The article ’How to Get Paid Twice for Everything You Do part 3’ discusses the methods and strategies that can be used to manage innovation in order to maximize the potential within that innovation. In the contemporary world of business, innovation and creativity are the key pillars of success. Without these two, there is a threat of losing relevance to competing forces due to production of obsolete products or services. The technology world in particular has changed the whole business setting. This it is crucial for any serious investors or entrepreneur to ensure they can keep up to speed with the pace of the business setting g in the modern world. However, creativity and innovation are not just enough to ensure that a business entity remains relevant even against established competing forces. The key is managing both innovation and creativity to ensure they have a massive impact to the business entity. Proper management of these two as described in the paper provides an assurance of continued relevance in the market both now and in the future.
Managing innovation and creativity requires a high level of discipline form within the leadership and down to the work force. Innovation is a resource intensive entity. Creativity, on the other hand, calls for the personal effort to allow the mind to wander in some fantasy. Creativity involves breaking the radical boundaries of thinking and designing new methods and solutions to the problem. However, it is important to note that not all creative minds end up becoming innovative entities. Such a phenomenon occurs for a simple reason (Marshall, A. C., 2013).
While creativeness is an individual affair, innovativeness is all about teamwork. As stated in the article “individuals may have part of the solution to the problem, but they rarely have the whole answer.” This is entirely true in all aspects. It is the reason a company will recruit a CEO to oversee the affairs of the company and incur some expenses in acquiring the services of heads of department. In this case, the CEO may have a way of overseeing the affairs from a management point of view. However, the dance CEO may not be adequately knowledgeable to oversee the day-to-day affairs of the IT department for instance. Similarly, the Finance head of department may not be able to oversee the daily affairs of the IT department in the same way the IT head may not be able to run the affairs of the Finance Department. Despite these differences, there is one thing that remains common for in the above scenario. All heads of Department and the CEO have a common agenda, and that is to ensure the company remains relevant and growing.
Thus, each of them will have to oversee the duties assigned to them and develop strategies and policies that they deem effectively to achieve the set objectives. Once they come together in the meeting all these individuals will present their argument and normalize them to have a common document that outlines the realism behind meeting the objectives. The volume of knowledge within such a meeting is wide. Sometimes, despite the accuracy with which policies and strategies are defined, there are evident cases of failure. This implies that even for a wide knowledge base, there are challenges in managing innovation. However, in such a case, there is a chance to redeem from the failure, as it is much easier to come up with affirmative action from a group of individuals to revert the dangers of a failed innovation. There are high chances for a single person to be overwhelmed by such a task. Similarly, it would take longer to act, as solutions may not be readily available for reversing the trend. This would be disastrous for the business entity.
The scenario above offers a clear distinction between innovation and creativeness ion several ways. In one way, it is clear that creativeness generates ideas whose consequences we might not be able to predict. In an ideal world, these ideas are may be applicable. Similarly, there are no physical or financial resources incurred in generating ideas. However, in the case of innovation the ideas generated have to function in the real world. Resources must be available. Otherwise, the idea will only remain as an idea. This implies that an innovation includes all the overlapping activities of converting an idea into a money-generating venture (Brown, C., 2014).
The significance of innovation management begins to manifest from this point. There is a set of best practices used to manage innovation efficiently. These practices are multi-directional. They must play a role from the bottom of the organization’s management structure to the top and from the top to the bottom. The points of overlap of these roles is what marks major milestones in the process of putting up an innovation. The top management role includes the approving of works suggested by the innovation heads. The innovation heads oversee the innovation groups and ensuring they remain within the scope of what the company or organization requires. Communication between these groups is crucial, and each of them plays a role in the innovation process. Eliminating any of the groups from their role renders innovation an irrelevant task (Patmore et al., 2009).
