International Journal of Managing Information Technology

Running head: INNOVATION AND LEADERSHIP
INNOVATION AND LEADERSHIP
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2INNOVATION AND LEADERSHIP
The business case for innovation
Amazon is one of the most innovative companies as per the 2019 Most Innovative
Companies forwarded by BCG. This is because Amazon is always up for bringing in any kinds
of innovations or any kinds of new aspects that they need. They have not only pioneered in the
online retailing but have also been able to use AI (Amazon.sg. 2020). In other words, they have
reached the greatest level of innovation and newness as they have been able to understand about
the usage of artificial intelligence and the ways in which it can actually work for the overall
benefit of the organization (Arnett, Goldfinch and Chinta, 2018). As the patterns of customer
needs and demands are increasing at a very rapid rate, it is essential for all the companies to
focus over the same and also innovate or diversify their services. Alexa and siri are the two most
well know newly developed AI applications. Amazon is one of the top innovative companies to
have opted for the usage of Alexa in their goods and services. Developing voice control system
is useful as it will make it very easy for the users and they can be freed from the stress of typing
the names of music or any other services that they want to get. They can simple enter their
choice by using the voice control system (src.bcg.com. 2020).
Leadership challenges
Amazon is trying to work very hard in order to use all the modern and innovative
technologies for satisfying the needs and demands of the customers. They consider that working
very hard throughout the week is worth the pain if their customers are appreciating the goods and
services and are also being able to real all the benefits from the modern technologies or the
digitalized platforms. However employees might often suffer from the lack of a flexible
atmosphere. This is because working so hard for about 60 t0 70 hours per week is huge and this

3INNOVATION AND LEADERSHIP
might also make the employees tired and less motivated. It is because of this reason that the
leaders must always try to provide some flexibilities to their employees.
As the company is trying to venture into the newly developed digital platforms it is a very
natural fact that there will be a resistance from ma y employees. In other words there can be
some employees who are not well versed with the modern technologies or the skills that they
need to have in order to keep in pace with the rapidly developing technological setup. It is for
this reason that the company must now try to ensure that there are proper training and skill
development sessions so that the employees are able to understand the need for this change and
are also able to learn the new technological developments that are needed for the overall welfare
of the organization. It is the duty or the responsibility of the leaders to ensure that they are
helping the employees to understand the actual need for the change and also to learn the new
course like machine learning and others.
It is recommended that Amazon must allocate and arrange the funds properly so that they
can actually provide for some on job training sessions that will be helping the employees to bet
some on job training facilities. This will be helping them to carry on with their regular works and
also be able to understand that the company is making a scope for them so that they can study
properly (src.bcg.com. 2020).
It is recommended that the company uses participative leadership approach so that all the
employees are able to give in their opinion and their understanding. This will help them to
understand about the different areas in which the employees are asking for support. They must
ensure that there is a proper transparency among the employees and the managers so that the
employees can actually reach out to them whenever necessary.

4INNOVATION AND LEADERSHIP
Innovation challenges
One of the challenges is the language barrier. It is because of the fact that most of the
modern or the artificial Intelligence applications like Alexa and Siri are mainly designed to
understand and interpret English language. This can be one of the major issues and therefore the
organization must make some or the other kinds of arrangements in being able to solve this issue
This can also lead to confusion in the business operations-Bringing about a huge amount
of innovation every now and then might make the employees suffer from a huge confusion. This
is because of the fact that employees will be getting worried and also they will be feeling too
much pressure over themselves. Therefore it is not possible for the employees to learn so many
new skills within such a short period of time. Therefore time management is one of the most
important traits that must be developed among the employees. This will ensure the employees
and the company that employees must not always be asked to work for extra additional time
shifts (Athayde et al. 2017).
The future will also be calling for even more innovations. This is because of the reason
that in order to stay in competition and fight with the immediate competitors like Apple, they
will have to develop their own smart home platform for the household end users Just like there is
already a very strong and fascinating battle for AI-enabled smarthome systems continuing
among companies like among Amazon (Alexa), Google (Google Assistant), Apple (Siri),
Microsoft (Cortana), and others as each company seeks to capture the biggest share of end-user
households for its voice-recognition technology, it can be comprehended that the competition
will only keep on increasing. On the other hand, they will have to think about more innovative
services than only the currently used application that is the streaming music (src.bcg.com. 2020).