"INNOVATION1The term “innovation” refers to the giving birth to new ideas and creating more effectiveprocesses, products and ideas so that the business could succeed. The businesses that give riseto new ideas have better chances f succeeding and better performances. Also, innovation can be defined as the process through the new ideas could be implementedso as to create value for the organization. Innovation can involve discounting any existingchain of products, system or process.(Its.yale.edu, 2015)Creativity and innovation is very much used interchangeably but it should not. This is due tothe fact that creativity is all about coming up with new ideas whereas innovation is bringingthe new ideas into life.http://www.bia.ca/what-is-innovation.htmFor many of the businesses, this could mean creating more dynamic products or improvingthe existing services. Innovation helps in adapting to the competition in the market place. Forany business to be successful, it has to forma a part of the strategy of the business and thisleads to the creation of the culture of innovation and lead a way of innovative thinking andsolving of the problems. (Encompass-scotland.co.uk, 2015)The following are the major steps that are involved in the business innovation:1. Analysing the needs, wants and the requirements of the customers and of the marketenvironment and the competitors. The business has to be open to new ideas.2. Development of a strategy and a responsive plan that includes innovation as the keybusiness process across the businesses3. All the employees at all the levels of the organization must be trained to think out ofthe box and giving birth to new ideas. Innovation is something that is driven byinspirational leadership and motivation.4. There must be an establishment with the customers and the employees so that newideas can be generated so as to improve the processes, products and the services bothinternally and externally INNOVATION25. Innovation can be achieved by utilising the available resources, business advisors,grants and assisting the business to innovate new products and ideas. This mayinclude the intellectual property protection for the ideas of commercialisation.(Business.gov.au, 2015)Innovation and focus on customers:The efforts of improving efficiency, cycle time and the quality along with the cost of thespecific process gets converted into significant benefits. Then there is another aspect ofproject management that is used to strategically to position the enterprise.There is an involvement of a number of steps that leads to the creation of the valuableproducts for the customers with the loyalty of their customers. But how well these strategiesexcel and how successful they are, depends upon the loyalty of the customers of theorganizations. If the enterprise really wants to focus upon innovation, then it must be able toconcentrate on the specific processes that will help the organization in delivering the betterproduct and experience that is still not available on the market stands. When the strategicprocess improvements come together with the initiatives of the traditional operationalefficiency, then the leaders of the enterprise are able to view the complete portfolio of theopportunities that are involved.The following are the points for innovation:1. The starting point: for any process improvement, there are 2 pints that are of utmostimportance, first is the starting point. The starting point drives towards the INNOVATION3destination. Any effort is useless if it is not connected with the starting point. Thestarting point is all about understanding the current process of the state subject, itinvolves how the subject processes are related or connected with the other processes,the activities that are undertaken to manufacture a product etc. when the starting pointis known, and it is not very difficult to ascertain the end point. Any strategy tobecome successful must aim at the customer, his needs, his aspiration and thisbecomes the most important part of the strategic planning but is very muchoverlooked. The idea must be unique and must not be copied as is in most of the casesas the preferences of the customers now will always be different from what they arenow.2. Strategic innovation: the new innovation must be unique in itself and very differentfrom what exist now but it need not be perfect, it just must be superior from what isavailable on the market stands now. It is very uncommon that the success may beachieved from single iteration and the main reason behind this is the fact thatinnovation is hard work. Most of the enterprises successfully develop the businessstrategies but they fail in executing the same. What can be done in this respect is thatthe processes that form the part of the strategy must be broken down into a number ofsub processes that must be executed and adjusted according to the strategy. In order toillustrate this, when the strategy is to add an existing line of product, then themarketing department must design a new marketing campaign altogether through thenew communication channel. This type of execution will encourage the collaborationcross the teams and communicate the part of the strategy to each and every one.3. Operational innovation: if the organization has its products of superior quality in themarket for the customers, then it must aim at improving the quality of the product,reducing the cost that is being incurred for its production. This process is calledtraditional process improvement. It includes the assigning an employee to theproduction engine stranger. The production must be more flexible, repeatable andfaster. The managers of the various departments must work together very closelysince if this does not happen, then the efficiency in one process will lead to aninefficiency in another department or the process.4. Initiative management: initiative manages does not have any traditional meaning thatextends to the providing of the approvals or tracking the progress but it is concernedwith the considering of the indicatives as an individual investment and must be rankedas against the other investments. All the initiatives must be considered form the point INNOVATION4of view of the initiatives of the same process and then the same must be prioritizedusing the same criteria. When the list has been ranked, then it becomes the portfolioof the innovation and the ranking is then used to invest the scarce resources of theenterprise so as to give out the maximum rate of return.