Managing Innovation

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.

Alongside the entrepreneur spirit, Innovation is the process of taking new ideas and implementing them into the market. Key word being “new”, an innovation can be sometimes viewed as the application to better solutions that meet new demand-requirements, inarticulated needs or existing market needs. Innovative ideas range from: goods, services, products, processes, services, technologies or ideas that create value for which customers will pay for. For an idea to be an innovation, it must be replicable at an economical cost and must satisfy a specific need. This means is that one must be ready and willing put their new idea to the test. On the other hand, there is recognition that “innovation is also critical to cultural, environmental, social, and artistic progress as well” (Bullinger, 2006). With this stated, high-tech innovation is ultimately the reason why we can be thankful for the many new conveniences of the 21st century. Although we might see the forefront of innovation being very prominent in today’s world, innovation is truly nothing new. From the start of modern man times, innovative ideas have paved the way for civilization to advance and develop into what we are today and at the same time, we have barely begin to chip away at the tip of the iceberg of our true human potential. Some scholars believe that innovation is a

B. the reduction in the amount of inventory needed by manufacturing firms due to technological improvements in inventory management.

This paper will refer to two audit exercises from Chapter three and Chapter four of the textbook. The first one will refer to demand for product, competitive response, level of novelty of the innovation, factor that could block the good outcome of an innovation, and other factors. The second audit exercise will involve the assimilation of a checklist for innovation with respect to the considered organization. It will also determine the readiness of the organization to implement an innovation strategy.

This research intends to explore innovation at an individual level, but in a context, where the roles and functions of an organization appear eminent either as a promoter or an inhibitor of innovation.

Innovation is an idea that must be cost-effective and must gratify a precise need. Innovation includes careful application of information, imagination and creativity in stemming greater or different values from resources, and includes all processes by which new ideas are generated such as brainstorming and converted into useful products.

Feedback and suggestions are powerful tools in the innovation process. Customers are the forefront of innovation, they give companies their thoughts on what they would like to see done with the items that they produce then the company then takes that feedback and builds on it until there is a product enhancement or even a new product produced.

Innovation is either a new idea a more effective device or a more efficinet process. Innovation is viewed as an application of better solutions that can meet new needs, requirement, or currently existing market needs. This can be accomplished through more streamlined procedures and processes.

1. Innovation and new technologies have led to longer product life cycles and lowered product obsolescence. FALSE

According to Rogers (1995), an innovation is "an idea, practice, or object that isperceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption" (p. 11). Five characteristics of innovations are identified and they help explain the differences in adoption rates (Rogers, 1995).

*Harvard Business School, Boston, MA **Wipro Technologies, Product Strategy and Architecture Practice, Boston, MA Copyright © 2007 by Alan MacCormack, Theodore Forbath, Peter Brooks, and Patrick Kalaher. Note: This is one of two papers reporting the results from this research. The other is “From Outsourcing to Global Collaboration: New Ways to Build Competitiveness,” HBS Working Paper 07-080. Working papers are distributed in draft form for purposes of comment and discussion. It may not be reproduced without permission of the copyright holders. Copies are available from the

Innovation is normally used to denote the process that takes place when a product or a process is developed, from idea to market; the concept of invention only denotes the process that takes place when new ideas or solutions are generated. Baumol (2002) argues “is it possible to have lots of inventions and still lack innovations. Nevertheless, inventions are a necessary precondition for innovation”.

Many people who work hard to be business owners always set out to be an Entrepreneur, which is, a risk taker in the private enterprise system, a person who seeks a profitable opportunity and takes the necessary risks to set up and operate a business. Being an entrepreneur is almost as common as being a sole proprietor in a business. What many business people and working individuals may not know is about being an Intrapreneur, the word in its self is self-explanatory. The word Intrapreneur says to me that, you are an entrepreneur on the inside of a business for an organization; just the opposite of being an Entrepreneur. Intrapreneur means, the process of promoting innovation within the structure of an existing organization. So how does an effective leader promote innovation within an already thriving organization while still being able to achieve the mission and goals in which the business must follow? Well recently the hospital in which I work held a town hall meeting with the President and CEO of the organization. The hospital had just merged with New York Presbyterian as an affiliation to gain better marketing, become more profitable, and overall making it a bigger business. The president was not very pleased with the hospital ranking as a two star hospital and wants to find ways to motivate the people whom work under him. All staff members from nurse managers, to department heads have to devise a plan to implement within their departments to improve new ways to promote

Innovation refers to finding new ways to improve the existing products, services, processes, technologies, and employee performance in an organizational setup. In today's competitive business environment, organizations have to focus on bringing innovation in each and every aspect of their business operations; like products or service offerings, enterprise resource planning systems, marketing and promotional efforts, and organizational structure. The market challenges and competitive pressures also force organizations to use a blend of all these innovation processes in their business activities. Therefore, it is vital to give an equal focus on product innovation, process innovation, marketing innovation, and organizational innovation within the limited organizational resources and capabilities.

Innovation: The term innovation generally refers to making a change or creating newer products and ideas or newer procedures which can result in the success of the company. Sanitarium utilises the innovation concept in various departments and ways.