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Proposed Solutions for Challenges Faced by General Mills Canada

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Prior to the arrival of David Homer, General Mills Canada had been a successful subsidiary of the General Mills brand. Although employees at General Mills Canada have generated positive sales growth every year before his tenure, Homer notices a lack of initiative, drive, and desire to embrace fundamental changes by his employees, a sign of progress hindered by risk aversion. He notices that data is pouring into the company and employees are using this data to analyze potential opportunities for growth, yet they are reluctant to take any actions. Thus, his ultimate challenge is to integrate innovative thinking into the General Mills Canada culture, and determine what “processes and tools” to use to achieve this goal, since employees are…show more content…
To integrate innovation at General Mills Canada, and ultimately increase sales, Brad Taylor needs to implement at least four changes. One solution is to set a mandatory time outside of the workday so that members of different departments can meet and share ideas, such as corporate sponsored events. According to Professors John Bessant and Joe Tidd, innovation tends to come from “bottom up team initiatives,” as seen from IBM’s success during Lou Gerstner’s tenure. , If low-level employees can associate, they can construct better ideas. A second solution to General Mills Canada’s problem is to “exploit their resources.” The idea is for employees to increase the efficiency of what they already do. They can increase innovation in this area by implementing new software to speed up any processes, or use the data from software to forecast demand and sales in a better way. , If they make their processes better than their competitors, they can gain a competitive advantage. A third solution is to create a balance between risk taking and stability. General Mills Canada must encourage employees to speak up in meetings when they have ideas or spot potential business opportunities. When upper level management encourages these initiatives, it will drive the employees’ risk aversion down and hopefully promote innovative thinking. Finally, General Mills Canada needs to increase the size of their prototype division.
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