StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

How to Overcome Organizational Barriers to Creativity and Innovation - Essay Example

Cite this document
Summary
This essay "How to Overcome Organizational Barriers to Creativity and Innovation" focuses on innovation and idealism as an occasion for opportunities and risks. The risks of innovation are obvious: it might fail to lead to wastage of the investment in SMEs. …
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER92.5% of users find it useful
How to Overcome Organizational Barriers to Creativity and Innovation
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "How to Overcome Organizational Barriers to Creativity and Innovation"

? Marketing Product Innovation In the past, numerous organizations whether small or large, have been surviving even with limited innovation and ideation capabilities. In recent world, there are trends that drive the process of innovation. Factors like outsourcing and globalization force organizations to exert efforts to improve it effectiveness ad efficiency (Yang & Tao, 2012: p. 319-331). An organization requires more than supplying good products for it to succeed. For instance, an industry require innovative management and processes that can assist it in improving productivity and cutting down operating costs. The work by Mats, Paolo and Jennie “Ideation capabilities for continuous innovation” explores and discusses ideation capabilities in large organizations. Ideation capabilities relate to organizational and managerial processes for the implementation, selection, identification and stimulation of innovation ideas. According to the results of this study, organizations adapt to distinct approaches to ideation. On the other hand, Sylvie Laforet writes an article by name “A framework of organizational innovation and outcomes in SMEs” to address innovation and its consequences in small and medium-sized enterprises (Stamm, 2005). Sylvie develops a detailed theoretical structure of the innovation’s end results, how it occurs, as well as, its effects on the financial performance of an industry. She focuses on three distinct innovations in addressing the topic of market product innovation. Sylvie states several drivers to innovation in small and middle businesses (Siddike, Amna & Kohda). For instance, quality, business, environment, a desire to succeed and improve working conditions in SMEs drive innovation. As Jennie et al describes the negative consequences of a resultant formalization, Sylvie focuses on the positive impacts of innovation. The positive consequences of innovation entail: improvement of SMEs’ image, reputation, cost benefits, increased financial performance, recruitment of additional labor and increase in outfitted efficiency among others. Consequently, just like Jennie et al, Sylvie states the negative outcomes of innovation. For instance, operational issues, management and financial risks: inclusive of industry’s reputation and image loss, customer and employees issues, safety, environmental and health impacts, uncontrollable industry growth and costs. Such negative outcomes of innovation are outrageous and require the large-scale, medium and small organizations to take action to manage them immediately. There are several approaches on how to overcome organizational barriers to creativity and innovation. According to Jennie et al, a firm with an explicit focus on developing ideation practices realise that there are negative outcomes of the resultant formalization. Employees develop significant ideas for innovation and creativity. However, the extent to which an organization can involve employees in ideation is a challenging aspect, even though additional technologies make the practice realistic. Nevertheless, the management requires to identify all creative employees within the business to curb the barriers to innovation and ideation. Surprisingly, creativity within the organization might emerge from people or teams that the management least expects. It is essential for the organization to steer employees and inform them the expectations of the ideation process. When the organization identifies the creative employees and innovative ideas, the next step involves removing the confusion and create a business environment where people can utilize maximum creativity. For instance, the management can use scenarios and visualize ideas (Schottler, 2007). It is essential to ensure that every employee and subordinate member in the business is comfortable. More so, the management should discuss the changes in the management while at the same time, work on all permissions. The SMEs or large organizations must avoid performing an act that might jeopardize the process of ideation and innovation. Jennie, Paolo and Mats indicate that the degree to which the management should direct the search for ideas is a non-trivial question. This is because limitation nd freedom can facilitate the ideation process. The organization must exert caution while searching for new ideas from employees. The creative employees should put the ideas on paper and management should take time to go over them (Trott, 2005). On this note, the business must be careful that it does not take the easy route to innovation or ideation. For instance, the idea that worked well for the business last year might fail this year, and vice versa. Therefore, the organization must be flexible to change and welcome the same change. Innovation drives changes and the executives must look at the organization and evaluate how it will accept those changes. In an organization, ideas of innovation can emanate from numerous of distinct sources. At times, it might result from focusing on encouraging new ideas, whereas others might be from sources that the business hardly expects (Siddike, Amna & Kohda). For instance, innovation and idealism can results