1/ Why is it critical that entrepreneurs and all businesses innovate? What are t

Question

1/ Why is it critical that entrepreneurs and all businesses innovate? What are the reasons that make it difficult for enterprises to simply stand still and accept the status quo? Note that these are not puny little notions. The reasons are based on large-scale changes in the economy and “macro” changes in the business environment.

2/ Why does your author stress “Successful innovation” and not just innovation for the sake of “newness”?

3/ There are two major types of innovation discussed in your text. Name them accurately and be able to identify their key differences

Comment

Explanation / Answer

Innovation is the process of creating and implementing a new idea. It is the process of taking useful ideas and converting them into useful products; services or processes or methods of operation. These useful ideas are the result of creativity, which is the prerequisite for innovation. Creativity in the ability to combine ideas in a unique way or to make useful association among ideas. Creativity provides new ideas for quality improvement in organizations and innovation puts these ideas into action.

Change and innovation are closely related, even though they are not the same. Change often involves new and better ideas. The new idea may be the creation of a new product or process or it can be an idea about how to change completely the way business is carried out. Successful organizations understand that both innovation and change are required to satisfy their most important stake holders.

For both established organizations as well as new organizations, innovation and change become important in a dynamic, changing environment. When a company fails to innovate and change as needed, its customers, employees and the community at large can all suffer. The ability to manage innovation and change is an essential part of a manager’s competencies.

Innovation does not take place in a vacuum. It is very much a collaborative process that requires thinking outside of your department, office, company, and at times even your industry. It is a “full contact, team sport” and boundaries and functional lines must be crossed, be multi-disciplined in approach, and inclusive of many rather than just a few in R&D and/or the ‘C-Suite.’ The largest advances and gains you can make in innovation come from having the courage to shake things up (perhaps even upside down) and being willing to be disruptive with your approach instead of just incremental.

Successful innovation is indeed possible to achieve and unlike the lottery, should you ‘hit it once,’ you actually have pretty good odds at hitting it again. In order to do so, you must recognize that innovation can be measured and therefore managed, and that it must include the entire organization’s effort and energy, not just a single individual or division. There are basic tenants of innovation that cross core competencies, environmental factors, and management disciplines. Your outcomes will most certainly vary but true innovation success comes from embracing your own innate strengths and uniqueness, and then spanning organizational boundaries to find solutions to accommodate the market signals being received.

Technical innovation involves creation of new goods and services. Many technical innovations occur through research and development efforts intended to satisfy demanding customers who are always seeking, new, better, faster and/or cheaper products.

Process innovation involves creating a new way of producing, selling or distributing an existing good or service.

Administrative innovation occurs when creation of a new organization design better supports the creation, production and delivery of goods and services.

The various types of innovation often go hand in hand. For example, the rapid development of business to business e-commerce represents process innovation. But this new process requires many technical innovations in computer hardware and software. Also as firms began to use business to business e-commerce, administrative innovation soon followed. Further, implementation of process innovations necessitated organizational change. “Doing something new means doing something differently”. Thus, innovation and organizational change go hand in hand.

Technology is defined as the systematic application of scientific knowledge to a new product, process or service. It is also defined as the methods, processes, systems, and skills used to transform resources into products. Technology is embedded in every product, service, process and procedure used or produced.

“Innovation is a change in technology”. When we find a better product, process or procedure to do our task, we have an innovation. Process innovations are changes which affect the methods of producing outputs. For example, manufacturing practices such as just-in-time, mass customerisation, simultaneous or concurrent engineering – are all innovations.

In contrast, product innovations are changes in the actual outputs themselves. Technological innovation is daunting in its complexity and pace of change. It is vital for a firm’s competitive advantage because today’s customers often demand products that are yet to be designed. As technologies develop, product obsolescence increases and innovative products will have to be introduced into the markets.

Managing technology requires that managers understand how technologies emerge, develop and affect the ways organizations compete and the way people work. Technology can greatly affect an organization’s competitiveness and managers have to integrate technology into their organization’s competitive strategy. Managers need to assess the technological needs of their organizations and the means by which these needs can be met.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse 1
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.