The top-bottom and the bottom-top approaches of communication are crucial in innovation. Similarly, crucial are meetings between the innovation groups and the executive. The innovation groups comprise of the management workforce. They form the innovation meeting where decision-making takes place concerning innovation takes place. Innovation focuses on value-addition to the currently working solutions. Thus, managing innovation is a two-fold process. There is a need to ensure proper appropriation of available resources well for research and innovation and secondly ensure that the value of the products or services resulting from this innovation is with the investment (Brown, C., 2014). This implies a high-level skill in management patterns of both appropriation and income generation.
As Andrew C. Marshall his article in the Business Insider asserts, that the company plays a key role in ensuring continued innovation through generation of creative ideas by the innovation groups within its workforce. He asserts that the creativity within the workforce can be tapped if the company is ready to involve itself in innovation as a way of adding value to its products or services. However, this will call for sufficient funding and risk taking. “Creativity is the price of admission, but its innovation that pays the bills.” (Marshall, A. C., 2013)In the technological world today, this trend is unavoidable. Research in business has become a crucial component as organizations look to hold onto the market share. There is a continuous struggle to keep the customers in anticipation by offering new products that suit the rapidly changing lifestyles.
The situations experienced by different companies require different approaches in the innovation strategies to be used to counter the prevailing conditions improve on the existing channels of production and incorporate new advancements to improve on the levels of production. To increase the performance and service delivery of a company or organization there should be constant evaluation of the existing business models. This enables the company to make innovations to the existing business models depending on the mode of the company i.e. proactive or reactive mode. In proactive mode innovation are necessary especially when the company needs to introduce new products in the market or when changing the mode of service delivery. In this case, innovations are necessary in order to come up with products that satisfy the needs of the consumers. For example, when designing a cell phone company should come up, with innovations such as adding new applications.
When entering a competitive market, innovation is crucial to enable a company counter the underlying competitive forces such as incorporating modern technology in the improvement of service delivery. In addition, to prevent the collapse of a company innovation in the existing business models are very essential. For example, a company can embark on using on-line advertisements to enable them market their products to the population while at the same time reducing the cost incurred in marketing (Patmore et al., 2009). When a company is in reactive mode changes, in the existing business, models are very crucial. For example, innovating an alternative model and abandoning the already existing model. The other approach would be to run parallel business models where each one of them is independent.
When an enterprise decides to incorporate two business models, there should be laid down strategies to ensure that the models run effectively. The first strategy is separation strategy. Each of the business models is allowed to run independently from each other but with close monitoring and evaluation by having a competent supervisor. The supervisor should be sourced within the company since this requires someone who has knowledge on the company. In addition, the business models should be allowed to budget for their own operational costs and run their units without interference. For example, if a manufacturing company decides to use different technology in production and retain the initial model then each should be given power to run independently.
The second strategy known as phase integration strategy involves separating the business models and allowing each to run independently for a certain period later merging the two after conflicts between them have been minimized. The other strategy is phase separation strategy. This involves analyzing the models in the business enterprise and the resources needed to run each new model separately and finally separating the two to minimize the levels of conflict for efficient running and faster productivity in the company. Another strategy used in dual models is the integration strategy.
This is whereby new models are embraced and integrated into the company’s infrastructure as soon as there is a complete resolve of all conflicts arising from the interaction of the existing business models and the new models have been minimized. For example, if a company was running a pilot model of a new database in the storing and retrieval of information and finds that it beneficial to the company then it is integrated into the company’s infrastructure for performance improvement. Therefore, embracing the above-discussed factors translates to an increase in the income realized by business enterprises.
References
Brown, C. (2014). Increasing Innovation Impact in the Enterprise | Innovation Management. Retrieved from https://innovationmanagement.se/2013/11/07/increasing-innovation-impact-in-the-enterprise/
Marshall , A. C. (2013, April 10). Difference Between Creativity And Innovation - Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/difference-between-creativity-and-innovation-2013-4
Patmore , J., Whittaker, S., Watkins, S., & Hessey, S. (2009, July). The Management of Creativity & Innovation | Jeff Patmore - Academia.edu. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/1583075/The_Management_of_Creativity_and_Innovation
