Innovation and Sustainable Business Development

This assignment analyzes the impact of the advances of lean startup movement in Amazon and its innovation trends. It discusses the importance of innovation strategy and alignment with the organization, and provides recommendations to respond to the innovation trends of Amazon.

Running head: INNOVATION AND SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
INNOVATION AND SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
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Table of Contents
Introduction to innovation trend in Amazon...................................................................................4
Impact of advances of the lean start-up business.............................................................................4
Innovation concepts and their relationship......................................................................................5
Importance of innovation strategy and alignment with the organization........................................6
Impact of innovation trend on Amazon...........................................................................................7
Recommendations to respond to the innovation trends of Amazon..............................................10
Recommendation to ensure strategic alignment with innovation trend.........................................11
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................11
References......................................................................................................................................13

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Executive summary
The purpose of this assignment is to analyze the impact of the advances of lean startup
movement in the selected company Amazon. The study describes and introduces the company
Amazon and the innovation trend brought in by the company. The assignment analyzes and
organizational environment, innovation trend, innovation strategy, innovation capabilities,
innovation value creation and capture of the company. It describes the creation of innovation
strategy and innovation trend on the selected organization, it creates the innovation strategy and
ensures the strategic alignment within the organization and analyzes its importance. It describes
the impact of the innovation trend of Amazon and analyzes the impact, opportunity, threats to the
organization. It uses the business model canvas by Osterwalder and Pigneur to support the
analysis and argumentation. Further, it recommends the organizations innovation strategy and
responds to the innovation trend. It analyzes the ways in which Amazon organizes its innovation
activities, additional innovation capabilities that are required to be developed by the company. It
recommends the innovation initiatives to be purposed by the business and ensures that it creates
and captures value from the innovation. It also recommends a strategic alignment to address the
innovation trend. Lastly, it concludes that Amazon's innovation trends its consumer-centric
approach to lead the company to gain its competitiveness and its market position.

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Introduction to innovation trend in Amazon
Amazon is highly a consumer-centric organization; the company seeks to provide its
consumers with the fastest and most convenient experience to its potential customers. One of the
most obvious trends of Amazon is Branding Bypass and its competitiveness towards
platformization. There is growing popularity of technology is its artificial intelligence, Alexa.
The company’s auto-replenishment capability has inspired its customers. To have a deeper
insight into the innovation trends of Amazon are its cashless society, the company has been
experimenting with the brick and mortar shopping in the highly cashless community. This is a
new shopping experience for the Amazon Go customer (Brook & Pagnanelli, 2014). This
innovation trend in the company provides high convenience to its customers. This innovation
taps on customers demand are it immediacy by eliminating the process of manual input. The
innovation trend in Amazon has gained immense popularity and because of which it is
considered to be an e-commerce giant. Further, the company’s new trend that is ‘trying before
you buy’ has enhanced the online shopping experience of the customers. The customers are
provided with the facility to try on the product for seven days and decide to make the purchase.
Amazon's trend Early Bird Brands, looks forward to the ways in which the company uses
‘teasers' in the form of membership, trials, preview to appeal and its entice consumers.
Impact of advances of the lean start-up business
The concept of lean approach is that it helps the business organization and the new start-
up business ventures to launch new products and ideas into the market. The lean startup business
and product developers can investigate the consumer interest and demands and determine the

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ways into which the new product or service can be developed (Dolata, 2017). The process of
lean approach helps the organization to avoid all unnecessary use of resources; it helps an idea to
develop quickly and cheaply. The lean startup method helps to consider a detailed planning of
the innovation and the new idea (Blank, 2013). It also considers the customer reaction and
expectations while implementing innovation. The concept of lean approach is based on the
hypotheses that are tested rapidly. When the customer reaction about the new idea or innovation
turns out to be negative, the start-up business plan helps the organization to limit the losses and
continue to develop products and ideas adhering to the customer needs and demands. Amazon is
one of the companies which has fully functioned, well-managed innovation machinery and
technology. (Blank, 2013). It has impacted the business by implementing social innovation
involving iterative testing and improvements. It has significantly impacted Amazon by enabling
the business to provide enhanced customer serving capabilities. It has helped the business
organization to bring principles from lean manufacturing and initiated agile developments in the
process of innovation. It offers to its customer's value with speed, nimbleness and risk
acceptance. It is commonly associated with entrepreneurial start-ups.
Innovation concepts and their relationship
The organizational environment of Amazon pushes the employees to innovate and go
beyond traditional limits develops bright innovative ideas and solutions. Amazon being the top
performing online retail company continues to seek fresh talent while maintaining a capable
workforce (Morabito, 2014). Amazon has an internal innovation strategy; it focuses on growth,
expansion over profitability. The application is used to address a large and varied content
database. The internal innovative capabilities of the company allow the firms to continuously

