E I Individual assignment online Essay example

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 today’s rapidly changing business environment, the ability to transform obstacles into opportunities can be a firm’s biggest advantage (Samašonok & Leškienė, 2015). As organizations recognize the need to be adaptable, creativity in the workplace has become one of the most important determinants of performance and success (Anderson, Potočnik & Zhou, 2014). To date, even though creativity has been linked to firm performance and survival (Nystrom, 1990), many managers admit that employees have “room to improve” in terms of creativity (Shalley, 2004).

What particular elements of each organization’s culture, processes, and management systems and styles work well to support innovation?

• Amabile: How to Kill Creativity? Harvard Business Review 1998 (course packet; writeup 1. For Feb 5)

The term creativity is used for the purpose of describing the ability that is concerned with the process of creating something new or valuable. This ability allows a person to surpass the rules, practices, methods, forms or similar kind of activities that the traditional society may be performing at that time. Creativity is one of the most important things that have allowed the people of the society to move forward and urge for development. All the development that has been made in various aspects of human life can be directly connected with the creativity. All the industry leaders of the world have secured this place because of the level of creativity and innovation that they showed. They used this creativity for creating something new that has allowed them to develop completely new methods for this purpose.

Innovation is not a single activity; it is a process. For businesses, innovation means fresh ideas, developing new products or services and its effective processes. Innovation can be key to any business or company in the future. Bringing innovation into your business can help you save time and money and gives you the competitive advantage needed to grow your business.

To make a business grow and achieve productive and efficient results you need to invoke creativity which has always been an essential business skill. Since long time creativity has been applied to a business world as companies seek to use it in all parts of the organization to make it gain more profits and to be exceptional from others. A business person has to find unique solutions every day and he has to know how to react to situation creatively. Richard Florida (2002) stated human creativity is the ultimate economic resource. The ability to come up with new ideas and better ways of doing things is ultimately what raises productivity and thus living

Innovation is what gives an organization the competitive advantage the business will need to be successful in the market. Innovations are ideas that can impact the strategy, process, products and services that an organization has to offer to its customers. Three organizations that have an enormous impact on innovation are United Parcel Service (UPS), Hewlett-Packard and The Coca-Cola Company.

On the other hand, innovation isn’t at the heart of a big corporation, as they have already made it, so to speak. The company has achieve a market share and its focus isn’t directed in creating new ideas, but rather making sure its existing ones are up to date.

Tidd and Bessant (2009) argued that “Unless an organization is able to move into further innovation, it risks being left behind as others take the lead in changing their offerings, their operational processes or the underlying models that drive their business”.

Innovation is essential to firms if they want to maintain competitive advantage, fulfill customer 's needs, wants, and expectations and perform well in the market. It 's important for firms to know how to identify innovative opportunities such as developing a new product or transforming existing products into new product development. “Innovation is the multi-stage process whereby organizations transform ideas into new/improved products, services or processes, in order to advance, compete and differentiate themselves successfully in their marketplace” (Baregheh, Rowley, & Sambrook, 2009, p. 1334). In order for a firm to be successful in new product development they must take into account that this development is divided into five critical stages. The process begins with stage one idea

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.

Harvard business essentials : managing creativity and innovation, 2003, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Mass.

The second stage is selection. It is well known fact that innovation is risky. In order not to fail, firm has to thoroughly assess the opportunities, so innovation will be held within the frame of company’s technological and marketing competences and will be coherent with overall business strategy (Tidd, J., Bessant, J., 2009). There are three components in this phase. The first component comes from previous stage and implies the analysis of opportunities, both marketing and technological, procurable for the firm. The second component includes the distinctive features company possesses, which are knowledge base, employees, equipment and experience (Prahalad, C., Hamel, G., 1990). The third component is suitability to the overall business strategy. This implies the fact that proposed innovation should be beneficial for firm’s performance, in other words, be in company’s competence base, otherwise it could lead to the failure (Cooper, R., 2000).

Innovation offers the companies a competitive advantage. Presently and within the future, more than any time in history, the key to competitive advantage is innovation. However innovation will facilitate businesses meet all of their strategic challenges, not simply competition; to illustrate, in confronting accelerating rates of change, globalization, apace advancing technology, a additional numerous workforce, associated a modification from an industrial to a knowledge-based economy. Meeting all of those challenges helps the firm attain competitiveness, and meeting these challenges suitably depends on innovation. Innovation allows a firm to workout its challenges in distinctive ways in which build competitive advantage either through relative differentiation, a relative low-priced position, or few acceptable level of each. Innovation cannot assure success, however success cannot be achieved within the end of the day without it.