Innovation and Risk Management in Oil & Gas

This report analyzes the significance of innovation and risk management in the oil and gas industry. It outlines the benefits gained from a dedicated module focusing on these concepts, including understanding business continuity, corporate venturing, and risk management frameworks like Pinwheel. The report also acknowledges the challenges faced during the learning process, such as the breadth of covered topics and the evolving nature of real-world risks.

REPORT ON INNOVATION AND RISK MANAGEMENT 1
Report On Innovation and Risk Management
Name
Course code
Instructor
Institution
10th December 2017

2REPORT ON INNOVATION AND RISK MANAGEMENT
Introduction
Innovation and risk management skills play a vital role in entrepreneurship. Innovation is simply
a better way of doing something. Normally, it is said to occur once a significant improvement is
made to an existing process, service or product (Saebi & Foss 2015). This is contrary to
invention which is described as the introduction or creation of a process or product for the first
time. On the other hand, risk management refers to the process of accessing and analyzing
potential risks before they occur and using resources to take precautionary steps to curb these
risks (Robert 2018). The just concluded innovation and risk management module was primarily
developed to equip the learner with skills on ways of managing risks and coming up with
innovations especially in the oil and gas sector (Robert 2018).
Benefits Of The Module
Upon completing the module, I was equipped with knowledge on extensive issues that
propel business continuity. These include sustainability, globalization, enterprise development,
business innovation, creativity and diversity. In particular, business innovation and creativity
pertains to coming up with fresh ideas that haven’t been implemented before and this is what
determines whether you’ll be successful in entrepreneurship or not (Schaltegger et al. 2017).
From the case studies in this module, companies such as Shell, BP and Chevron have come up
with a new trend referred to as corporate venturing (Schaltegger et al. 2017). As such, it involves
investing in upcoming businesses which not only increases their exposure to a vast array of
technologies but also helps them to balance their innovation portfolio (Schaltegger et al. 2017).
This module also equipped me with risk management skills. I was able to sharpen my
critical thinking skills. Consequently, I was able to differentiate assumptions from false logic.

3REPORT ON INNOVATION AND RISK MANAGEMENT
Risk management is all about making decisions based on evidence rather than assumptions.
What’s more, a risk management framework such as Pinwheel enhances risk management by
making risks more understandable to stakeholders, enabling cross fertilization of risk estimation
and control and improving the efficiency of processes (Robert 2018).
Lastly, I acquired both practical and transferable skills. As such, I developed skills of
team work which very important in any business environment. Team work enables members to
pool together their individual strengths while helping each other in their respective weaknesses. I
was also able to improve my communication skills through activities such as discussions and
presentations.
Challenges Of The Module
One challenge I can point out with regard to the innovation and risk management module
is that I found it to be too wide. There are a lot of concepts one must internalize including
sustainability, creativity, globalization, risk management and enterprise development among
others. Another challenge I encountered was that some skills like creativity for instance is
someone’s personal trait and cannot be imparted on the learner. In addition, risks in real life
scenarios tend to evolve with time hence a risk management strategy may be applied now but in
years to come, it may be rendered obsolete (Lam 2014). Consequently, learners must be sharp to
when learning concepts in this module so as to apply them in the future.

4REPORT ON INNOVATION AND RISK MANAGEMENT
References
Lam, J., 2014. Enterprise risk management: from incentives to controls. John Wiley & Sons.
Robert, G.C., 2018. WINNING AT NEW PRODUCTS. BASIC CIVITAS Books.
Saebi, T., & Foss, N. J. (2015). Business models for open innovation: Matching heterogeneous
open innovation strategies with business model dimensions. European Management
Journal, 33(3), 201-213.
Schaltegger, S., Burritt, R., & Petersen, H. (2017). An introduction to corporate environmental
management: Striving for sustainability. Routledge.