a particular case, our point of departure concentrates around the success within a given company. Just like learning from failures it is important and interesting to learn from successes. For that reason we have been motivated to investigate the success in the protease department. As justified above, the process development can be characterised as a competence development going on in the protease discovery department from 1999 to 2004, and with this in mind we have composed the following research questions:
1. What are the constituents of competences leading to successful process innovation in the protease discovery department? 2. Why have the protease discovery department hitherto succeeded in fostering knowledge leading to competence development? 3. How can the protease discovery department exploit current knowledge and competencies in future advanced process innovations?
1.3 Specification of the Research Question To give the reader a clear understanding of the task at hand we will now elaborate on the questions above and how they are going to be addressed. The question will be answered from both theoretical as well as practical point of views.
The thesis is divided into two overall objectives. The first objective is from a competencebased perspective to analyse and present the process innovation in the protease department running from 1999 to 2004, thereby answering question 1. The need to raise the first question is because the process innovation it self is highly complicated and consequently requires a thorough analysis and clear presentation to first of all make sense to us as researchers and equally to make sense to you as the reader. The second and main objective of this thesis is to
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