Creativity and Innovation in Pepsi Co.

Creativity and Innovation in Pepsi Co.
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Introduction
Pepsi Company is among the largest manufacturer of snack and crisp with very high
annual sales. The company is also known for its manufacture of carbonated drinks. However,
Pepsi Company is not only known for the products it manufactures but also for their methods of
production. The company is very creative and innovative in their activities where the company
invented various brands of sale instead of selling one particular product.
There are various critical drivers of innovation in the company and among them are
strategy and structure. There is a very complicated relationship between structure and policy in
the company. The primary plan of PepsiCo was to enter the new rapidly growth markets, to
achieve this. PepsiCo had to restructure their organizational structure twice within four years
(Alvesson, 2016). To successfully implement this strategy, the leadership of PepsiCo had to
continuously evaluate, adapt and implement new policies across the PepsiCo structure that
supported the primary approach. This would not have been an easy task. It required a lot of
creativity and the management of the company had to consider several factors.
(i) The current PepsiCo structures may not be able to cope with the new radical change.
(ii) The type of structure selected is imperative to the success of the change.
(iii) The new structure must allow the resources of the organization to implement the
selected strategy. It must not limit their implementation options.
(iv)The complexity of the change required to be managed to ensure the successful
implementation of the restructuring.
Another key driver of creativity and innovation in Pepsi Company is Product innovation. Product
innovation is essential to many companies and firms because of competition. Since the
environment is dynamic, product innovation is a strategic priority for many businesses and

businesses. It assists the management of firms to plan for the future of their products and
services. Product innovation increases research and development of companies. Product
innovation is necessary for the preparation for economic growth. The market often responds
positively and rapidly to new products and services. However, not all the commercialized
products are successful in the stock exchange. Radical product performance is the success of the
product innovation in the market area.
The company also came up with a new organizational structure as a creative way of
improving business operations. A new corporate structure provides new opportunities for
employees, although it can be argued it also presents new threats. It’s imperative that the
employees must be consulted and included when planning the restructuring. Employment moral
can’t be ignored by the leadership of an organization. Organizations require buy-in from their
employees. To increase buy-in, organizations may develop rewards systems for their employees.
This practice is highly recommended when an organization embarks on a radical change.
Innovation cannot happen without the presence of talent which means the business has to
approach recruitment of new employees more strategically especially when it comes to nurturing
individuals from diverse environments. However, the majority of talented individuals
increasingly prefer to start their businesses rather than joining an already established business.
For this, PepsiCo has to emphasize to potential recruits that the company will be able to create a
change for them. The company hence built a design and innovation center in the lower parts of
Manhattan, New York which notably made for this focus. The center is staffed with about 70
designers recruited from some of the best design schools and design companies.
However, the company still faces challenges in the effort of spreading diversity across the
business. Some of the difficulties were realized when the company was looking for a recruit to

do a very senior job, and a whole bunch of candidates was all men hence the company had to
create some diversity by finding a female candidate which they couldn’t. Managers of the
company realized that it’s not that easy to develop difference and one requires a strategy where
unless one brings it to the consciousness, the difference cannot happen organically.
Influence of Creativity and Innovation on PepsiCo
Creativity and innovation have influenced the activities and business operations of the
company positively by increasing their production and hence their annual sales. PepsiCo focuses
heavily on the novelty of their packaging technologies. The company has made an exciting step
by filing a patent to make paper bottles. The idea of making paper bottles is apparently not new.
The Green Bottle Company in the UK introduced the first paper bottle in the year 2007 in the
storage of milk. The manifest by PepsiCo proposes a different method of production. High levels
of carbonation will cause Pepsi not to be served in these bottles since they may prove to be
problematic in the design of the packaging (Banerjee et al., 2016).
However, PepsiCo still owns various brands such as Tropicana, Gatorade, and Naked
Juice and the company also has a partnership with Starbucks which offers ready to drink
beverages. All these are possible areas where the idea of paper bottling may be applied. A move
like that will encourage other businesses to produce innovative recyclable products to reduce the
amounts of plastics in dump sites. The company also saw it also creative to make the drinks
aromatic on one of their packaging manifest applications. The plan was to make their products
smell more natural to the consumers.
In the previous years, PepsiCo had put less senior executives in charge of innovation
where they kept innovation at the brand level. However, a recent move by PepsiCo was the
hiring Luke Mansfield, a previous employee of Samsung Electronics. Luke was hired to be the