Managing Innovation and Entrepreneurship - Assignment Example

Running Head: Managing Innovation and Entrepreneurship Your name Your Tutor’s name Date Question 1 The term innovation means to renew or to change, this term is broadly applied as it generally refers to the making of products, services, and technologies, processes ideas that are more efficient and are at the same time accepted in the markets. Innovation is therefore the specific tool of entrepreneurs Radical innovation Radical innovation entails the commercialization of products, services and technologies that have the impacts on the following scopes. First, the market, in aspects of offering completely new customer benefits that are relative to the previous product production, and second, the company, in terms of its capability to generate new businesses. Examples of organizations that have applied radical innovation include: the AOL’s instant messenger (AIM) service, Amazon.com and Transistor technology. The success of radical innovation is basically due to the following main factors. Main factors for the success of radical innovation An organization can’t change in a proper manner unless some aspects are looked at, these aspects include such as 1. A convincing case for innovation Entrepreneurs need to understand the importance of innovation; this is the first step of successful change in a firm. Successful concepts need to be designed in order to commercialize the products and technologies. This is done with the aim of offering the customer a better product and the company a better and outstanding financial result. Therefore, the case for innovation has to be made and has to be persuasive if the entrepreneur expects good results 2. An inspired, common dream of the future This factor is vital in innovation as most of the organizations anticipate the future of their firm on the basis of the past performance. Nonetheless, if history is balanced and a holistic viewpoint of the potential is visualized, then it's easier to identify the aspects of change surprisingly, the business may not look so relevant in that prospect. Therefore, for the designed case to be of success, the business needs to develop a hypothesis about its future. 3. A completely aligned strategic innovation outline. Innovation is a journey of the transformation of a business to the unknown results; as a result, the innovator happens to have many paths opened. Vital strategic innovation outlines includes the questions such as, “what trade are we involved ?” in most of the organizations, the major reason as to why radical innovation fails is due to the fact that time is not spent to support the business behind one planned innovation program. 4. Practical senior management involvement. Radical innovation is applied in situations whereby the strategy of the business is clear and the decision metric. The implementation of the process of radical improvement works after the individual who can say yes to big expenses visibly supports and participates in the work and provides all the needed resources for the change to take place (Baron & Markman 2000). 5. A clear yet supple implementation program Organizations that have established themselves apply the main concept of small scale innovation so as to test the waters; they focus on making small and incremental or radical changes. The Five entrepreneurial lessons From the above analysis of the main aspects that contribute to success in innovation, and that can be applied in the innovation of other organizations include the following 1. The willingness by an entrepreneurship to take risk and view the value in absurdity is one of the main lessons that are applicable to other ventures. There exists no choice in innovation, big risks must be undertaken. 2. Organizational change is usually steered by the market place factors such as customers, the government, competition, science and technology. Only by the exploration of the above aspects will a business start to be aware of what has to be done, in order to be significant in its outlook. 3. Decision makings are very vital in any business as the change can not go through without them. A decision making model also needs a passionate campaigner who can make judgments and involve the team in discussions to sustain resolutions. 4. The exploration of the marketplace factors that entail the customer, the competitors, science and technology is a vital aspect in the implementation of innovation in any venture. Via this, the company is able to clearly see the sectors that the changes need to be installed most and the less fundamental areas. 5. A creatively resourced, multi-functional dedicated team is a must in any type of innovation whether radical or incremental, the bets teams in have the following components, the project campaigners who decide during functioning sessions. Question 3 Barriers of Innovation Innovators face several obstacles, the most common are in adequate funding, avoiding risks, incorrect measurement, “siloing” and time commitments. Inadequate funding Acquiring the funds to do the several required and designed changes in a business is a major barrier to entrepreneurs, the other funding issue is getting the money in time, acquiring of funds often implies that money will be taken from an already established program, this is a major challenge due to the fact that many organizations work on the yearly funding cycles, therefore taking longer time to pass the funding process. Most innovations require more than just the seed money in order survive in the competing market. This barrier of inadequate funding brings out questions such as when, how much, how the organizations do requires money (Zimmerer & Scarborough 1998). Risk avoidance Most are the organizations that view the taking of risks as the number one enemy to the running of a company or a business. On the other hand, innovation process cannot be achieved without the taking of risks. Basically, no profitable progress in an organization can be made without taking risks many entrepreneurs are aware of the risks associated with innovation and as a result they tend to run away from it. In addition, some organizations have the habit of playing the game of findings of the possibilities of the entire process going wrong. The most common response to the organizations that are afraid of innovation is the response of “we have never done this before, or this failed the last time we tried it” and so forth. On the identification of the risk barrier, the innovation process comes to a halt in many business enterprises. However, it’s vital to note that a clear eyed perspective of risks that are professionally balanced against the advantages of innovation creates an environment that nurtures innovation rather than killing it. Time commitments Time being a scarce and a precious commodity is a fundamental aspect in innovation in any organization. Verification that minutes are filed in a productive manner is one of the roles of management, a progressive management invests its employee in the on the job time in