Prioritizing strategic business units in the face of innovation performance: Combining fuzzy AHP and BSC

Large corporations may be composed of multiple strategic business units (SBUs), each of which is responsible for its own profitability. Innovation performance management of SBUs boosts corporation business results. In the present work, SBU ranking based on innovation performance was addressed. The contribution of the proposed model was threefold: (1) it proposed a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for SBU ranking with triangular fuzzy numbers; (2) it provided a comprehensive and systematic framework that combined balanced scorecard (BSC) and fuzzy AHP; and (3) it explored practical application and illustrated the efficacy of the procedures and algorithms. It used a real-world case study in a large steel manufacturing company to present the applicability of the system. Finding SBU priorities would help the corporations to develop strategies and policies to manage and improve SBU performance.