(Processexcellencenetwork.com, 2015)The following are some of the critical issues, concerns and the checkpoints:Type of customer Critical issue CheckpointinnovationCustomer segmentation The customers and their Are the types of customerchoices are dynamic and information beingtherefore, the staff must be prioritized? Are there anytrained adequately so as to customer protectioncater to the needs of the guidelines?customers. The right type ofinformation will lead toavoid discriminationCustomer analysis Overloading information Can analyses be tracedespecially from the back to specificautomated system. The customers? Are allsystems must be integrated systems connected?Customer communication Complex problems and If outsourced, doesvaluable clients require in- customer service stillperson interaction. High- understand customers?quality communicationmust be paramount. Manychannels and options forcommunication must existfor "anytime, anywhere" INNOVATION5serviceCustomer interaction with Investment must be made in Can the organization'sorganization infrastructure for agility in structure morph? Hasadapting to environment. groundwork for changeRisks with established been laid with establishedrelationships whenever suppliers, vendors,communication channels customers, etc?changed. Copycats mayrapidly duplicate ideas.Customer interaction with Customers and technicians Are customers segmentedproducts and services need a common language. by need and expertise? DoNovice and expert technicians interactcustomers need to be regularly with customers?handled differently.Channels of communicationneed to be varied andflexible.Products and services Requires rich, human-to- Are there protocols foroutputs human interaction. "Sticky" eliciting knowledge fromor tacit knowledge can be customers? Are theredifficult to articulate. metrics to evaluate theFeasibility must be marketability of ideas?carefully analysed andcustomer needs, not specificproducts, should beidentified.(faculty.mu.edu.sa, 2015)The high tech manufacturing companies must keep on innovating the new ideas so as toremain competitive and maintain their position in the market. In the absence of the innovation INNOVATION6that is not focussed on the customer, such as the enterprise resource planning (ERP), supplychain management (SCM), and customer relationship management (CRM), innovation willbecome very risky and will turn into an unproductive journey. The flexible and an integratedIT infrastructure that underlines the sound best practices will be able to support the demandriven and high tech manufacturing strategy by helping the enterprise in gathering theinformation of the customers and improve the decision making of the employees and themanagement. The high tech companies will be able to take into account the changingrequirements and the needs of the customers and will be able to reduce the wastes across theprocesses. This will also lead to the shrinkage of the lead times, reducing of the costs andimprove the customer satisfaction.(MPI, 2015)INNOVATION7Engines of innovation:The following are the engines of innovation:1. Superhighway of ideas: there must be a consistent interchange in the ideas. Theconsistent interchanging of the ideas has led to the cities to get out of poverty andenter into prosperity. It was the interchange of the ideas that led to the growth in theaverage incomes to reach a level that is 5 times higher than the countries that weremostly urbanised when compared with the population that stays in the countryside.2. Healthy ideas: there must be an outlay of the healthy ideas. The cities are able tobreed health and wealth. It is the onset of the healthy ideas that led to the city of NewYork having the life expectancy of more than 2 years higher than the nationalaverage.3. The social revolution: the social networking sites such as the Facebook helps ininnovation. The constant spreading of the new ideas has led to an innumerablenumber of revolts since Paris in 1789 to St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1917 to Cairo in2011.(Engines of innovation, 2013)(academic.evergreen.edu, 2015)The following is the image of a typical implementation plan: INNOVATION8INNOVATION9Sustaining innovation:The concept of sustained innovation is concerned with the people coming closer to share theirideas, their observation and their ideas for solutions so as to solve the complex problems. Theorganizations must concentrate on the sustained innovation so as to share the commonprinciples that acts as the gum to bind together the people in productive collaboration.The following are the 3 principles for a sustained innovation:1. Converged disciplines: the ideas can never be born in isolation. They are celebrated ingroups and helps the entire organization to act as one. The most important in this isthe convergence of the business and the management of the technology so as to ensurethat there no one unit or a division that would miss out the opportunity to capitalisethe new ideas the possibilities.2. Cross boundary collaboration: innovation is like a puzzle, each and every employee orthe manager has his own piece and he must create breakthrough so that the piece fitsinto the puzzle correctly. The suppliers, partners, distributors and the customers are animportant source of the valuable information and the ideas.3. Innovative structure of business: every organization is not as lucky as the lunaticfringe that led to the innovation of the ground breaking pioneer Texas instruments.This requires the convergence of the disciplines, management and the units of theoperations.Each organization must operate with the sustained innovation and focus on the relatedpractices that requires the business, technology, management convergence so as toperform at the high level of the organizational maturity.