from spontaneous reactions by employees to certain needs. Employees are the major sources of organization innovation. The employees are familiar with the exact departments in the business especially the areas that they can make maximum use. This implies that the same employees rarely have to force the ideas out of them because the innovation come naturally. Customers are additional sources of innovation, although companies overlook them. Clients know their wants and portray the innovative ideas regarding how the organization could meet those needs through new services and products (Schottler, 2007). When SMEs and organizations take time to listen to ideas from customers, it can significantly boost innovative ideas that will flow into the business. Jennie et al states that firms can benefit from more deliberate approaches to ideation, in particular when these are balanced, broad and focus on building capabilities. These building capabilities include those that are essential to organize informal structures in new strategies and formalize the informal in establishing overt systems, roles and processes (Michael, 1989). In order for the organization to become innovative, it requires to promote and encourage the idealism of innovation (Zhu & Guan, 2013:p1195-1216). For instance, the large organization should ensure that it engages all the staff members and departments and feel as part of the innovative environment. The achievement of new ideas and innovation requires ample time for the company to succeed. Therefore, leaders within the organization should exert commitment and focus on key areas. For instance, the organization should foster the culture of creativity and innovation (Lamb, Hair & Mcdaniel, 2012). Since innovation is a continuous and time consuming process, it is essential for the business to create a supportive environment. The environment should be open and supportive; encourage creative expression and thinking; reward success; and hardly dismisses an idea that fails. It is vital for the company to focus on and motivate its staffs because they are the richest sources of creative potential and new ideas. Jennie et al discusses the concept of sustainable competitive advantage, which requires the organization to shift from past and static view to a dynamic one. Whether the company is launching new products or pitching investors, it is likely to succeed when it communicates and creates a sustainable competitive advantage (Kirova, 2010). The company should avoid relaxing on the note that it was the first in the market. This is because an organization with better products will venture the market and leave it in the dust. Alternatively, the business should invest in innovation even when it is the sole producer and supplier of a product. When an industry is solving and facing similar pain as what others are addressing, under the same clients, then there is competition. Creating and implementing a sustainable competitive advantage is a challenge, but it is easy. Well, there are guidelines for assisting the organization succeed in competitive advantage. For instance, the organization should patent its product, create brand loyalty, upgrade and update innovation, utilize long term incentives & contracts and employ a net-worked team members. It is possible for the organization to achieve a competitive advantage via low pricing strategy and provide new products that are superior to the existing similar products (Huang, 2008:p.619-626). The strategy for a business should continue to succeed over a long period in order to gain sustainability. According to Jennie et al, dynamic capabilities consist of the capacities to shape and tense threats and opportunities; maintain competitiveness and seize opportunities. This is possible through reconfiguring, protecting, combining and enhancing the tangible and intangible assets of a firm. In Sylvie’s work, there are factors that contribute to the success of SME and those determining SME innovations. For instance, strategies, business planning, regional support and networking are some of the factors that contribute to innovation in SMEs. More so, optimizing an organizational structure can contribute to efficient and effective management of idealism and innovation (Helle, 2007: p194-201). Managing innovation requires the SMEs to understand the process of innovation. The next step involves coming up with a strategy and techniques that will assist in implementing and managing the process. A small or medium scale business should adapt to an effective strategy of managing innovative projects in order to succeed. A perfect executive will take significant idealism forward, as well as, work in unison with the team members to develop products under market potential. A tremendous idea from customers or employees might fail to reach its maximum potential when the business hardly manages every stage in an innovation process (Fiore, 2003). The initial step towards the management of innovative projects relates to identifying policies and processes that the team follow during the implementation of ideas. The process depends on the size of the business, the complexity of a project and the category of the organization. Some of the innovative ideas are quicker and easier to implement than others (Fang & Qi, 2011). Consequently, the crucial aspect for the organization is to ensure that it allocates ample time planning. In addition, each participant in the process must be focused on attaining similar results for the industry. When a company develops a perfect work strategy for an innovative and new project can assist in focusing its efforts and perform under the stipulated time frame. The plan must move from developing an innovative idealism to evaluation and implementation. Firm-specific characteristic, structural factors and external environment are factors that affect