2019 6th International Conference on Control, Decision and
Information Technologies (CoDIT’19) | Paris, France / April 23-26, 2019
Selection and Scheduling of Actions for Innovation Capabilities
Improvement
Franco Quezada1 , Luis Rojo-González2 and Óscar C. Vásquez2∗
Abstract— This paper introduces the selection and scheduling
problem of actions for improving the innovation capability (IC)
of an enterprise based on expert assessment using a particular
maturity grids for its measurement, in which budget and time
limit constraints are imposed. To address this problem, we
study its computational complexity and formulate a binary
integer linear programming (BILP) for an exact resolution,
which meets IC targets and minimizes the total cost of the
schedule for the selected actions. To illustrate the usefulness of
the proposed model, a numerical example based on a French
textile company is considered.
Index Terms— Selection, Scheduling, Innovation capability.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Innovation has been considered as a key process for the
economic growth of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME’s),
which defines important strategic decisions including com-
panies’ business model whose essence is in defining the
manner by which the enterprise delivers value to customers,
entices customers to pay for value, and converts those
payments to profit [21]. In literature, several authors develop
methodologies to evaluate companies’ IC according to a set
of processes performed by companies called innovation prac-
tices [1], [3], [11]. Those methodologies open the possibility
to measuring companies’ IC that has relation with companies
delivers value to customers as development of new products.
Other authors apply network analyse SME environment and
their interrelationships to classify and describe its innovation
performance [10].
In this context, an important methodology to describe
and to elaborate a diagnosis of SME’s IC is the Potential
Innovation Index (PII), proposed by Équipe de Recherche
sur les Processus Innovatifs (ERPI) in University of Lor-
raine, France. This methodology has been theoretically and
empirically validated by experts [2], [5] and some real cases
can be found in [2], [8], [15], [20].
The PII methodology considers a multi-criteria model
with two aggregation levels: Main practices and Observable
phenomena; classifying SME according to their innovation
performance which defines the opportunities of a company
and its role in four categories: Passive, Reactive, Preactive
and Proactive [18]. Recent related work has the goal to
determine recommendations for improving the company’s
1 Franco
Quezada is with Laboratoire d’Informatique de Paris
6, Sorbonne Université, 4 Place Jussieu, 75005 Paris, France
franco.quezada@lip6.fr
2 Luis Rojo-González and Óscar C. Vásquez are with Department of
Industrial Engineering, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago, 9170124
{luis.rojo.g, oscar.vasquez}@usach.cl
*Corresponding author
978-1-7281-0521-5/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE
IC subject to different constraints (e.g. budget constraint)
[9], [17]. These recommendations require to define an action
plan, which selects and schedules a set of actions to be
performed by the companies. In practice, this action plan
is based on the expertise of the persons who are charge
and to find an optimal selection and schedule of actions that
maximize the IC of the company is still an open problem.
Our Contribution: In this paper, we introduce the inno-
vation actions scheduling problem to enhance IC in SME’s.
We investigate its computational complexity and prove that
the decision version of this problem is NP-complete. For
an exact resolution, we formulate a binary integer linear
programming (BILP), which meets IC targets and minimize
the total cost of the schedule for the selected actions. To
illustrate the usefulness of the proposed model, a numerical
example based on a French textile company is considered.
Outline of paper: The remaining part of this paper is orga-
nized as follows. Section II describes the innovations capa-
bilities. Sections III introduces the selection and scheduling
problem. Computational complexity is studied in Section
IV and a Binary Integer Linear Programming formulation
is proposed in Section V. Section VI shows the usefulness
of the proposed model, considering a numerical example
based on a French textile company. Finally, conclusions and
directions for further works are discussed in Section VII.
II. I NNOVATION CAPABILITIES
The knowledge area which considers IC as its principal
studies has evolved from a black-box perspective, measuring
inputs and outputs, to new trends where most important focus
is on relationship between internal processes and innovation
[14].
IC will be defined as the absorption capacity and measured
by the PII. The absorption capacity of a company represents
the ability to acquire, assimilate, transform and exploit new
knowledge or information [4], [12], [19]. This property
gives dynamism to the company due to the capacity to
make decisions on uncertain situation using complementary
information obtained from its environment [7]. In order to
generate an action plan to increase their IC, companies must
have a evaluation and diagnosis framework. PII has been a
relevant indicator being applied in different researches [2],
[8], [20] creating a web tool for IC diagnosis used by 300
companies. PII considers 6 basic practices:
1) Strategy.
2) Human resources management.
3) Creativity.
