Arab Open University B203A, First Sem: Innovation and Business Report

This report analyzes the concepts of innovation and commercialization within a business context, using the 3M company as a primary case study. It explores the factors that have contributed to 3M's innovative culture, including its customer-focused approach, emphasis on market research, and proactive adaptation to customer needs. The report also defines the commercialization process, outlining key stages such as research, market assessment, and sales. Furthermore, the report discusses product innovation, differentiating between quality, performance, cost, time and risk. The Skylock product is used to exemplify product innovation, highlighting its features and how it meets market demands through eco-friendly design and technological advancements. The report references the importance of aligning innovations with business strategies and maintaining ethical sourcing practices. The report also highlights the importance of integrating business functions to facilitate innovation and commercialization.

B203A- Business Functions in
Context I

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Table of Contents
Answer 1..........................................................................................................................................2
Answer 2..........................................................................................................................................3
Answer 3..........................................................................................................................................4
References........................................................................................................................................7

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Answer 1.
The idea of creative thinking, being advanced or making people’s idea into reality defines the
word innovation (Painter et al., 2018). When people’s innovative ideas and thinking comes to the
world of business, it leads to the immense growth of the organization or institute, for the
continuous growth and profit of the company it is necessary that firm fulfill the customer right,
desire, and their basic needs.
Factors that laid Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (3M) into an innovative
company:
 The company's inventiveness, resourcefulness, and its new imagination play a vital role
in making the manifesto of the company.
 Focusing on the ideology of making the company into a genuine customer – focused
solutions.
 They are the blend of ingenuity and enterprise.
Now, it is necessary to understand the business function that deals with the operation which is
performed simultaneously to reach the goal of the company — hierarchy, decomposition, and
abstraction which are the basic principle of business function modeling (Mohalajeng and Kroon,
2016). The business function can also be defined as the structure of being independent of the
company's product.
The business function that had contributed to laid Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing
Company (3M) into an innovative company:
 The practices of managing and developing new idea encouraging the customers to
visualize their goods and services.
 Making the culture of warmth and enthusiasm within the organization which will help to
make good relationship within the organization.
 The company believes that the most important thing is to be proactive and they work
according to the customer's needs.
 The company worked on market research, and then they create the products that match
with the customer demand.

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 Understanding the market competition and working with innovation, urgency, and speed
(Heikkilä, Kaipia and Ojala, 2018).
 They focused on the products that were used in people’s daily lives.
Example, - commercial, health care, industrial and customer markets.
Answer 2.
The process of launching a new product or its method into the market defines the word
Commercialization, or it is a stage-wise process wherein each process it has goals and milestone.
It consists of different stages like prioritizing ideas, Distribution, sales, marketing, and customer
support.
Commercialization Process: It depends upon the following process
 RESEARCH - Creative thinking, Observation, and different experiments result in
discoveries and inventions.
 Unrivaled the confidential invention and market assessment
 Licensing
 Legal protection
 Revenue
Innovation is very important for the company’s growth strategy. Successful innovation such as
generating ideas prototyping and also the tactics to develop the business cases. Before moving to
Commercialization Company’s innovative idea should be tested once:
 Benefits that are valuable for the customers - Company’s innovation should be
providing benefits that are superior to other market products.
 Quantifying the innovations- The Company should be able to provide the quality of a
product in sufficient numbers.
 Market planning, research, and strategy – All these factors include
1. Branding
2. Designing
3. Distributing

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4. Pricing
5. Sales
 Leadership quality - The people related to the innovation should have sufficient
knowledge, skills, experience, and the motive to initiate their innovation by
commercialization (Bulsara et al., 2017).
 Ethical sourcing – This innovation should have environmental and social benefits.
 A fitting according to strategy – The innovation should be according to the business
strategy.
By using all these commercializing ideas organizations like Minnesota Mining and
Manufacturing Company were continuously improving their tools and techniques to reduce
variation and deliver a genuine product to the customers (Jussila, Kärkkäinen and Aramo-
Immonen, 2014). They are trying directly channelize with the market which involves the
distributing of the product by the channel that is easier for the buyers and the consumers.
Marketing the product which includes creating the brand identification and locating the product.
All these plays important role in commercialization for the innovative organization (Coulson-
Thomas, 2017).
Answer 3.
Product innovation refers to the development of the new, redesigned, updated or improved
product or services. In the business world, we say that a product's invention may be done by
updating technical specification and the improvement that is required for the product or the
addition of the new component to the product. Product innovation co-relates with process
innovation both are necessary for their fields. Process innovation refers to the improvement of
the production method (Calfa et al., 2016).
Product innovation is of different types-
 Quality
 Performance
 Cost
 Time
 Risk

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Skylock is the world's first solar-powered Bike lock with having the function of GPS; this gadget
brings the evolution of the future technology with an eco-friendly nature. Skylock have
following features that make it a different product as respect to the others-
Having the features of keyless unlock system which is fully organized by the Bluetooth LE
sensors, when the customer will be close towards bike it will be unlocked. Now, the bike will be
more secure because of the feature of theft alert or crash alert. People did not have to carry the
wire or not have to look after the plug points to charge the lock now it is fully solar powered.
People can operate the lock with the smartphone, the lock also has a keypad and can be opened
by password (Beck et al., 2016). The lock also has a sensitive accelerometer that enables to
automatically call an ambulance or family if there is any crash happens with the cycle.
The company's approach is to designing and managing enterprise to ensure the customer's data
secure and integrate, this is a completely innovative product and application, the reason for the
product to be innovative are :
 It is eco-friendly saves energy and environment that implies that it is a fully ethical
source.
 The company’s approach is to satisfy the needs of the customer in a better way by the use
of technology.
 Beating the market standards and the other competitors by innovative and creative
thinking.
 The product is easily available in the market which means that product visibility is
extremely good and also having the market planning.
 It will make things easier for the customers it is fully modified in technology, having a
better security system.
The product by its performance meets the standard of being innovative and gives a good market
choice for the customers and buyers.

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References
Beck, D.A., Carothers, J.M., Subramanian, V.R. and Pfaendtner, J., 2016. Data science:
Accelerating innovation and discovery in chemical engineering. AIChE Journal, 62(5), pp.1402-
1416.
Bulsara, H.P., Kabiraj, S., Priya, M.S. and Priya, S.S., 2017. Exploring green business functions
and green brand equity: proposition of a conceptual framework. International Journal of
Qualitative Research in Services, 2(4), pp.262-279.
Calfa, B.A., Banholzer, W.F., Alger, M.M. and Doherty, M.F., 2016. Web-Based Simulation
Games for the Integration of Engineering and Business Fundamentals. Chemical Engineering
Education, 51(2), pp.88-93.
Coulson-Thomas, C., 2017. Stimulating creativity, enabling innovation and supporting
entrepreneurship. Management Services, 2017(Summer), pp.26-29.
Heikkilä, J., Kaipia, R. and Ojala, M., 2018. Purchasing category management: providing
integration between purchasing and other business functions. International Journal of
Procurement Management, 11(5), pp.533-550.
Jussila, J.J., Kärkkäinen, H. and Aramo-Immonen, H., 2014. Social media utilization in business-
to-business relationships of technology industry firms. Computers in Human Behavior, 30,
pp.606-613.
Mohalajeng, L.E. and Kroon, J., 2016. Innovation through accelerators: A case for open
innovation. The Southern African Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business
Management, 8(1), pp.1-9.
Painter, M., Pouryousefi, S., Hibbert, S. and Russon, J.A., 2018. Sharing vocabularies: Towards
horizontal alignment of values-driven business functions. Journal of Business Ethics, pp.1-15.