innovation in small/medium scale businesses. External environment portrays regional differences like sectors, activity levels, competitive structure and market types. Other external environment that affect innovation in SME are market and strategic orientation (Doole & Lowe, 2008). SMEs can obtain a competitive advantage via acts and strategies of innovation. In addition, the industry can implement innovation on a broader perspective including new strategies of conducting business and new technologies. There are several challenges that affect the process of innovation in SMEs and large organizations. Moreover, the company should adapt to a deliberate action to attain success in the entire innovation process. According to Sylvie, there is little information regarding the ingredients for a successful innovation process, its outputs and inputs. In addition, little research has examined innovation, its impacts on the financial performance of a business and few of them on the outcomes of innovation (Cheng & Shiu, 2008). A successful innovation process comprises of three different phases: the execution phase, the incubation phase and the search phase. Every phase has distinct attributes for the organization to succeed and requires the business to adopt a strategic approach. People have different ideas regarding the crucial ingredients for every successful innovation. Some people state that understanding the challenges and clients is key others believe it is crucial innovation, smart commercialization, industry foresight and market speed. For each business, innovation and idealism is an occasion for opportunities and risks. The risks of innovation are obvious: it might fail to lead to wastage of the investment in SMEs. In as much as Sylvie discusses, the outcomes of innovation, executives require to evaluate both the consequences of a failure and opportunities for development that innovation processes provide (Carolyn & Karen, 2002). The positive impacts of innovation are sustainable development, improved health care, increased productivity, creation of high paying jobs and competitive industries. Idealism drives innovation and SMEs and large organizations should endorse ideas and creativity from customers/employees. References Carolyn Folkman Curasi, Karen Norman Kennedy, (2002) "From prisoners to apostles: a typology of repeat buyers and loyal customers in service businesses", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 16 Iss: 4, pp.322 – 341 Cheng, C. C. J., & Shiu, E. C. (2008). Critical success factors of new product development in Taiwan's electronics industry. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, 20(2), 174-189. Doole, I., & Lowe, R. (2008). International marketing strategy: analysis, development and implementation. London, Cengage Learning. Fang, H., & Qi, H. (2011, July). Exploration on product brand innovation under creative management. In Product Innovation Management (ICPIM), 2011 6th International Conference on (pp. 276-279). IEEE. FIORE, C. (2003). Lean strategies for product development: achieving breakthrough performance in bringing products to market. Milwaukee, Wisc, ASQ Quality Press. Helle Alsted Sondergaard, Hanne Harmsen, (2007) "Using market information in product development", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 24 Iss: 4, pp.194 – 201 Huang, Z. H., & Su, W. (2008). The User Research in New Product Development. Advanced Materials Research, 44, 619-626. Indurkhya, B. (2012). Whence is Creativity?. In International Conference on Computational Creativity (p. 62). Kirova, M. (2010). Effective Combination Of The Performance Characteristics Of The Innovations. Lamb, C. W., Hair, J. F., & Mcdaniel, C. D. (2012). Essentials of marketing. Mason, Ohio, South-Western Cengage Learning. Michael R. Bowers, (1989) "Developing New Services: Improving the Process Makes it Better", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 3 Iss: 1, pp.15 – 20 Scho?Ttler, J.-S. (2007). Innovation and new product development Launch strategy and market plan for the new product "Click and Drain". Mu?nchen, Grin Verlag GmbH. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:101:1-201008135839. SIDDIKE, M., Kalam, A., Amna, J., & Kohda, Y. Contribution of Different Disciplines to Service Innovation: A Keyword Analysis. Trott, Paul (2005) Innovation Management and New Product Development. 3rd Edition. This is an e-book and can be accessed via Voyager on StudyNet. Stamm, Bettina von (2005) Managing Innovation, Design and Creativity. This is an e-book and can be accessed via Voyager on StudyNet. Spath, Dieter and Fahnrich, Klaus-Peter (2007) Advances in Services Innovations. This is an e-book and can be accessed via Voyager on StudyNet. (Spath & Fahnrich, 2007) Undervalued or Overvalued Customers: Capturing Total Customer Engagement Value Journal of Service Research August 1, 2010 13: 297-310 Yang, P., & Tao, L. (2012). Perspective: Ranking of the World's Top Innovation Management Scholars and Universities. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 29(2), 319-331. Zhu, W., & Guan, J. (2013). A bibliometric study of service innovation research: based on complex network analysis. Scientometrics, 94(3), 1195-1216. Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“Product Innovation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words”, n.d.)
Retrieved de https://studentshare.org/marketing/1474324-product-innovation
(Product Innovation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 Words)
https://studentshare.org/marketing/1474324-product-innovation.
“Product Innovation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 Words”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/marketing/1474324-product-innovation.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF How to Overcome Organizational Barriers to Creativity and Innovation