education, relationships, experimentation, health and person growth, it becomes very hard to validate whether such investments do pay off. In addition, these investments may not pay off in a timely manner in case the funding has been sponsored. However, the increment on the value, urgency and benefits of any innovation tends to free up for work on it. Incorrect measures In most of businesses, the profits, revenue and market shares are the only applicable measures in the running of the enterprises; this is due to the fact that they are quantifiable than aspects such as knowledge, reputation, leadership and other intangibles that make key contributions to the real value an organization. Many important innovations are hard to explain in the terms of return on investment. The return on investment trap on the innovations can only be avoided via the expansion of the view of measures and the inclusion of decision makers in process of creation of new and effective measures. Siloing This is a major barrier that aims at protecting the identity of an organization in the motive of acquiring proper credit, proper sustaining and maintaining of the enterprise. As a result, boundaries are created; assigned roles and rules are put in place. Despite the creation of artificial divisions and boundaries, they usually get ignored as it’s of advantage to each and every individual of the organization, on the other hand, by nature; innovations have a propensity of crossing the boundaries and creation of new categories. Therefore, it’s usual to see competition claims of possession and disagreements about authority. Deals collapse on the question of who will run things and the division of profits, due to this, innovations that are likely to benefit from the entire organization are collapsed by enterprises that do not promote themselves (McClelland & Winter 1971). Barriers of radical innovation that aid in prevention of imitation is the network externalities, this is usually on the basic of the fact that the more the costumers, the more attractive a company will look. For instance, e-bay has many sellers and many buyers, therefore hard for them to move from e-bay to another potential organization providing the same services. Another form of barrier in radical innovation that prevents imitation is the aspect of politics and culture, in most cases, imitation often requires the organizations to make changes to business practices and cultures. For instance, the southwest enterprise that offers speed of travel. N this type of business, this barrier would mean main revisions in the training, marketing and routing. Therefore, barriers are sometimes necessary for the well being and development of an organization. Question 5 Select a key �innovation issue� that you believe an entrepreneurial organization needs to address to be a commercial success. Discuss the impact or effect of this issue on the innovation process. Using at least three articles or readings studied this semester, outline possible strategies that can be used to manage the issue identified. One of the key contributors towards commercial success within an organization is the implementation of Information systems. Information Systems have grown to become the central infrastructure that businesses depend for the success. These systems are utilized in the management of information. The simple reason of I.S is sufficient to show its significance to the strength of a business process. Practically speaking, nearly all businesses rely on such technology to provide data. IT eases work within firms in spite of size. This assists firms to center operations on objectives relative to wasting time and money on hiring more labor. Impact According to Moore (2007), innovation has to be there in order for information technology to progress otherwise what ensues is a mere recurrence of the existing technology. It has been said that Information technology has the power to involve users in critical but creative and complex shills which are essential in evaluation, analysis, connection and information synthesis for analogous, visual and extension of ideas. Also for design, problem solving, decision making and planning processes (Scollard, 1996). In a generalized point of view, information technology can serve very many and different functions today: it facilitates communication, It’s a highly reliable source of information; it can be used for presentation, manufacturing and design to mention but a few. According to Girl and Chong (1998), information technology is expanding at such a rate that there is an emergency in the need for innovation. A good example of innovation in information technology in the recent past is the emergence of wireless network responsible for communication, with remote computers within a given area. The wireless network can be further widened by use of additional channels for transmitting digital data such as fiber optic and other channels that can carry digital information. This innovation in technology has been boosted further by the presence of the World Wide Web or the internet. Sharing of information has therefore been made easier and possible through this technology. Additionally wireless LAN normally assist in making the wireless hot spots communicate with each other creating what has now been called WLAN. A web site is a collection of well designed pages that can be used for various reasons. Companies use websites to market themselves and their products, to express to customers what they do. There also sites that are used to interact with others. A good example of such sites is the recent use of facebook, hi5, yahoo, Gmail or others. As we focus on aspects of innovation in IT, we will focus on facebook as our sample site. Facebook is an interactive website that has been used to connect people around the globe. An interactive site is one in which you can communicate with directly. In the web page you can input information which is saved directly into the database of the site and you can get an immediate response. In such a site it is possible to communicate with other people. Innovation comes in handy when designing such a site so as whoever is accessing it enjoys surfing through the site. Creative websites have helped shape people’s lives by directly affecting them. We can be able to share information with other people very first and even work from remote areas. A web site needs to be interesting to go through and so the designer has to use creative ideas so as to make people spend more time in it. In a statement by Sexto, & Bowman-Upton (1999), there lies a great challenge to leaders and other participants as introduction of new technologies will first require them to be shaped in a variety of ways before it is deemed acceptable to all users References Baron, R. A., & Markman, G. D. 2000. Beyond social capital: How social skills can enhance entrepreneurs' success. Academy of Management Executive, 14(l):106-115. Buttner, E. H. 199. Female entrepreneurs: How far have they come? In R. W. 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