THE INNOVATION MANAGEMENT

Running head: INNOVATION MANAGEMENT
INNOVATION MANAGEMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Discussion..................................................................................................................................2
Corporate Social Responsibility:............................................................................................2
Defining the Corporate Social Responsibility challenge:......................................................3
Sources of ideas affect growth of creative solution and innovation:.....................................4
Strategic innovation model:...................................................................................................8
Innovation Action Plan:.....................................................................................................9
Leadership Strategy............................................................................................................9
Innovation Implementation..............................................................................................10
Conclusion................................................................................................................................12
References................................................................................................................................13

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Introduction
A wide range of techniques and tools that helps managers, users and workers for
accommodating with a mutual understanding regarding goals and processes is known as
innovation management. The functionality of innovation management enables an
organization to address the external and internal opportunities and directing the approach of
innovation towards newer product or service ideas and processes (Goffin and Mitchell 2016).
Innovation management ensures the sustainability of business functions in a competitive
business environment due to the efforts directed towards the future goals and implementation
of creative ideas in a response for business challenges. The purpose of the paper is to offer a
strategic innovation response for addressing the gap or challenge in regards with Corporate
Social Responsibility challenge experienced by a company. The chosen company for this
paper is Volkswagen. The paper will design the innovation plan for the corporate social
responsibility issues with evidences based on the automotive manufacturing company,
Volkswagen. The paper will propose a leading edge strategic innovation resolution by
accompanying with innovation action plan. The proposed innovation plan for the issue
identified will be addressed by the support of leadership and cultural aspects of the
organization. The paper will be concluded by presenting the summary of Corporate Social
Responsibility solution for the selected company and industry.
Discussion
Corporate Social Responsibility:
The activities and actions of organizations in assessing and adopting responsibilities
for the purpose of influencing the social well-being and/or environment in the environment of
which a firm is a part of, is known as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The main goals
of CSR are to build or improve a brand by attracting quality talent and to enable the short-

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term and long-term operational and financial success, and these goals can be attained by
establishing a socially and environmentally responsible business operational system (Crane,
Matten and Spence 2019). Corporate Social Responsibility is crucial for maintaining an
effective reputation in the market amongst the target audience and competitors of an industry.
Defining the Corporate Social Responsibility challenge:
The significance of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) involves maintaining an
industry reputation, creating recognition, cost savings, competitive advantages, customer
engagement and employee engagement. The significance of maintaining reputation may
involve the potentiality of unethical or distributed focus approach of ensuring the
communicated or promised responsibilities for the community, society or environment
(Crane and Glozer 2016). The challenge or issue of diverting from the alignment of fulfilling
responsibilities and generating profit will be discussed in this paper. The issue of diverted
focus or misrepresentation of CSR functionalities in an organization requires responsive and
immediate action.
The case of Volkswagen demonstrates the failure in regards with CSR or Corporate
Social Responsibility (Siano et al. 2017). One of the leaders of the automotive industry,
Volkswagen was found to construct a way to avoid the emission control responsibility. The
design was aimed to offer a competitive advantage for the company amongst the competitors
based on the aspects of ‘apparently environmentally friendly cars’, when in reality, the
company was harming the planet by harmful emission. This scandal or issue not only
demonstrate the deviation from CSR but also affects the theory of Business Social
Responsibility (BSR). BSR can be defined as the involvement of ethical responsibilities in a
business along with the expectations of corporate social responsibilities. The case of
Volkswagen deviates from both CSR and BSR by primarily hindering the trust and ethical
principles due to misrepresentation of information and secondly harming the environment

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through carbon emission (Zhang et al. 2016). The company designed software for enabling
their motive of accomplishing both, reputation and profit maximization by misrepresentation
of their engine system to be environmentally friendly. The software was designed to be
transform from test mode to the ‘dirty mode’, which has saved a lot of cost for the company.
The software of the automotive manufacturing company was designed in such a way that it
can compensate for the complexities in the product.
This evidence reflects the disappointing truth of almost every company, business with
large or small scale operations. Most of the businesses appoint a CSR head, who is
responsible for the role of cleaner reputation in the industry even by adopting unethical
means or deviating from the objectives and promises of CSR practices. The symbolism of
practicing CSR activities without reflecting the accomplishment of goals is a serious issue or
challenge in the automotive industry, which needs immediate action or strategic innovation
plan (Bowen et al. 2018).
Sources of ideas affect growth of creative solution and innovation:
An innovation plan is influenced by the motive of responding to challenges
innovatively (Frishammar et al. 2019). The first action should be to transform the identified
challenge into an innovation driven concern. The sources of ideas help in addressing the
challenges of a problem. The sources of ideas can be the collaborative efforts of the industry
leaders and CSR specialists or auditors.
The aim of integrating corporate innovation in response for the identified challenge in
the businesses with the evidence of Volkswagen will be facilitated by the execution of the
creative ideas with the purpose of generating values, reduce the process cost and uplift the
income. The identified issue of misrepresenting CSR for the sake of maintaining a reputation
and ultimately generate profit can be addressed by converting the issue into operational gap

