This value can take many forms with regard to the nature of the actors involved. However, whatever be the form of innovation process, several strategic decisions are required to be made for the innovative knowledge to become an innovation. In order to decide whether or not to continue the process of innovation, the value of the current outcome of the process must indeed be somehow evaluated by the management. The passage of the innovative knowledge for improving the return process from consumer of the innovative knowledge (collectors /sorters, re-manufacturers, repairers, recyclers etc) rests in the ability of the creator of the innovative knowledge (agents of RL) to show the value of the innovative knowledge. The decision to exploit innovative knowledge lies in the hands of the consumer of innovative knowledge. Their decision making methodology strives to bring together a number of modeling and analysis tools, which can be used by designers, managers and other groups involved in the innovation process. The approach can be viewed as a three-phase decision making methodology.
This methodology includes following activities (Shown in Fig. 3). The first activity is to develop a strategy and goals for efficient ad effective process to retrieve product back from consumer (both internal and external). This phase also involves decision making regarding return strategies and performance measures (i.e. economic, environmental etc). The next three activities include engaging innovative knowledge from creator and consumer, and then we analyze the present return system, finally define migration to plan the innovative system. All these activities constitute the second phase of the approach and primarily involve the transformation of RL strategies into time phased development. The final activity ‘implement RL systems innovation plan’ is the third and final phase which involves recognition of potential business value of the invention by the consumer of the innovative knowledge. The decision to go for model implementation lies with the management after considering the potential service value change to the consumer of innovation. If no potential service value is recognized, then the considered process of innovation is either stopped or pulled back to an earlier phase in order to increase this potential value with continuous improvement initiatives.