Stakeholder identification in innovation projects: Going beyond classification

The management of stakeholder involvement within innovation projects is a task of growing importance. The purpose of this paper is to present a method for the first challenge in stakeholder management: the identification of those stakeholders to be involved in innovation projects.

Analysis of stakeholder literature leads to the conclusion that stakeholder identification is considered a problem of classification. Although the availability of a classification model is necessary, it is argued that for a classification model to be of use in identifying stakeholders, such a model needs to be supplemented with an identification procedure for identifying real world parties. Furthermore, a classification model should fit the context the stakeholders are identified for, in this case for innovation projects. These insights have led to the development of a classification model fitting the innovation context, and to the embedding of this model, along with a matching identification procedure, in an identification method.

A partial and integral evaluation of the method on four cases showed its efficacy in the managerial practice of identifying stakeholders within innovation projects.

The method as proposed in the paper can be used for identifying stakeholders in innovation projects. The method can be considered a first step in managing stakeholder involvement.