4) Development of new products.
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5) Project management.
6) Knowledge management.
These practices are divided in 18 observable phenomena
that represent the activities that describe their performance.
Each phenomenon is evaluated on maturity grid form. An
example of that form is shown in Table I:
Each grid represents company’s performance on different
observable phenomena using levels that are increasingly
ordered associated with vector V = (0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1).
The obtained results are aggregated using the flow sort
multicriteria method, obtaining PII [16]. According to that
index, companies are classified in four groups [18] such as
follows:
1) Passive: They tend to be companies that are in a
defensive position with respect to competition. They try
to survive in the market.
2) Reactive: They react once the technological changes
have become consolidated. They have short-term vision.
3) Pre active: Although they are not responsible for the
generation of the technological changes, they are well
prepared to anticipate them due to the constant use of
technological vigilance mechanisms.
4) Proactive: These are very dynamic and aggressive com-
panies, they are the ones that generate technological
changes in the setting in which they operate. They tend
to dominate the market.
Passive companies are found between [0, 0.25), Reactive
companies between [0.25, 0.5), Preactive companies between
[0.5, 0.75), and Proactive companies between [0.75, 1]. Once
companies have been diagnosed and classified, the challenge
is: How define an action plan to improve its PII and thus
increase its chances of success in the market?.
III. S TATEMENT OF PROBLEM
Given a set of P observable phenomenon, a set Lp of IC
levels for each phenomenon p ∈ P and a set of actions J .
Let Jp be a set of actions associated to the phenomenon
p ∈ P.
Each observable phenomenon level l ∈ Lp has a weight
wl,p on the Potential Innovation Index. We define π(j) :=
(ˆl, p) and ρ(j) := (ˆl, p), which denote two observable
phenomenon levels: the initial ˆl and the current l in the
observable phenomenon p ∈ P associated to the action
j ∈ Jp , which has a cost Cj and a time Tj by its
performing. Without loss of generality, we suppose that the
actions associated to a particular observable phenomenon are
in increasing order. Let Jl,p ⊆ J be a subset of actions
associated to each observable phenomenon p ∈ P and
observable phenomenon level l ≥ ˆl; (ˆl, l) ∈ Lp , and then
each action j ∈ J(l,p) , ρ(j) := (ˆl, p), with l ≥ ˆl.
In addition, there exists a cost Ci,j by performing action
i before action j. A schedule σ is defined by a ranking for
a subset of actions J σ ⊆ J , where σj denotes the position
of action j ∈ J σ in the schedule.
Consider a firm with an initial IC levels for each observ-
able phenomenon ˆlp∈P . The goal of the actions scheduling
CoDIT’19 | Paris, France - April 23-26, 2019
Pdefine a schedule σ which
problem for IC improvement is to
maximize the company’s PII, j ∈ J σ wρ(j) , subject to a
limited budget equal to b and time constraint limit equal
to T .
A. Illustration of the problem
The maturity grid of each observable phenomenon is
represented by a directed graph, where its flows are actions
associated to the change of level. Thus, each observable
phenomenon has associated 5 levels (`) and increases its
level through 10 different actions such as Figure 1 shows.
The initial level of an observable phenomenon is obtained
by a survey applied to experts that has some participation
on resources assignment and assessment or are important
researchers in this area. On this case the initial level of
the first observable phenomenon (use of tools to motivate
creativity) is `1 . Therefore, a possible path is represented by
dotted line in Figure 2, considering `5 as the final position.
Fig. 1: Representation of different paths.
Fig. 2: Representation of a possible solution for one observ-
able phenomenon.
IV. C OMPUTATIONAL COMPLEXITY
In this section, we state the status of the computational
complexity of our problem. We consider the decision version
of the problem defined as follows:
Instance: A set P of observable phenomenon and a set
L of innovation capability levels, where Lp corresponds to
the set of levels of an observable phenomenon p. Each level
l ∈ Lp has a weight wl,p . A set J of actions, which allow
to go from a initial level l to a level l0 for an observable
phenomenon p, each of them with a execution cost and time
Cj and Tj , respectively. Moreover, a cost Ci,j is incurred by
performing action i before action j.
Question: Do there exist a schedule of selected actions
with a PII at least equal to W , that respects paths over
observable phenomenon, a budget limit b and a time limit
T ?.
Theorem 1: The selection and scheduling problem of ac-
tions for innovation capabilities is NP-complete.
Proof: To show that our problem is NP-complete, we
reduce an instance of the Knapsack problem with Conflict
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Promotion of innovation: ideas stimulation, rewards, support and autonomy of the groups
I II III IV V
No specific action. The employees involved in the in- Only success is rewarded (fi- Set-up of a re- The risk-taking is rewarded at the
novation policy are congratulated nancial reward, formal feed- ward system of individual and collective level. Ac-
and the company organizes punc- back from the direction, ...). risk-raking. tions are setting up with the aim of
tual events. increasing the group cohesion.

