Druckers Seven Opportunities for Innovation - Term Paper Example

The paper "Drucker’s Seven Opportunities for Innovation " is a great example of a business term paper. The growing environmental concerns regarding mitigating climate change, the necessity for greater innovation and a need to enhance innovation execution in systems within the construction industry is well recognized. External factors like the changeful societal expectations and demands, increase the rate of globalization of markets and an increasingly dynamic business climate, and advancement in technology and knowledge, construction and infrastructure firms face extensive pressure to innovate. The objective of this paper is to explore the concept of innovation in the construction industry, and how construction firms would apply business model innovation to engage in innovations, including developing smart cities. Drucker’s Seven Opportunities for Innovation is used to identify the changes and challenges to the construction industry market structures.

It is established that a tendency for uniqueness is what hinders construction innovation, as it ensures that contractors have limited opportunities to benefit from being innovative, rather than just optimizing their own processes. Another concern identified is the lack of systematic diffusion of innovation in the sector. Additional barriers include the fact that the construction process remains significantly fragmented. Other challenges include Workforce management, lack of learning culture, the poorly articulated business case for innovation, and poor attitude towards innovation.

The construction industry should, therefore, change its business model from that of cost-efficiency to value-addition. In this way, the construction industry would add value to societies, businesses, clients and other stakeholders through innovations that improve the built environment or lead to the realization of client needs. A potential area of innovation for the construction industry identified is developing smart cities, which would create value for the clients, contractors, businesses and the public. Instead of being viewed in terms of cost, integration of smart technology to a city would create momentous opportunities that would add value to a range of stakeholders.