Innovation management in logistics: an empirical study

In this study, we examine the extent to which innovation management is established in business logistics. In addition to the general implementation of an innovation management, the study is also focused on the importance and success of innovations for logistics, the underlying innovation process, corresponding expanses to achieve logistics innovations and relevant innovation triggers. To get significant results, we carried out a questionnaire under the each 100 largest German companies of eight selected industries. In total, we integrated 800 companies in our study and got a response rate of 11%. As main results, we show that despite a fundamentally high importance of innovations in logistics, the corresponding expanses are still relative small. Innovation management is not yet sufficiently implemented in the area of logistics and a structured innovation process is also absent in the majority of companies surveyed. Moreover, we show that innovation management is mostly limited to a single company and a continuous enterprise‐wide expansion would be desirable for the future.