System features of innovation strategy

Today an innovation strategy has different concepts, and each concept assigns some attributes to it. As it is found out by the author, there is no complex definition among analyzed ones that considers a strategy as a system with its features. Having studied the definitions preliminary to this research, the author raises open issues on the innovation strategy concept, its role and position in the hierarchical structure of corporate strategies, distinctive features and key characteristics. The author gives new definition to the innovation strategy by dividing the concept into component parts: strategy and innovation. The author considers an innovation strategy from the perspective of purpose and means determining a primary criterion for it. Then the role of innovation strategy, its features and relation with other corporate strategies are analyzed, where in one case the innovation strategy is considered as a general corporate strategy. Subsequently, the author introduces some key characteristics of innovation strategy which can be the criterion of estimation: degree of novelty for the market, degree of novelty for the firm, position activity, market orientation and technology orientation. The research output is an introduction of complex definition of innovation strategy, as the result of which the objectives to examine and estimate the innovation strategy are set, a simple classification is introduced, the basis for building more complex classifications and example of qualitative analysis of innovation strategies of Tele2 and Apple are given. The research findings can be used as a basis for understanding the system features of innovation strategy and have potential to be used for qualitative and quantitative analyses.