Innovation and Creativity

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Innovation and Creativity

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In today’s competitive business world, organisations are facing fierce competition in the
industries, and they focus on implementing strategic policies to generate a competitive
advantage. Organisations focus on generating a competitive advantage by adopting an
innovative approach in the business which enables them to address challenges caused due
to adverse market conditions, and it assists them in sustaining their business growth
(Herrera, 2015). The corporations which did not rely on innovations find it difficult to stay
relevant in the rapidly changing market conditions. Innovation enables them to create
products or services which caters to the demand of customers which is continuously
changing. New challengers are able to give strong competition to incumbents and disrupt
their customer base by relying on innovation to develop products and services based on the
demand of customers (Reed, Storrud-Barnes and Jessup, 2012). This paper will evaluate the
example of Tesla and Apple to understand how both corporations use innovation to create
and sustain their business growth.
Innovation does not only mean inventing new products, services or processes; however,
innovation also means changing the business model and adopting changes in the business
environment to deliver better products or services of the company. Organisations have to
take measures in order to ensure that they use the changes in market trends, customer
preference and technologies to their advantage (Christensen and Raynor, 2013). They can
use these changes to introduce new products or services, or they can use them to improve
their processes to reduce costs, increase customer base, branch into new industries and
increase their profits. Once they establish a strong position in the market, companies have
to continue to rely on innovation in order to ensure that they introduce new products and
services to customers and improve current offerings to stay relevant in the market
(Christensen, Bartman and Van Bever, 2016). Rapid changes in technologies and customer
preferences make it difficult for companies to keep up with these changes; however,
innovation enables them to step one step ahead of the competition and effectively use their
resources to sustain their growth in the market.
In order to understand the role of innovation, the case of Tesla can be evaluated because
the sole reason for its success was its ability to innovate. Tesla Motors Incorporation is an
American automotive and energy company which specialised in electric car manufacturing.
The company has established multiple productions and assembly plants, and it also

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manufactures batteries, solar panels and other related products (Stringham, Miller and
Clark, 2015). Tesla disrupted the automobile industry by relying on innovations; for
example, the company successfully launched its autonomous vehicles in the United States
and sustained its growth in the market. The early models of its cars looked like ‘toy car’
because they were basic and not aesthetically pleasing. However, the reason why Tesla
stands out in the electronic vehicle industry is because of the fact that it designs desirable
electronic vehicles. Moreover, the company has also announced the ‘Roadster’ which is
claimed to be the quickest car in the world with the ability to accelerate from 0-60 in just
1.9 seconds (Howard, 2017). The corporation has also brought the prices of its cheapest car
down to $35,000, and the company is also working hard to bring these prices even lower.
The corporation has also established over 10,000 Superchargers around the world which
gives it a substantial competitive advantage over its competitors most of which have not
launched any successful electronic vehicles (Fingas, 2018). The success of Tesla is linked with
the ability of its management to rely on innovation in order to find different ways to achieve
success.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, stated that the pace of innovation is all that matters in the long
run, and this innovative approach has enabled Tesla to reshape the automobile industry and
generate a competitive advantage over major brands such as General Motors, Volkswagen,
Honda, BMW, Audi, Toyota and others (Vance, 2015). While all these companies were
focused on developing better petrol and diesel cars, Tesla launched an electric vehicle in the
industry which disrupted these companies position in the market (Cooper, 2018). Moreover,
Tesla continued to improve its products by relying on innovation through which it launched
autonomous vehicles which are able to drive themselves without any human assistance. All
Tesla vehicles have hardware which is needed for full self-driving capabilities at a safety
level which is substantially greater than compared to a human driver (Tesla, 2019).
Customers can pay a little extra to get the autopilot feature in their Tesla cars which give
them access to features such as automatic driving, automatic parking, summoning the car
and others. Based on the continuous innovative offerings of Tesla, it has become more
valuable than many other major incumbents in the automobile industry such as General
Motors, Ford and BMW (Electrive, 2018). It shows that Tesla did not stop after making its
mark on the automobile industry and it relied on creativity in order to build products which