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develop new products and initiate new ideas in the organization. Amazon innovates frequently
and is high-risk takers (Daspit, 2017). The company invests a lot of its money and resources on
innovating its services and products to its customers. It highly believes in building the vision, its
idea of staying to the course for the long term is one of their success factors. This facilitates the
company to cooperate among all the departments and parties of the organization. Amazon
systematically and creatively uses data and analysis in each aspect of its operating system, value
creation and value capturing (Morabito, 2016). It was able to capture value by inserting relevant
ads. And create high value for its free users through the data.
Importance of innovation strategy and alignment with the organization
Amazon considers innovation as a strategic priority. However, a lack of efficient
innovative strategy and optimising an existing business is the priority of a successful business
enterprise. While developing a business innovation strategy is necessary to align it with the
overall business goals of the organization (Sorescu, 2017). Therefore the organization is
required to work most of its time and effort in developing an innovation strategy and align it with
the business goals and objectives. The innovation strategy of the organization involves setting up
an idea challenge and maps the organization’s mission, vision and creates a value proposition to
define the customer market (Fielt & Gregor, 2016). The innovation strategy in the organization
helps to set boundaries to its innovation performance expectations by simplifying and structuring
the innovation goals and objectives in order to achieve the best possible outcome for the business
organization. The innovation strategy of the organization is considered to be an explicit roadmap
for the desired future outcome of the business (Miguel & Casado, 2016). It is important that the
innovation goals of the organizations should not be separated from the overall business

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objectives and goals. It requires having a unified mission and a common goal for the innovation
purpose and it helps the business organization to increase the overall operational efficiency of
Amazon (Pandit & Poojari, 2014). The innovative strategy of the organization must comply with
the business goals and it is an important consideration that the marketing strategy and initiatives
of the business need to contribute to the business planning and goals of the organization.
Impact of innovation trend on Amazon.
The giant company Amazon manages to innovate its products with enough dexterity,
creativity and are highly customer centric (Pisano, 2015). The company’s major innovation
trends include the Alexa, Amazon Echo-voice command, Amazon prime wardrobe, Amazon
Spark-social feed shopping. The company has undertaken projects which are highly ambitious
and game-changing efforts were initiated by Amazon (Sorescu, 2017). The innovation trends of
Amazon impact the organization and its customers in a positive way. It helps to maintain a
competitive position in the market and maintain its competitiveness. Its highly innovative
products enable the company to attract potential customers and affect the organization
subsequently. The company has the biggest opportunity in the process of its innovation. It has a
single-minded focus on its customers. The company faces stiff competition from its key rivals
such as Walmart, eBay (Morabito, 2016). The products and services offered by Amazon are
replaced or is imitated by its competitors, the company loses much of its customers to its
competitors. However, the company with its highly innovative products has been successfully
able to influence its key customers, suppliers and maintain a positive relationship with the key
customers and suppliers. The channels and the customer segments are highly integrated by the
customers. The company highly delivers value to its potential customers (Fielt & Gregor, 2016).

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A business model canvas of Amazon
Key
Partners
Affiliates
Network of
sellers
Suppliers
Logistics
provider
Publishers
Amazon
payments global
Key
Activities
Research and
development
Innovations
Customer
service
Human
resource
Logistics and
distribution
Value
Propositions
To offer
extraordinary e-
commerce
marketplace.
It provides a unified
multichannel
platform where the
retailers can
communicate with
the customers
through the website.
It is the world’s
largest provider of
cloud infrastructure
service.
It is a consumer-
Customer
Relationshi
ps
Same day
delivery race,
Amazon’s main
leadership
principle is
customer
obsession,
Free shipping
with Amazon
Prime.
Customer
Segments
Multi-sided,
The massive
consumer
market,
Teenage,
young adult,
Adult readers,
Niche
provider
segment
(companies
and
developers)
Key
Resources
Brand,
Platform,
Channel
s
Websites eg:
amazon.com

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partner program
Mergers and
acquisitions
Staff, robotics
systems,
Amazon sales
rank,
Physical
warehouse
centric company.
Amazon is the world’s
most innovative
company.
Mobile apps,
Affiliates,
Social media
Cost Structure
Strong investment in new projects,
Warehouses, offices, employees, research and
development
Revenue Streams
Amazon is a retail site with a sales revenue
model, prime monthly subscription, value-
added services
Recommendations to respond to the innovation trends of Amazon.
Amazon. Should organize its innovation activities by creating an organized structure and
culture for the business organization which helps the organization to innovate its products and
services in such a way that meets the goals and business objectives (Pisano, 2015). The
innovation activities should be broken down and the work is to be divided among the employees.
The innovation activities must be formulated by the management experts and measure and

