Carlsson–Magnusson (2019) devoted an entire volume to understanding and presenting the various system elements of innovation management. Each of the following factors plays an important role and fundamentally influences the innovation performance of companies:

There are many ways to approach a corporate innovation management system, moreover, each person may have a different understanding of it. The complexity of the system is well illustrated by the Indian management parable about the blind men and the elephant, where six blind sages ponder what an elephant is like. Touching its smooth, cylindrical tusks, one of them says that an elephant is like a spear. To the one who touches its knee, the elephant is like a tree trunk. And to the one who touches its ear, the elephant is thin and fluttering, like a fan. The moral of the story is that the elephant is large, and the part being observed matters when drawing conclusions. Like the elephant in the parable, innovation systems are complex, with people and individuals and groups from multiple departments working towards common goals. They consist of constantly changing and evolving subsystems, such as research and development, ecosystem partners, incubators, acceleration programmes or internal corporate capital funds, but also include decision-making systems, process descriptions, organisational capabilities and a number of less visible factors, such as cultural norms and behaviour.

Large global consulting firms, such as Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and PwC, are attempting to translate this kind of systems approach into (large) corporate practice, naturally, for a significant fee. Nevertheless, clients welcome "productised" services, as they themselves learn new things and refine their frameworks during the implementation process. In addition, their more practical wording, as opposed to the academic language of researchers, is probably easier for corporate executives to understand, which also justifies their involvement. What is more, they themselves conduct certain research, the results of which they publish in the form of studies. The aforementioned global report on the "Most Innovative Companies" publishes a list of the world's 50 most innovative companies each year, along with a thematic analysis. BCG's 2020 report published a framework that presents the components of a corporate innovation system. In this context, they examined the sources of innovative ideas, how they interact with members of their ecosystem, how they support innovation, and how they integrate new technologies into their own development programmes. According to the results of the research, companies with strong innovation systems perform all of the above activities at a high level, and their innovation systems are dynamic and respond quickly to changes and emerging needs in order to grow organically while achieving high profits. Another important finding of the study is that, based on benchmarking data, large companies with better innovation systems have outperformed the average by 5-20% over the last three years thanks to product, service and business model innovations (BCG, 2020).

In most large companies, the CEO is the sole decision-maker who influences all elements of the innovation system. Other executives have only partial or functional mandates. That is why it is important to know that top management has a fundamental influence on the success of innovation. A successful innovation journey begins with defining a common language, substantiating the innovation challenge or problem to be solved with facts, and winning over the CEO. Only then can managers decide what problems to focus on solving with their teams. What works well? What are the company's most painful weaknesses? What should be examined thoroughly first? Strategy, processes, talent, incentives, corporate culture, or something else?

One of the main messages of the book is that successful innovation management requires the development of a complex corporate system. It is not enough to formulate an ambitious vision and operate a mature idea management system. Innovation management is about much more than that. We support this statement with the analyses, case studies and management techniques presented in the following chapters, in the hope that the reader will be able to build a system that provides a fertile ground for innovation in their own company, and employ suitably trained and qualified staff to operate it. We are not calling on our readers to embark on a mission impossible or a journey, but rather we will discuss the steps taken by numerous successful companies and the often invisible, hidden factors involved. All of this cannot be found in one place, even if the volumes presenting the tools of innovation management are quite thick. Even if you are familiar with and read these scientific works or practical guides, you can only achieve real innovation success if you become an innovator yourself.