About us

What is Sustainable Innovation Management (SIM)?

Innovation is the process of:

  • turning ideas into commercial products or services,
  • the improvement of business processes,
  • the enhancing of organizational structures.

SIM is the process of planning, designing, and deploying innovations in organizations. Different from other innovation management approaches, SIM should be a sustained process that can be replicated as needed. For SIM it is critical to continuously study and understand the drivers and inhibitors that impact the sustainability of the innovation process in any organization. Organizations should be able to recognize the changing environment where they operate and compete, consequently; the SIM process needs to adapt to those changes for the organization to remain competitive.

What we do

We are an academic group cultivating new experts in SIM within an organic structure discovering, disseminating, and training to pursue innovation and sustainability of business processes.

What is our vision?

Our vision is to make innovation succesful.

Why SIM is better

Sustaining the innovation management process in the long term is a very complex task that requires a holistic understanding of the internal and external factors affecting an organization. Changes in technologies, consumer behavior, availability of suppliers, and number of competitors happen faster in today’s business environment. In most cases, business organizations are not well prepared to adjust to these rapid changes and sooner or later they find themselves losing their competitive edge. By breaking down the innovation management process into steps that follow a value chain management approach it is possible to quickly react to internal and external changes and make adjustments as needed.

Our partners

We work with federal agencies to obtain financial support for our research projects and extension activities. SIM is also part of the Center for Innovation-based Manufacturing (CIbM) at Virginia Tech. The CIbM is a multidisciplinary group that solves current manufacturing issues and helps researchers at Virginia Tech to commercialize their discoveries. For more information on the CIbM go to http://www.cibm.ise.vt.edu/index.html

Since much of our research is market and business oriented we also partner with the Center for Forest Products Business (CFPB) at Virginia Tech. The CFPB serves a large number of wood products industries mostly located in the hardwood eastern region of the United States with the goal of providing marketing, business management, and operations management research through publications and training activities. To learn more about the CFPB at Virginia please visit http://www.cfpb.vt.edu/

We are also sponsor by the IUFRO Group 5.04.13 Industrial Engineering, Operation Analysis, and Logistics.

IUFRO logo

How we can help you

We continuously offer training opportunities, and updates on our research projects. We can also help you to  identify the best way for your organization to embark in the innovation journey. Our students and associated faculty are well prepared and they will be excited to assist your organization through in-house training, audits, or consulting projects. If you would like to receive notifications on our events and publications please email us at quesada@vt.edu. Or you can also contact us at:

 

Virginia Tech
Brooks Forest Products Center (503)
Blacksburg, VA 24061
 
Phone:540-231-0978
Fax:540-231-8868