Learning Organizations and Effectiveness

Most organizations experience barriers to achieving their learning objectives.... A shared vision is needed to overcome authoritative forces that hold up the preservation of the status quo (Denton, 2002).... Organizations are expected to endorse both learning innovation as specific goals, and learning strategies (Denton, 2002).... The paper points out these barriers and offers some mitigation strategies.... In order for an organization to survive in a highly competitive market and maintain competitive advantage, organizational learning is ideal....
10 Pages (2500 words) Coursework

Innovation as the Main Engine of Progress

The Renaissance freed the minds of men and women, unleashing a wave of creativity and the formation of new insights arising from and leading to a better understanding of the world (Isaak and Just, 1995, 281-326).... The paper "innovation as the Main Engine of Progress" affirms that knowing the behaviour of innovations gives a tool that can help to better predict when such innovations begin to lose their advantage, opening up the market to disruptive or transformational innovation....
13 Pages (3250 words) Book Report/Review

Strategy and Innovation

This paper ''Strategy and innovation'' tells us that the concept of innovation and strategy has evolved over years.... Understanding the relationship and link between strategy and innovation is the prime topic of discussion in the current study with the extended objective of providing leverage to managers and marketers in terms of maximum utilization.... 10 years back, global expansion or creating a new brand or line extension might have been termed as strategic innovation....
19 Pages (4750 words) Essay

Understanding Innovation and Change in an Organization

One of the common barriers to change an innovation within organizations is leadership or management that is not receptive to new perspectives and ideas.... Business innovation and change accrue benefits from diversity of personality and backgrounds filling different roles.... According to the paper, Understanding innovation and Change in an Organization, a managerial perspective indicates that innovative employees are more involved and motivated in the firm activities....
6 Pages (1500 words) Coursework

Creativity as a Conception in Which Novel Ideas are Considered Regarding Services

There were ample political problems throughout the organisational model, which Woodman, Sawyer and Griffin (1993) identified as barriers to the creative process.... The paper "creativity as a Conception in Which Novel Ideas are Considered Regarding Services" discusses that creativity is the highest within an individual when intrinsically motivated.... People should achieve the highest levels of creativity when they are motivated by satisfaction, challenge....
19 Pages (4750 words) Essay

Creative and innovative management

Creative and innovation always makes an organisation to differentiate itself from its competitors.... Innovation helps to Innovation changes knowledge, creativity and ideas into extraordinary value and competitive gain.... As per research study carried over by Boston Consulting group, about 75% of the companies had enhanced their spending on innovation and 90% of the companies regard the innovation as a must for success in their sectors....
28 Pages (7000 words) Assignment

Leading Innovation and Change

Discuss with reference to innovation and suggest ways in which these unhelpful behaviours and practices can be.... This is because through innovation, organisations of any kind are offered the opportunities of commercialise their inventions (Chan-Olmsted & Jamison, 2001).... Any modern organisation Meanwhile, it will be admitted that they ways in which organisations are designed and managed that unwittingly discourage the prioritisation and promotion of innovation (Afuah, 2003)....
14 Pages (3500 words) Assignment

Leadership Style, Organisational Climate, Resources and Skills

creativity and innovations are vital ingredients for the success of a learning organization.... innovation is implementing new knowledge and ideas.... Gurteen (1998) defined creativity as the process of generating ideas and creating.... Similarly, Goodman (1995) revealed that creativity is the application of imaginative thought resulting in new solutions to problems.... The literature review attempts to identify the importance of Creativeness and Innovativeness within the learning organization and the factors that influence the organizational creativeness and innovativeness....
13 Pages (3250 words) Research Paper
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us