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that requires innovation. Then, the focus should be on involving significant stakeholders and
colleagues, industry specialists for generating creative and strategic ideas in response of the
CSR issue. The ideas can also be generated from industry competitors with appropriate CSR
activities. The combined ideas can be evaluated with respect to the company objectives and
culture and then implemented for a sustainable future.
The strategic innovation solution for the company can be generated through the
application of idea generation techniques like mind map and 5W+H method. In accordance
with the 5W+H approach, the ‘why’ depicts the objectives of proposing the solution, which
in this case is to ensure the responsibility an organization possess towards the environment
and society in which it operates (Zubaidah et al. 2017). The main objective for proposing
solution is to address the gap in the consumer or market expectations regarding especially
regarding industry leaders in automotive industry. Automobile manufacturing companies are
more prone to cultivating negative environmental impacts through carbon and nitrogen
emissions. The ‘who’ of this process will determine the stakeholders involved in this problem
and potential solution, employees, CEO, shareholders, CSR department and customers. A
single deviation from the objective can influence these many people. The ‘what’ of the
decision will determine what needs to be done for designing solution, restructuring the ethical
codes, alignment between R&D and CSR department and regular auditing as well as
depending on the aspect of transparency not on superficial commitments (Braun 2019). The
‘where’ will determine the area or platform on which the strategies will be based on, in the
case of the automotive manufacturers, the restructuring process will be implemented in the
internal environment of the organizations and in the whole industry as an industry standards.
The current instances of innovative CSR initiatives can be witnessed in BMW and General
Electric (Clinton and Whisnant 2019). The cooperation of the industry players with respect to
the standards of emission control should be implemented for the success of the CSR goals.

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Situations like deviation from the responsibilities for profit will pave the path for the ultimate
goal of a socially responsible and fair company. The response for the situations will be
addressed in the ‘when’ section. The ‘how’ of the process will determine the current and
future potential process of ensuring the CSR initiatives. In case of Volkswagen, the company
prioritized generating profit over the CSR goals and expectations rather than integrating the
two aspects. The successful integration can only be ensured by implementing a stricter
industry standard (Stafford-Smith et al. 2017). The stake of reputation and competitive
position will embark Volkswagen and other companies to restructure and be transparent
about the CSR initiatives and ethical codes.

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The next decision tool for proposing the solution is mind map.
Supply chain
CSR
Local Community
Environment People
Social value Winning business
Customers’ ethical
standards
Brand awareness and
employer brand
Personal Development for
employees
Supporting local projects
Supporting local charities
Employee
engagement
Improved Productivity
Employee well-being
Reduced Turnover
Mental Health
Physical health
Recycling
Water Management
Energy usage
Waste Management

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Strategic innovation model:
The strategic innovation model will help in responding to the CSR issue identified in
the organization Volkswagen and the drifting focus of the automotive industry from the
negative impacts on environment, which is one of the major contributors for the negative
outcome. The Collaborative Innovation model will be applied for the selection of optimal
societal and environmental innovation strategic actions in order to integrate the required
focus. This model will place external and internal collaborative elements in association with
each strategy for accomplishing transparent guidelines with respect to optimal selection of the
strategies (Feldman-Adams et al. 2019). It will involve the contribution and co-creation of a
number of stakeholders and will include the ideas generated from both internal and external
stakeholders.
The process where multiple players are involved for co-creating a number of policies,
guidelines, ideas and business solutions is known as collaborative innovation model (Lin et
al. 2019). In this case, this innovation model will propose solution for an effective approach
towards CSR approach and initiatives through the involvement of suppliers, consultants, CSR
industry experts, auditing agencies, employees CEOs and customers. Volkswagen can adopt
open portal for collaboration, as it can directly contribute to the speeding up of innovation
process and in overcoming the inflexible procedure of single directed focus at profit
maximization. The collaboration model needs to target various functional areas for co-
creating a strategy of transparent and responsible operational approach.
 Collaboration on procurement and supplier connection
 Collaboration between R&D department, technological department, CSR department
and marketing department.

