Section C Innovation Flashcards
Drivers of innovations
- Market reading - observing customers and competitors
- Need seeking - Focus groups, surveys of customers to determine needs
- Technology driving - investing in R&D to follow opportunities offered by technological capabilities
Is innovation necessarily related to technology?
No, Need-seeking innovation often occurs using ordinary products, but finding new business models or new uses of products
Innovation vs production method?
Availability and type of technology affects the choice of production method
Innovation vs leadership style?
Innovative culture of a company directly depends on the leadership style, on the values and image that are promoted (by the decision of leaders) within the company and externally.
Innovation vs diversity (one of HR strategy)
Diversity recruitment means companies recruit individuals with a collective mixture of differences and similarities that include individual characteristics, values and beliefs, experiences, and backgrounds.
●As a HR strategy, diversity gives companies an opportunity to start identifying new trends. They can do this because their workforce is representative of its customers
●Also it means greater pool of talent and creativity to problem solutions
Which leadership style supports innovation?
Democratic
Laissez-faire
Which organizational culture supports innovation?
Task ; Person (Handy)
Limitations/problems with R&D?
● Opportunity costs – what else could the money be spent on?
● In the wrong direction – not necessarily there is a market for it.
● Time- Workforce is tied to a project for years, without any ROI (return on investment) for the company during that time.
● Ethical issues: genetically modified? stem cells? animal experiments?
4 types of protection available for innovations (intellectual property rights) ?
● Patents (up to 20years)
● Trademarks (around 10 years with renewal terms)
● Copyright (50-100 years after death of author))
● Trade secrets (unlimited)
Patent vs trade secret?
Patents and trade secrets present opposing choices.
Patents even protect against competitors even if they have come to the same discovery independently. They just don’t have the right to use a discovery patented by you without your permission/license. However, patents last only around 20 years and the applicant must disclose the invention to the public. The patent gives the inventor “first mover advantage”.
A trade secret, could theoretically last forever, but trade secret law only prohibits the theft, it does not prevent a competitor from engineering the innovation or from independently discovering and using the secret.
The 4 Ps of innovation?.
● Product innovation,
● Process innovation,
● Positioning innovation, and
● Paradigm innovation
Two types of creativity?
Adaptive (thinking inside the box)
Innovative (thinking outside the box)
Paradigm innovation?
Refers to an innovation so important that it may change the industry itself both short-term and long-term. e.g. Airbnb ; couchsurfing; linkedin.
Positioning innovation ?
Refers to the use or perception of a new product or service. The word “positioning” is in the marketing sense of “in relationship to competitors”, as with a product position map. It is related to rebranding.
Which indexes of Hofstede may indicate the level of innovation?
● Uncertainty avoidance (high scores are discouraging innovation)
● Power distance (high scores are discouraging innovation)
● Individualism (law scores may be discouraging innovation)
