Designing A Company 's Long Term Economic Success

Innovations form the main sources of competitive advantages and are always of significance for the growth of a company. Companies or organizations put their greater efforts in improving their performance by finding new ideas and knowledge on the best way of beating their competitors and therefore give satisfaction to their customers. There are various factors involved in the innovation design system which can be either internal or external.

In the context of creativity’s stated definition, we will proceed to group our arguments into three themes of factors: cognitive ability, expertise training, and environmental conditions. The human brain is highly adaptable and can continue to develop new cognitive abilities, even past adulthood (Norman, 2015). Proper cognitive expertise and training can help workers produce and operate in ingenious ways (Ginamarie, Lertiz & Mumford, 2004). Finally, the working environment can both motivate or stifle creative output. Managers can influence all three components: expertise, thinking skills, and motivation (Amabile, 1998).

IQ is defined as a measure of intelligence that shows the ratio of an individual’s mental age to their chronological age, this is then multiplied by 100 (Cattel 1972). Creativity cannot be measured by undertaking an IQ test, creativity is subjective and the simplest way of defining it is the ability to create original, useful and surprising new things. However, over the years pioneering research has inspired psychologists to devise tests to measure creativity. The most famous Divergent Thinking test is Guildfords Alternative Uses Task established in 1967. This test proposes that the individual involved should think of alternative uses for a common item such as a brick. This way of measuring Divergent Thinking is universally used in contemporary testing of creativity.

According to Baird and colleagues, mind wandering can enhance creativity goals and problems that were encountered. Creativity finds solutions that are novel, and high quality (Matlin, 2009). J.P. Guilford researched how we measure creativity. Creativity should be measured by divergent production. This research demonstrates the number of different responses that are made for each test item (Matlin, 2009).

In What Do We Know About Creativity? Jose Gomez defines an idea as being creative when it “brings new insight to a given situation….[it] includes the ability to change one’s approach to a problem, produce ideas that are both relevant and unusual” (30). This quote is very important because it gives an idea of a way to classify what a creative idea can look like. I find it particularly difficult to define what creativity means because when I think of the word creativity, I think of an indefinite amount of things that would fit under the word. I believe coming up with a concise definition would be near impossible without leaving out multiple ways to exercise the word. The way this author describes a creative idea is helpful because he manages to

Because creativity is subjective it will never be accurately measured. Researcher’s that acknowledge this may be

Convergent thinking is defined as the ability to apply conventional and logical search, recognition, and decision-making strategies to stored information in order to produce an already known answer (Cropley, 2006). Divergent thinking, by contrast, is defined as the ability to produce new approaches and original ideas by forming unexpected combinations from available information and by applying such abilities as semantic flexibility, and fluency of association, ideation, and transformation (Guilford, 1959, as cited in Cropley, 2006, p. 1). Divergent thinking brings forth answers that may never have existed before and are often novel, unusual, or surprising (Cropley, 2006).

Good To Great is Jim Collins’ most famous book. In this book Collins and his research team analyze and compare numerous corporations in an attempt to identify what key aspects set apart successful companies. He developed five aspects of organizational success and I will be making references to those points.

Innovation research has addressed many areas: capacity for creativity; creativity at individual level; leadership style influences; and environmental influences. All these factors have significant impacts on creativity and innovation in

     Our assignment is to create and promote an innovative product. In developing a new product, we started with an idea generation. This is a systematic search for new-product ideas. Companies go through many ideas before they come to find some good ones. We had to do the same thing. We thought of many ideas on our own. It was more of an internal idea source as opposed to going outside of our partnership for ideas. Our first idea was a restaurant with half of it an actual restaurant and the other half an automobile tuner shop. The next idea was a new energy drink that would be less costly and better tasting. Our next idea came up when we were sitting

Understanding the benefits of strategic management is one of the key theme of the chapter and it is important for the long-term performance and operational success of a firm. A firm must adapt to the changing market and technological environment is another major concept that is explained briefly in the chapter. Strategic management provides a clear sense of strategic vision for the firm, sharper focus on what is important, and an improved understanding of a rapidly changing environment. Importance of innovation is another important concept explained in the chapter with respect to an example using the struggling retailer, Sears. Sears succumbed to the lack of innovation, which shows that if a firm stands still, it will be run over by the competition. Strategic planning and innovation should go hand in hand, because innovation is the machine that generates business opportunities in the market and its implementation drives businesses to be remarkable. Theories of organizational adaptation is another important concept, because it helps a company keep track of the changes in technological, economic, and political-legal areas, and the sociocultural trends around the world. The theory of population ecology seems very critical in today’s changing market environment in that it explains how inertia (which is unable to adapt to changing conditions once an organization is successfully adapted to a particular environment niche). For example, Walmart and Target is

After studying KNJ, we feel that the long-term financial success of your company can be met by diversifying into new markets. This would allow you to leverage your expertise as a producer of large scaled machinery to financial stability. Diversifying your product range to new customers would expand your market reach, which would directly enhance sales and profits. By expanding market reach and customer base, diversification also indirectly raises your profit margins by improving your economy of scale. In operations, which there are high fixed costs, i.e. millions invested into machinery, it is naturally advantageous to produce more output so that per unit cost come down and margins rise. Diversification would also enhance your brand equity. Producing more products to a wider range of clients would help to enhance your brand recall and reputation; thereby ensuring repeat business and gaining more referred business. Overall, the benefits of diversification will make KNJ immune to downturns in any one economic segment.

When developing a new product or service it is important to consider the opportunities in the market. In delivering new or innovative products into the market, firms must employ a series of activities that are outlined in the New Product Development process (Koen et al, 2007). Peter Koen et al. provides a five-step front-end activity called front-end innovation: ‘opportunity identification, opportunity analysis, idea genesis, idea selection, and

In the beginning lectures, I had no idea that brainstorming and conceptualizing an idea was part of an elaborate process to generate good product ideas. Great inspiration and a creative idea require deep thinking. I have learned that opportunity identification involves looking into the problems first rather than diving

Before starting a business, entrepreneurs need to take and use the methods to generate creative ideas for product to be marketed and test new ideas. The methods are the focus group method, brainstorming, brainwriting and problem inventory analysis. These methods are best suitable for an organization that needs expansion in products or services