Recommend Ways to Incorporate Innovation in a Company

Recommend Ways to Incorporate Innovation in a Company

Summary of Answers

1. Efforts top management is putting in to support innovation

The top management provides training opportunities for the employees in the company. The training focuses on informing the employees of the latest technologies used in the industry that can be leveraged to improve profit.

The management also takes part in rewarding the creative employees to improve their innovativeness. It gives a chance and encourages the employees to participate and contribute to the innovative ideas in the organization.

2. Does everybody devote part of their daily attention to having a better business model?

Not every employee devotes attention to having a better business model. Some employees are only in for the cash and nothing else. Most of these employees are reserved.

3. Is it clear to everybody how the company intends to innovate?

For the most part, the company effectively communicates the innovation intentions to all the employees. The plans are communicated via memos, open meetings, and email address. The employees have the option of contacting the management on any qualifications. Some employees, however, do not take any interest in the communique.

4. Does creativity or bureaucracy crowd out innovation?

Bureaucracy is not widely rampant in the organization. Therefore, it does not affect innovation. Creativity on the other hand significantly influences innovation positively. The employees are open to new ideas and work well to promote the ideas that are created by other employees. The environment is always conducive to creativity, and as a result, the employees can freely present their new ideas to their colleagues or the management without fear of rejection or judgment.

5. What are the reasons, if any, why innovation is not as effective as you want it to be?

The main reason according to me is the lack of proper encouragement from the management and the lax involvement of the employees in the innovative processes. The management is reluctant to spend quality time encouraging the employees. As a result, the employees do not see innovation as important because of the example set by the management. A proper reward technique is also not in place to properly reward the employees who bring new ideas and products even if they fail.

6. How does your company leverage its internal talent and its access to external talent?

The company holds an inter-departmental competition to encourage internal talent development. Every department is challenged to come up with new projects and ideas that can benefit the company. The winning department takes home a relatively large sum of money home. The external talent is leveraged by sponsoring innovative projects which target school children and ordinary citizens.

7. How do performance measures and rewards affect innovation?

Performance measures and rewards affect innovation positively. Whatever gets rewarded gets done. Therefore, any reward will make the employees come up with new items to get the reward. Performance measures, on the other hand, make the employees come up with new ideas to have a higher or a positive rating in the performance measure.

8. What are the constraints or barriers to innovation?

In the organization, the greatest barrier to innovation is the lack of resources to fund innovative projects. The management often finds it difficult to issue resources to projects whose return values are not properly known. This leads to the management settling for the status quo.

9. How do you leverage various outside constituencies in innovation

The company takes part in any innovative competitions created and funded by other bigger organizations in the industry. The company also requests resources from any potential investors promising attractive returns.

10. How is the company adapting to the changes in the industry

The company implements the best practices in the industry. Innovators are hired from time to time to bring new ideas on board.

11. Which employees are allowed to participate in the innovation processes?

The employees who are able to think. There is no restriction on those who can participate, as long they have sound ideas.

12. How do you find the potential ideas from a high volume of them?

Experts can be hired to help in the selection of the best ideas. The organization scales its efforts to get potential ideas with the help of the other employees. The management also asks the right questions to the innovators to see the potential returns of the idea.

Analysis of the responses

The company seems to have robust strategies and a conducive business environment to nurture innovation in the organization. It focuses on training employees on new skills and technologies in the industry so that they think along the lines of current innovation strategies, not outdated ideas. The management also implements rewarding strategies to make the employees participate more in innovation. The management, however, does not seem to put in a lot of effort in encouraging the employees. This is because the employees do not feel compelled to participate in the innovation projects because of lax management.

Compared to other organizations and best practices, the top management has little commitment to encourage innovation. The management, however, is committed to the training of the employees. In this aspect, the company is doing better than most organizations (Dembowski, 2013). The answers to the interview questions show the company has weaknesses and strengths that many organizations share.

Recommendations

Creation of a safe space for innovation

The management should create an environment that allows innovation while at the same time encouraging the employees to feel comfortable taking calculated risks (Perks et al., 2012). Walmart for instance has a group which provides a support environment for testing new ideas. Other organizations remove the pressure of short-term returns of the new projects enabling the project to run to completion.

Enable organizational agility

Most organizations where innovation is key have flexible job definitions. The roles of the employees have an important role in adapting to the market changes. For instance, FedEx company assists the executives to actively move functions to accumulate a wide range of experience to improve the general adaptability of the organization. The company can incorporate the movement of the functions geographically to get new perspectives on the business. It also encourages independent problem-solving and thinking.  This movement of the function gives the employees room to explore their full potential.

Promote Reward collaborations

It may seem that the lone scientist working in his lab is a true innovator, but studies show that most of the significant innovations result from collaborative team efforts. The company should not only employ innovative leaders but also leaders who can create conditions which foster creativity and innovation by incentivizing and measuring

Celebrate success and learn from setbacks

Organizations which celebrate innovation and see performance problems as learning opportunities. When innovators are recognized, employees get a powerful message that the company values innovation.  Employees would not be willing to take risks related to innovation if they know the leadership is not willing to accept a certain amount of failure which is a component of innovation (Jain & Banerjee, 2015). For instance, at Dow Chemicals, taking risks is encouraged and accepted. This helps the organization to stay innovative and agile. Leaders should be able to do so courageously whether collaborating between themselves or encouraging collaboration among others.

References

Dembowski, F. L. (2013). The Roles of Benchmarking, Best Practices & Innovation in     Organizational Effectiveness

Abdel-Razek, R. H., & Alsanad, D. S. (2014). Auditing and comparing innovation management in organizations.

Jain, V., & Banerjee, I. (2015). Innovation without borders: Six best practices to improve innovation success rates. Evalueserve White Papers, 1-10.

Kahn, K. B., Barczak, G., Nicholas, J., Ledwith, A., & Perks, H. (2012). An Examination of New Product Development Best Practice. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 29(2),   180-192. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5885.2011.00888.x

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Instructions

Interview an experienced marketer, product developer or someone in a similar function at your company or a company to which you have access. The interview can be conducted face to face or via Skype (or similar service).

NOTE: You may schedule an in-person appointment, phone appointment, or use online resources such as Skype or GoTo Meeting to complete this requirement. Email could be a potential alternative choice, but only after the previous options have been requested and declined. If you still have concerns about meeting this requirement, contact your instructor for additional guidance.

You will first develop a series of questions to ask during the interview. The questions should include the following questions:

1. What efforts is top management putting in place to support innovation?
2. Does everybody devote part of their daily attention to having a better business model?
3. Is it clear to everybody how the company intends to innovate?
4. Does creativity or bureaucracy crowd out innovation?
5. What are the reasons, if any, why innovation is not as effective as you want it to be?
6. How does your company leverage its internal talent and its access to external talent?
7. How do performance measures and rewards affect innovation? (p. 10).

Questions were taken from Davila, Epstein, and Shelton, 2013.

In addition to these questions add at least 5 additional questions. Information that should be included: What are the constraints or barriers to innovation? How do you leverage various outside constituencies in innovation? Summarize the responses and present them in a report. Then develop an analysis of the responses. How do they relate to best practices and what you read? Finally, develop recommendations based on the current process and best practices.

Support your paper with a minimum of three (3) peer reviewed articles published in the last five years. In addition to these specified resources, other appropriate scholarly resources, including older articles, may be included.

Length: 3-5 pages not including title page and references

Your response should demonstrate thoughtful consideration of the ideas and concepts presented in the course and provide new thoughts and insights relating directly to this topic. Your response should reflect scholarly writing and current APA standards.