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evaluate its innovation activities. The additional capabilities required by the organization is
taking advantage of the opportunities and taking advantage of the organizational strengths. The
success of the organization comes from leveraging the strengths of the organization. The
company needs an internal alignment initiative in the organization which will help the
organization to innovate its products successfully (Daspit, 2017). Amazon. needs to take
initiative to effectively and efficiently utilize its strengths and opportunities by analyzing the
external environment and improve its products according to the needs and interests of the target
audience. Initiatives can be taken by the company to too enhance its customer service and
improve the other aspects of the business to imitate innovation in the organization. To increase
its value creation and capture value from its innovative activates and improved products, the
company should allow and encourage customer involvement and engage with the customers to
analyze their interests and needs, which would further help the organization to deliver products
according to their needs and thereby maintaining its competitive position (Nylén & Holmström,
2015).
Recommendation to ensure strategic alignment with innovation trend
Various companies find it difficult to make innovation a part of their business strategy.
However, Amazon has been successful because of its innovation strategies and its capabilities.
To survive in a highly competitive environment, the companies require initiating innovation
programs and inspire the employees of the organization (Sorescu, 2017). To align the innovation
strategy with the business goals and objectives, the senior managers must take initiative for
implementing the innovation strategy as it is the major factor of success for any innovation
process. The innovation consultants of the organization need to take charge of the innovation

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activities of the organization. This will ensure that the innovation strategies of the organization
are aligned with the innovation trend. These actions will generate new ideas in the organization
and will be relevant to the business strategic aims and goals of the organizations. Random ideas
in the organization must be encouraged by the managers of the organizations. This will
encourage incremental improvements in the organization. Further, in order to align innovation to
the strategy, the company needs to measure the business performance related to the business
goals (Miguel & Casado, 2016).
Conclusion
Therefore from the above analysis, it can be concluded that Amazon is considered to be
the most game-changing retail innovation. Its innovation strategy has been discussed in the
above discussion. The company has achieved high success due to its overarching idea and tie
everything with the company’s area of expertise specifically in the field of artificial intelligence
Alexa. The innovation trend in Amazon has revitalized the original mission of the company. It
successfully organizes the world’s information and makes it accessible for the entire world in a
most useful way. The assignment has analyzed the impact of the lean startup in the company. It
has described the innovation trend in the organization. The assignment has discussed the
environment and culture of the selected company Amazon; it has analyzed the innovation trend
of Amazon and its innovation strategy and capabilities. It has analyzed the innovation and value
creation and value capture techniques of the company. Further, it has analyzed the innovation
trend in the organization and its impact on the business; it has determined the strengths and
weakness pertaining to the innovation trend. It recommends the ways in which the organization’s

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innovation strategy responds to the innovation trend. Further, it also recommends the
organization’s strategic alignment to address the organization’s innovation trend.

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References
Balsmeier, B., Fleming, L., & Manso, G. (2017). Independent boards and innovation. Journal of
Financial Economics, 123(3), 536-557.
Blank, S. (2013). Why the lean start-up changes everything. Harvard business review, 91(5), 63-
72.
Brook, J. W., & Pagnanelli, F. (2014). Integrating sustainability into innovation project portfolio
management–A strategic perspective. Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, 34,
46-62.
Dolata, U. (2017). Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft: Market concentration-
competition-innovation strategies (No. 2017-01). Stuttgarter Beiträge zur Organisations-und
Innovationsforschung, SOI Discussion Paper.
Morabito, V. (2014). Trends and challenges in digital business innovation. New York: Springer
International Publishing.
Daspit, J. J. (2017). D. Andreini and C. Bettinelli: Business model innovation: from systematic
literature review to future research directions. Journal of Management & Governance, 21(3),
785-792.
Mason, H., Mattin, D., Dumitrescu, D., & Luthy, M. (2015). Trend-Driven Innovation: Beat
Accelerating Customer Expectations. John Wiley & Sons.
Morabito, V. (2016). The future of digital business innovation: Trends and practices. Springer.

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Sorescu, A. (2017). Data‐driven business model innovation. Journal of Product Innovation
Management, 34(5), 691-696.
Fielt, E., & Gregor, S. (2016). What’s new about digital innovation?.
Miguel, J. C., & Casado, M. Á. (2016). GAFAnomy (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple):
The big four and the b-ecosystem. In Dynamics of Big Internet Industry Groups and Future
Trends (pp. 127-148). Springer, Cham.
Pandit, V., & Poojari, A. (2014). A study on amazon prime air for feasibility and profitability: A
graphical data analysis. IOSR Journal of Business and Management, 16(11), 06-11.
Pisano, G. P. (2015). You need an innovation strategy. Harvard Business Review, 93(6), 44-54.
Nylén, D., & Holmström, J. (2015). Digital innovation strategy: A framework for diagnosing and
improving digital product and service innovation. Business Horizons, 58(1), 57-67.