Following the American Psychological Association’s Guidelines
Why Do We Need Innovation for a Business?
Every process in which humans are involved might be a subject of an innovation case. The most discriminating power of human being from other creatures is being rational or thinking. We develop processes to provide a more comfortable environment for ourselves. We need innovation in our daily lives to create better opportunities for ourselves.
Considering a company as an organization which has stable processes, it is possible to have some problems or dead ends that you might have hard time. Even sometimes, you do not realize some problems which might cause a failure in your business. However, there is always a way to solve any problem just by monitoring situation in a different approach and creating a new model implementation. This is called innovation which can be defined to find new ways to cope with current problems and do a better business.
Assessment of the Situation
In this essay, a story of a regional development agency will be given as an example of innovation. This regional development agency is responsible to create strategies at developing human capital in a region in a developing country. The agency is trying to find a way to promote writing projects to cope with some socio-economic problems according to a system developed in the European Union called “Project Cycle Management - PCM”. PCM is basically a method containing financial, social and environmental sustainability. Only a few people in the region is acquainted with this method. The agency designed and implemented some financial support programs in the region to make people learn PCM by developing and implementing some projects with small budgets. The agency has used some forms translated from the EU financial support programmes.
However, it has not worked so well. People has developed the thought for the agency that the agency provides free finance to people and instead of learning PCM, they found ways to get the money without developing projects. People could not comprehend the terms in the project application forms.
Identification of the Problem and Opportunity
The agency had some mistakes such as using a translated form, strange terms in its forms for the public, and implementing some communication methods not human oriented. To inform people, the agency were organizing many short meetings, however, in this short meetings , people were more confused.
After evaluating the projects assessment processes and results and interviewing people who applied or wants to apply to the agency's financial support programs has provided some information and some clues to innovate the financial support program design. People have complained about that even though they know what their problem is and they have some suggestions to solve this problem, they are having difficulty to express their ideas in the financial support program application form. The agency applied a survey to the all the stakeholders and defined the things and messages not comprehended by the people.
Even though people have had some problems, they are happy to have this agency and its functions. They get acquainted with a new method to solve their problems.
Creative Concept Development
According to the points not understood by the people, the agency specialist have researched which method could fit to the agency. After this research, a specialist with an academician background has suggested the Socratic method and extra help desks to the appliers. The Socratic method is basically suggesting to create a set of simple questions for people which enable them to understand themselves, their problems and their solution suggestions to these problems. For example, instead of asking the general objective of the project, asking where they live, where they work, and their problems. Asking their problems in details makes them understand why they need a project. After understanding their real problems, they can find solutions much more easily.
People also were having problems to satisfy some formal procedures to complete their applications such signatures, forming a budget etc. The agency, to help people, formed a technical help desk to show how to file a project.
Prototype Development
While developing this implementation, this agency had a preparation time. This preparation has included forming a user friendly application papers with more basic and simple questions on it and forming a technical help desk for the applicants. To understand the missing points in these two innovative processes, some people have been asked to develop a project and apply to the agency with the innovated application papers by getting help from the technical help desk.
Implementation, Validation and Refinement
After making sure that everything is fine with the innovations, a financial support program with a small budget has been implemented. A survey about the application process has been applied to the applicants and also the results of the assessment of the program has been taken into consideration. The results have shown that most of the applicants could apply the program easily by themselves. The number of the applicants suffered from the elimination because of technical problems was smaller accordingly. Some applicants had a problem of understanding the priorities of the program.
The results have shown that the innovative process has been successful. However, defining and explaining the priorities of the program to the people has to be more simplified and detailed. The agency also has started a new service called irregularity management for all the stakeholders of the agency. When anyone struggles a problem or an irregularity in the processes of the agency, he might report this to the agency and the agency will use this information to improve its processes.
The Result
All the organizations need innovative and progressive ways of running their businesses. No one can make perfect plans to be implemented with zero mistakes, because we do not have the full information of the future. We can create some expectations depending on our experiences and scientific information, however, those do not give us fully true information about the future. They can be the best estimations, and even the best estimations need to be adjusted to the needs of the following times. While forming an organization culture and creating a working team, the organization culture and the working team should develop an understanding of innovation, thus the organization can elastic enough to the changing business environment.
References
Amit, Raphael and Zott, Christopher. (2012). Creating Value through Business Model Innovation. Strategy in Changing Markets: New Business Models, MITSloan Management Review, Vol.53, No.3.
Teece, David J. (2010). Business Models, Business Strategy and Innovation. Long Range Planning, No.43, p. 172-194.
Casadeus-Masanell, Ramon and Ricart, Joan E. (2009). Company Strategy: Business Model Reconfiguration for Innovation and Internatinalization. Working Paper No. WP-807, Business School, University of Navarra.
Santos, Filippe. (2009). Business Model Innovation Workbook: How Entrepreneurs Design and Assess Innovative Business Models. INSEAD.