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The main focus of the Collaborative Innovation plan is to respond to the ‘Gap’ or
issue identified in an organization or industry (Howard et al. 2016). The ‘Gap’ acts as a
bridge in between the organization and the ultimate goal of sustainable future in the long-run.
This model will design the planning approaches with the association of
engagement from internal and external stakeholders. The vision of the company
will be to successfully integrate the objectives of maximizing the profit and to
operate responsibly both socially and environmentally. The vision of effective
integration can be approached by the help of the planning tool of transition
management, which will transform the current system of operations and decision-
making system by involving standards and guidelines, which restricts the deviation
from the CSR goals. Volkswagen needs to inculcate the guidelines and standards
for maintaining the strategic competitive position in the market. The CSR goals will
be to reduce the harmful emission of carbon and nitrogen from the engines of the
cars. The goal will also be to introduce complete transparency in the operational
processes of manufacturing cars for reflecting the authenticity of the practices as
per the expected outcome from the company. For a company like Volkswagen,
customers expect a clean and ethical operational design for zero or minimum

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impact on society and environment. Moreover, the least expectations of the
customers from one of the leaders of car manufacturing company aretransparency
and acceptance of mishaps.
Innovation Action Plan:
Current Approach: Prioritizing profit maximization over the attainment of
CSR standards and expectations. Companies like Volkswagen are focussing
primarily on generating profit rather than assessing their stance on the CSR
initiatives. The company failed in meeting the standards of CSR practices with
respect to harmful emissions, which is directly affecting the environment and
population.
Change requirement: The Company has introduced software by the help of
R&D department, which is focussed on creating an illusion of clean energy
utilization but is ultimately affecting the environment.
Target market: The target market for the change and innovation will be the
current and potential customers, shareholders and stakeholders of the organization
Customer perceived value: The customer perceived values of the
organization will be enhanced by increasing operational transparency. Moreover,
the company needs to commit more than just the financial resources in order to
connect with customers.
Leadership Strategy
Past Leadership Failure: Volkswagen’s history has reflected a failure in
leadership strategies in the past. There have been a lot of efforts made in
restructuring the leadership strategies of the company. The leadership of past CEO

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Winterkorn led to a huge loss of the company. He tried to create an advantage in
competitiveness, efficiency and innovation by skirting ethics, norms and
environmental policies. However the company paid its price and suffered a huge
loss for the poor leadership.
Applicable Leadership Strategy: Strategic Leadership Strategy is the best
suitable strategy for the company. This style aims in creating high performance
across the organization and helps in filling the gaps strategically and ethically by
preparing some prescriptive set of habits (Glatthorn et al. 2018). Innovation is
necessary for business growth. This leadership strategy will aim in providing a clear
vision statement and a clear action plan. It will also focus on providing incentives to
those who performs well and follows customer centricity. It also ensures that
resources required are enough for the employees to deliver services to the
consumers ethically.
Innovation Implementation
Implementing innovation is one of the most difficult tasks for every
organization (Tidd and Bessant 2018). While implementing innovation with respect
to CSR focus should be given on community, workplace, market place and the
environment as a whole.
i. Volkswagen should aim in putting more efforts in education,
sponsorship and environment.
ii. It should aim in providing excellent work condition and fair pay.
iii. The company must adopt sustainable components for providing
environment friendly vehicles (Thompson, Jowallah and Cavanagh
2019).

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The opportunities in the innovation plan are that the company can focus
more on its operational areas rather than mere expansion. This will help in effective
cost reduction and lesser environmental issues (Emblen-Perry et al. 2019). The
transparent operational approach and collaboration with effective environment
friendly companies will help the company earn customer loyalty, which will
automatically boost up sales and help in retaining customers for a long time. These
opportunities can be availed only if the innovative actions can be tested and
supported by stakeholders. Volkswagen has already reduced its environmental
impact by 37% per vehicle in the last 9 years. The company has reduced around
10% CO2 emission per vehicle in just two years (Hooftman et al. 2018). The only
weakness is that operational change is very difficult. The group of leaders involved
in the organisation should also prepare a suitable change management strategy in
order to effectively implement CSR innovation (Hayes 2018).

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Conclusion
It can be concluded from the above discussion that Volkswagen had been a
failure in respect to CSR activities. The past strategies and innovation style states
that the organization has only focused on expansion and profiteering at the cost of
environment and consumers’ health. The organization however had to repay for the
same. This paper clearly concludes that the organization needs to focus on
operational transparency and operational change. The innovation plan aimed in
focusing more on research and development for producing greener resources as well
as focused on customer centricity. The CSR responsibility of the organization
aimed at community, environment, workplace and the consumers. These innovation
goals can be only achieved with the help of strategic leaders, stakeholder support
and a proper change management program.

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