TABLE I: Form Sample

Graph (KPCG) to the decision version, asking for a solution

with a value at least equal to W without exceeding a budget
X
zj wρ(j) ≥ a (5)
j∈J
b.
Consider an instance of KPCG problem: Let n be the  
number of items, each of them with positive profit aj and X X
yj Cj + Ci,j xi,j  ≤ b (6)
positive weight cj , j = 1, ..., n, and b the capacity of the j∈J i ∈ J \ {j}

knapsack. Given an undirected conflict graph G = (V, E)

where each vertex i ∈ V corresponds to an item (i.e., |V | = yj Tj +
X
Ti xi,j ≤ t ∀j ∈ J (7)
n) and an edge (i, j) ∈ E denotes conflicting items i and j, i  J \ {j}

i.e. items that cannot be included together in the knapsack.

The question is: Can a profit of at least W be achieved X
zj ≤ 1 ∀ j ∈ Jp (8)
by a subset of items to be packed into the knapsack, while j ∈ Jp

satisfying the capacity and the incompatibility constraints?

Given an instance of KPCG, we construct an instance of yj ≥ zj ∀j ∈ J (9)
the actions scheduling problem as follows: we first recall
that each possible path from a initial level ˆl to a level X
l for an observable phenomenon p is a subset of actions yj = 0 ∀ p ∈ P, πj := (l, p), ∀ l < l̂ (10)
j ∈ Jp
belonging to Jl,p . We hence introduce a set of possible paths
|J 0 | = 0
P n, where each path j ∈ J has a cost Cj = cj , X
with j∈J 0 Cj > b, and an execution time Tj , where
yj ≤ 1 ∀p ∈ P (11)
P
j∈J j = T . Moreover, we assume that
T j: π(j):=(l̂,p)
Peach phenomenon
observable level l has a weight wl,p = j∈J 0 l,p aj for all X X
p ∈ P and Cij = 0 for all i 6= j ∈ J . Finally, each yj ≥ yj ∀ p ∈ P, ∀ l > l̂ (12)
j: ρ(j):=(l,p) j: π(j):=(l,p)
incompatibility edge belongs to G represents two paths that
cannot be selected at the same time. Clearly, this instance
has a solution with a objective value at least W if and only xi,j = 0 ∀ p ∈ P, (i, j) ∈ Jp , ∀ π(i) ≥ ρ(j) (13)
if the answer is YES to the KPCG instance.
V. B INARY I NTEGER L INEAR P ROGRAMMING (BILP) xi,j , yj , zj ∈ {0, 1} ∀ (i, j) ∈ J (14)

We propose a Binary Integer Linear Programming (BILP)

model for the actions scheduling problem for IC improve-
Constraint sets (2)-(3) state if action two actions i and j
ment. We have an initial IC levels for each observable phe-
are performed, then only one possible sequence. A cyclic
nomenon ˆlp ∈ P . Without loss of generality, we suppose that
is avoid by constraint (4). Equation (5) represents the lower
the actions associated to particular observable phenomenon
bound of PII (α) to be satisfied. Constraints (6) and (7) report
are in increasing order. Let yj and zj be binary variables that
the budget and limit time to perform the selected actions,
takes value 1 if the action j ∈ J is performed and if the
respectively. Set constraints (8) imply that only one action
action j ∈ J corresponds to the last performed action in the
j ∈ J can be the last one in each observable phenomenon
observable phenomenon p ∈ P; and 0 otherwise. Let xi,j be
p ∈ P and set constraints (9) exhibit the conditions that
a binary variable that takes value 1 if the action j ∈ J is
an action j is last performed only when it is performed.
performed after of performing the action i ∈ J \{j}. The
Set constraints (10) avoid that some action j that has its
BILP formulation is introduced as follows:
starter level l = π(j) before than the current observable
phenomenon level ˆlp∈P for each observable phenomenon
X
max wρ(j) (1)
j ∈Jσ
j be performed and equation (11) constraint the output
2xi,j + 2xj,i ≤ yi + yj ∀ i 6= j ∈ J (2) flows (actions) from initial level ˆlp∈P . Finally, set constraints
(12) state the flow process; set constraints (13) impose
xi,j + xj,i ≥ yj + yi − 1 ∀ i 6= j ∈ J (3) that the actions associated to an observable phenomenon
are performed in the schedule in increasing order; and set
xi,j + xj,k + xk,i ≤ 2 ∀ i 6= j 6= k ∈ J (4) constraints (14) establish the domain of the variables.

