Innovation (Essay Sample)

Innovation
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Executive summary
The paper explains he importance of innovation in detail manner. The aim of this paper is to clear the understanding about the innovation. The definition, importance, innovation process, benefits of innovation for an organization and the nation and lastly the required characteristics of leader have been explained. This paper provides detailed explanation on the innovation and the role of leader in support and inhibit the organizational innovation.
1 Introduction
Innovation is a process of introducing new or improved good or service in the market. Innovation helps the organization to grow in this globalized business world. This paper is based on the concept innovation. It states different definitions of the innovations and its detailed explanation. In the explanation, different perspectives and types of innovations have been discussed to clear the meaning and significance of innovation in different disciplines and fields of the life. Moreover, innovation process and its six vital stages have also been discussed. In addition, the importance and benefits of innovation for the organization and the nation have also been elaborated further. In the last section, the role of leader and its required characteristics have also been explained that are required for managing organizational innovation in the organizations. Thus, this paper highlights the importance of innovation in detail.
2 Definition of innovation
Innovation is an important concept of the modern world. Innovation can be defined in different ways in different perspectives CITATION Fre95 \l 1033 (Freeman, 1995). In general terms, innovation can be defined as the new application that has been introduced as the new product, process and other aspect of the activities of the organization. Innovation always increases the efficiency of the activities and provides value to the consumers. Such a value is very beneficial for the firm if it introduces in the organization and also for the consumer if it introduces to the common people for their common use CITATION Mar98 \l 1033 (Roger, 1998). Moreover, innovation can also be defined as any new or improved good or service that has been used for the commercial purpose. Similarly, innovation is a substantially improved process that is something new to the business and that increases the productivity of the firm. Innovation can be introduced as materialist change or non-materialistic change. The materialistic innovation includes some technological innovation. On the other hand, the non-materialistic innovation includes the new improved processes and techniques of working in the business organizations. Thus, the definition of innovation is different that can be distinguished into five different ways like the introduction of new product or a qualitative change, process innovation that is new in the business, opening of new market, organizational change and last development of new sources of supply for raw material CITATION OEC97 \l 1033 (OECD, 1997).
3 Innovation and its explanation
From the above definitions, it has cleared that innovation is a process of making changes in the established product or established something totally new and introduced into the world for the benefit of the people. Innovation has been an important topic of many disciplines like economics, business management, engineering, science and sociology CITATION Sul08 \l 1033 (Sullivan, 2008). In business management, innovation can a new product or services that is introduced in the market for adding value for the consumers. On the other hand, in engineering, introduction of new technology in the world is called as innovation. Likewise, in the sociology, new work ethics can be termed as the innovation. There, innovation has different meaning for different disciplines. Innovation has many types. The different types of innovation include product innovation, process innovation, marketing innovation and organizational innovation. The first type of innovation, which is product innovation is an introduction of new or improved good or service in the world. The example of product innovation is user-friendly software in the personal computers and the tablets, and laptop for replacing bulky computers, these all are product innovations. The second type which is process innovation is such a type of innovation in which new or improve methods of working are introduced like economies of scale has been introduced to decrease the overall cost of the production. The third type which is marketing innovation is another important type of the innovation in which new marketing methods are introduced by the marketers or the organizations to promote the product like new positioning techniques or new advertising forms and other. The last type of innovation is an organizational innovation in which new organizational methods are introduced to introduce changes in the organizational environment to increase the productivity and employee performance like new improving workplace satisfactions and other initiatives are known as organizational innovation CITATION Raj08 \l 1033 (Tiwari, 2008 ). All the types are advantageous for the people and increase value and efficiency of the users and the firms.
4 The innovation process
The innovation process has six significant stages. Each stage, compliment the next stage in the innovation process. The six stages include generate ideas, Capture ideas, begin innovation, develop the strategy, apply improvement and decline CITATION Mic131 \l 1033 (Stanleigh, 2013). The first stage generates idea in which ideas have been generated from different ways. The ideas can be generated in the groups and individually, as well. The company or the organization which plans for introducing innovation ask its employee to suggest the idea for the new product. On the other hand, sometimes, companies recruit the employees for research and development that gather different ideas from the customer about the new innovation that may be based on the need of the customer. In such a way different ideas are collected from multiple sources in the first stage. In the second stage, capture idea from first stage explains the screening of best idea from hundreds of ideas and discarded the unrealistic ideas and select the feasible ones. In the third stage of the innovation, the innovation in the real sense is started CITATION Bre09 \l 1033 (McPhail, 2009). The organization first aligns the new idea with its mission, vision and objective of the company because it is very important to justify the innovation on the basis of the company’s mission and goals. The fourth stage is to develop a business effective strategy in which the innovation and its development begin and innovation team starts formulating new strategies to deal with the development of the innovation. It may require new techniques, method and staff to carry out the innovation development process. Thus new strategies to carry out new operations are formulated at this stage. The fifth stage is apply improvement in which continuous examination is done at this stage to identify gaps in the innovation development process. The estimation of risk related to cost and its control is also managed in this stage. The last stage of the innovation process is decline stage. This stage is sometimes missed and ignored, but this is one of the significant stages in which the time span of innovation validation is estimated. The decline stage explains the duration till the innovation will prove beneficial and advantageous for the firm and also for the users CITATION Mic131 \l 1033 (Stanleigh, 2013).
5 Importance of innovation in a business or a nation
In today’s highly competitive global environment, innovation plays an important role not only in the organizations, but also for the nation’s as well. Organizations can achieve a competitive edge by introducing innovation. An organization introduces business and technology innovation to improve the productivity of the employees and improve the efficiency of the operations of the workplace. Innovation can increase the performance of the firm and also provides value to the employees by making their tasks easy through innovations. In addition, innovation is also imperative for the nation’s success. It has a direct relationship with the economic development of the nation. A country with more techno...