Factors Affecting Innovation Process in FutureMed: Internal and External Perspectives

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• Innovation has an important role in the business in order to survive in the competitive
market (Verworn & Herstatt, 2002). FutureMed is famous and large radiopharmaceutical
company operating in Australia. The company provides pharmaceutical drugs that are
radioactive.
• Company has unique medicinal formulations including radioisotopes that can be used in
major clinical areas for diagnosis and therapy.
• There are various operations in the company including finance, operations, marketing,
and research and development. The senior management team is made up to manage every
department.
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In case of the Company FutureMed, there are various internal factors affecting the
innovation process of the business. The innovation process of the company is the result of the
accumulation of resources and generating new ones especially knowledge. Internal factors of
FutureMed affecting the innovation process are described below:
• Human resources- The role of human resource department in the company is to
motivate the employees towards the innovation process. The HR practices in FutureMed
is helpful in facilitating innovation by reinforcing employee role behaviors such as
creativity, cooperation and trust, long-term orientation, risk taking and tolerance of
conflict. Employees can create resistance towards the innovation and bin such condition;
company needs support from the human resource department in terms of training new
skills, and psychological support. So, human resource can affect the innovation process in
FutureMed.
• Research and Development activities- Pharmaceutical companies like FutureMed is
engaged with the research and development activities since most of the developed
innovations are technological. In order to maintain a strong competitive position,
FutureMed is facing continuous pressure to innovation. It is observed that research and
development environment mainly experiences challenges in internal collaboration.
Sometimes, there is the lack of motivation for explorative activities.
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There are some more internal factors affecting the innovation process and those are as follows:
• Management and leadership support- Company FutureMed can face challenges in
terms of leadership or management challenges while focusing on product innovation.
Leadership in the company creates the environment in which people interact and operate.
If leader or manager in the company does not show any interest in innovation then
employees will not be ready to adapt the change related to innovations. In FutureMed,
there can the issues with innovation related to group think and decision making. So,
leader must be active to check the messages otherwise this can degenerate the group
thinking (Glor, 2002).
• Lack of Ideas- In FutureMed, innovation is not possible with the new and innovative
ideas. If there is the lack of ideas among the employees, they will not be able to actively
participate in the product innovation process. Lack of knowledge on innovation, weak
learning environment and lack of need to innovate are the factors that restrict the
employees to share their new and innovative ideas.
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• Financial Resources- Innovative projects in FutureMed needs financial resources.
Sometimes, inflexible funding in the company can be a big issue. Funding can be a
problem due to alignment of centralization or decentralization principles and differences
in power level and types. Now. There is the uncertainty of various sources of funds.
• Weak Change management- Further, weak change management program can also be a
factor that can impact the innovation process in FutureMed. The company may be scared
of various consequences and are not inclined to act innovations. Weak change
management will not be able to deal with the resistance to innovation. There can be three
types of resistance i.e. open (employees expresses the grievances or react immediately),
hidden (loss of willingness to work and loyalty) and delayed (real reaction after a certain
period of time). Weak change management can be a barrier for the innovation in the
company (Yaşar, 2010).
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