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Human resources, (5) Project management and (6) Knowl-

edge management. A reactive profile for the practices (1)
Creativity and a proactive profile for (4) Strategy. In general,
the company is classified as reactive.
A. Solution
To illustrate the the usefulness of the proposed model, the
scenario for the company to reach the maximum PII will be
solve. To achieve this goal, the required budget is b equal to
0.9 (90%) of the company’s current estimated budget. This is
one of the possible scenarios, if the company does not want
to take this risk, it can let a lower investment percentage.
Therefore, in this case the instance is:
max a
Fig. 3: Performance profile for the case of study.
s.t. constraints (2)-(14)
with b = 0.9K, where K is the current budget
VI. C ASE OF STUDY The mathematical model determines the set of action and
We consider a French company to be analysed is a limited the schedule of them, which maximizes the PII subject to the
liability company that has operated in the country for 8 budget and time limit. Table V shows the obtained results by
years, specialized in waste recovery classified sector. They the proposed mode for binary variables yj and zj .
have worked constantly on new ways of innovating in the
processes, in 2014 announce new recycling methods for σj yj zj
polyester brought from China, which increased employment 1 y170 z170
2 y139 z139
rates in the company. Table II shows the most relevant 3 y127 z127
characteristics for our investigation previously obtained by 4 y37 z37
Riquelme [17], who worked on a similar problem for this 5 y59 z59
6 y27 z27
study case. Table III and IV show the obtained results from 7 y20 z20
the PII application. 8 y64 z64
9 y110 z110
Company Anonymous
Location Lorraine, France TABLE V: Results of yj and zj and its schedule.
Business sector Textile
Employees 10 - 50 people
Sales 10 - 100 million of euros From the obtained results for this company, the PII in-
creases from 0.335 (reactive) to 0.637 (proactive).
TABLE II: Characteristics of the company Figure 4 shows the increase in the different innovation
practices of the company. Table VI shows different final
percentages in the different practices:
Practice Evaluation
1 0.2675
2 0.23417
3 0
4 0.865
5 0.15917
6 0.145
PII Reactive (0.335)

TABLE III: PII of the company.

Initial level Observable phenomena

`1 1, 5, 7, 8, 15, 16, 18
`2 3, 4, 13
`3 6, 14
`4 2, 11, 17
`5 9, 10, 12

TABLE IV: Initial level of the 18 observable phenomena. Fig. 4: Results illustration

In Figure 3, we can observe that the company has a passive Figure 4 shows the improvement in the innovation prac-
profile for the practices (2) Development of new product, (3) tices of the company. Development of new products and

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Human Resources shows the most important increase.
Practice Evaluation
1 0.74
2 0.81
3 0.47
4 1
5 0.48
6 0.29
PII Pre active (0.637)
TABLE VI: PII of the company.
VII. C ONCLUSION
This paper seeks to create a tool to develop a guide
that companies can follow to maximize and improve their
innovation capability. This tool is based on the Potential
Innovation Index (PII), one of the most studied metrics in
recent years, which focuses on the measurement of innova-
tion capacity in SME’s and built through a mathematical
model, which not only will find an optimal solution in
the search for improvements, but also a complete guide of
recommendations that will show us a schedule or an order
of actions to follow to meet our long-term objectives, which
can be complemented in practice with the opinion of experts
to guide the entire process to get accurate results.
As a future work, it is recommended to compare the
ERPI’s case studies that have been studied over many years,
to analyse whether the recommendations given were the
most accurate or to determine how unpredictable is the
measurement of innovation capacity in relation to the results
delivered by the model.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Authors are grateful to Daniel Gálvez, Camila Riquelme
and Mauricio Camargo for their comments and initial discus-
sion of this work. This research was partially supported by
the supercomputing infrastructure of the NLHPC (ECM-02)
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