(Fast company, 2012)The following are some of the way of sustaining innovation:1. Establish the clear sense of direction: when there is a change in the culture, there is achange in the set of mind and this requires time. But the setting up of the clear sensehelps in speeding the journey. The aim of the entity must organize and direct thepeople towards creativity. When a person has a clear message with regard toinnovation, then it helps in innovating the ideas that will deliver the greatest value. INNOVATION10Innovation s has bene defined by Peter Drucker involves creating a new dimension ofperformance.2. Open communication: the open communication between the management and theemployees helps in the development of trust but when there is trust in abundance, thenthe employees cannot be expected to take the first step towards innovation.Leadership initiates the process of open innovation and the leaders of theorganizations have sustained innovation by offering many opportunities forcommunication.3. Reduced bureaucracy: it is actually the system that leads to innovation and not thesize of the company. Rather, the smaller organizations helps in implementing theinnovative ideas since there is a lesser amount of bureaucracy involved.4. Instilling a sense of ownership: there must be a sense of ownership in the minds of theemployees, when the employees have this sense in their mind, they are willing to goan extra mile for the fulfilment of the goals and the objectives of the organization.5. Recognition and reward must be aligned: the compensation must be aligned with thefinancial rewards. When the reward are so aligned, then this would lead to morecompetitive atmosphere and will discourage the smaller and less dramaticimprovements.6. Risk and failure tolerance: the organizations should be aware of the fact that theinnovation is not always successful. When a new idea is developed, there is a certaindegree of risk that is involved since the outcome can go either way and therefore, thisshould be tolerated and so does the failure.7. Elimination of the projects and the processes that will never work: as the organizationpaves the way for innovation, there must be a creative abandonment. When theorganization is creating new ideas, then the processes and the projects that areinconsistent with the new ideas must be discontinued. No entity wants to finance theactivities that will not take it anywhere or that do not contribute to its goals. This willonly involve wastage of the irreplaceable resources of the entity.Innovation needs optimism. It aims at continuously reaching the higher levels so as to lead tohigher performances. (Innovation management, 2015)(MC Kinsey, 2015) INNOVATION11When an organization continuously keeps on developing new products and has new ideas, itgrabs the attention of the customers and helps in gaining a position in the market and beatingits competitors. (HBS.edu, 2015)The leaders of the creativity that produce the innovative goods and services and results indelight of the customers and in achieving the competitive advantage have certain set ofcharacteristics. They are the understanding of creativity, innovation and the leadershipprocesses and an ability along with the desire to develop a culture of creativity andinnovation.(Leadership, 2015)INNOVATION12References:academic.evergreen.edu, (2015). Engines of Innovation. [Online] Available at:http://academic.evergreen.edu/z/zita/articles/SciAm/GW_CC/CityInnovation.pdf[Accessed 28 Feb. 2015].Business.gov.au, (2015). Innovation - what is innovation? | business.gov.au. [Online]Available at: http://www.business.gov.au/business-topics/business- planning/innovation/Pages/default.aspx [Accessed 28 Feb. 2015].Encompass-scotland.co.uk, (2015). What is Innovation? | Innovation in Your Business.[Online] Available at: http://www.encompass-scotland.co.uk/innovation-in-your- business/innovation.html [Accessed 28 Feb. 2015].faculty.mu.edu.sa, (2015). CUSTOMER-DRIVEN INNOVATION. [Online] Available at:http://faculty.mu.edu.sa/public/uploads/1357394142.956332024697.pdf [Accessed 28Feb. 2015].Glaeser, E. (2013). Engines of Innovation. Sci Am, 23(1s), pp.102-105.Hoque, F. and Hoque, F. (2012). How Successful Companies Sustain Innovation. [Online]Fast Company. Available at: http://www.fastcompany.com/3002324/how-successful- companies-sustain-innovation [Accessed 28 Feb. 2015].Innovationmanagement.se, (2015). 7 strategies for sustained innovation | InnovationManagement. [Online] Available at: http://www.innovationmanagement.se/imtool- articles/7-strategies-for-sustained-innovation/ [Accessed 28 Feb. 2015].Its.yale.edu, (2015). What Is Innovation? | Yale ITS. [Online] Available at:http://its.yale.edu/about/innovation-its/what-innovation [Accessed 28 Feb. 2015].Mckinsey.com, (2015). Leadership and innovation. [Online] Available at:http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/innovation/leadership_and_innovation [Accessed 28Feb. 2015].MPI, (2015). Customer-Focused Innovation in High Tech Industries. [Online] Available at:http://MPI_Report_High-Tech.pdf [Accessed 28 Feb. 2015].Processexcellencenetwork.com, (2015). Customer Focused Process Innovation by DavidHamme. [Online] Available at: http://www.processexcellencenetwork.com/business-INNOVATION13transformation/articles/customer-focused-process-innovation/ [Accessed 28 Feb. 2015].www.hbs.edu, (2015). How Can We Beat Our Most Powerful Competitors? [Online]Available at: http://www.hbs.edu/socialenterprise/pdf/TheInnovatorsSolutionChpt2.pdf[Accessed 28 Feb. 2015].www.leadership.org.uk, (2015). Leadership trust. [Online] Available at:http://www.leadership.org.uk/files/uploads/75.pdf [Accessed 28 Feb. 2015]. "