BUMGT 6927 - Innovation and Business Development: A Telstra Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of innovation and business development, using Telstra as a primary case study. It begins with an overview of creativity and innovation, differentiating between the two and highlighting their importance for organizational success. The report explores various theories and types of innovation, including the investment theory of creativity and the four types of innovation: architectural, radical, incremental, and disruptive. It then details the steps involved in the innovation process within organizations, emphasizing the need for a structured approach. A significant portion of the report is dedicated to Telstra, examining its innovation and creativity initiatives, including its innovation challenge and its use of radical innovation. The report also outlines Telstra's specific innovation process. Finally, the report offers a reflection on innovation, summarizing the key findings and insights gained throughout the analysis. The report covers topics such as understanding innovation, the importance of creativity and innovation, innovation theories, and Telstra's innovation process.

Running head: INNOVATION AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
INNOVATION AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
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Executive Summary
This paper is on innovation and business development where Telstra Company is taken into
consideration. An overview of creativity and innovation is explained along with the differences
between them. A clear understanding of innovation and creativity is done. The importance of
both is seen for organisations in general. Various theories and types of innovation and creativity
are discussed. The investment theory of creativity is taken. The four different types of innovation
are discussed in details. The various steps of the innovation process used by an organisation are
written. These steps explained how innovation requires many steps to be launched in the market.
As Telstra Company is taken a brief overview of it is given. Telstra's innovation and creativity
are seen. The innovation process of Telstra is seen in a step by step manner. A reflection on
innovation is given along with a mind map explaining about Telstra’s innovation.
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Table of Contents
Overview..........................................................................................................................................3
Understanding of innovation and creativity....................................................................................3
Importance of creativity and innovation..........................................................................................4
Theories of innovation and creativity..............................................................................................5
Innovation process followed by organisation..................................................................................6
About the company..........................................................................................................................7
Innovation and Creativity within Telstra.........................................................................................8
The innovation process within Telstra.............................................................................................9
Own reflection on innovation........................................................................................................10
Reference List................................................................................................................................12
Appendix........................................................................................................................................15
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Overview
Something new and valuable is formed through the phenomenon of creativity. The item that is
created can be a physical or intangible object. Innovation is a method which looks after the new
requirement in an existing market (Cruickshank, 2016). It consists of new ideas, imaginations
and thoughts. There are many differences between innovation and creativity. The process of
innovation is productive whereas the process of creativity is imaginative. Creativity thinks of
something new whereas innovation thinks of introducing new things. Creativity has no risk
whereas innovation does have some risks. In order to innovate something people should have
creativity within themselves.
Understanding of innovation and creativity
In order to understand innovation and creativity, two different articles are taken into
consideration.
According to the article Innovation in the Public sector:
Towards an open and collaborative approach author is trying to explain the importance of
innovation in public sector where there are politicians, societal and civil servants
(Bekkers&Tummers, 2018). The changes in innovation are discussed in this article. In earlier
days innovation could be organised in the organisations if all the resources were available.
However things have changed and innovation is seen as a process of collaboration between the
stakeholders of various companies. All these are open approaches and the consequences can be
seen on innovation process. This paper sees the role of stakeholders in the innovation process.
They are mainly focused on leadership, network governance and design thinking.
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According to the article Happy creativity:
Listening to happy music facilitates divergent thinking explains that in the 21st century
creativity is the key competencies (Ritter & Ferguson, 2017). It gives a lot of opportunities and
challenges in the changing world. The main problem is that people can’t come up with creative
ideas and problem solutions as it earlier use to happen. In this paper music is seen beneficial for
creativity and the part is unexplored by the people. The paper shows how different types of
music can help in facilitating convergent and divergent music. It is also compared to the silent
control condition in case of creativity. Those who hear happy music their creativity level is high
and convergent creativity has no effects. It is also seen that music plays an integral part in
today’s life and is effective of organisational settings where creativity is needed.
Importance of creativity and innovation
In today's world, creativity and innovation have great importance. In an innovation, process
creativity is important because it is the key ingredient of it and without this, any kind of
innovation is not possible. Creativity is out of the box thinking which leads to innovative
solutions (Amabile& Pratt, 2016). The scope of search and space in innovation is done with the
help of creativity. They are also very important because they help in finding new opportunities
and establish connections. Innovation is also important along with creativity because it is the
building block to new solutions. When the problems are not solved by traditional methods then
innovative solutions play a major role. It eliminates difficult problems and gives new opportunity
and competition the market. Innovation has the power to convert ideas into productive positions
(Noworol et al., 2017). It also improves the quality, service and process of a product. This adds
value to any organisation. Innovation helps in achieving monetary rewards. Innovation tries to
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bring improvement in an existing product so that the organisation can gain profit through that
product. It also meets the needs of the market and people. Both innovation and creativity are
necessary although they are different. They both can be used to meet the needs of the customers
and the organisation.
Theories of innovation and creativity
For creativity, the investment theory is taken into consideration (Creativitytheory.com, 2019).
This theory was proposed by Todd Lubart and according to him, creativity is a major part of the
decision. In the world of ideas, it simply means get the idea at a low price and sell it at a higher
price. This gives profit to any organisation or individual. This theory is known as investment one
because people have the attitude to get creative ideas at a cost. However, buying creativity has
some risk and selling them might not be accepted by people. This theory examines the creative
process and their aspects like abilities, motivation, thinking style and personality attributes. This
theory is of vital importance in any organisation and for their product making.
Innovation is of four types and they are Architectural Innovation, Radical Innovation,
Incremental Innovation and Disruptive Innovation (Ali Taha, Sirkova&Ferencova, 2016). Out of
the four innovations, the incremental is the most common one. They use existing technology for
increasing their customer base and value. Every organisation tries using incremental innovation.
Disruptive innovation uses new technologies and processes for the current market (Kim &Lui,
2015). This type of innovation is costly in nature and it is hard to apply for the existing market. It
will become difficult for the organisation to compete with new technologies in a short period of
time. Architectural innovation uses existing technologies in a new market. This innovation type
increases new customers as the market is new. The amount of risk in this type of market is low
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because of reintroduction and reliance on proven technology. However, it sometimes becomes
difficult to meet the requirements of the new market. The last one is radical innovation where
new technology is used in a new market. Organisations do opt for this innovation type as
everything has to be started in a new way.
Innovation process followed by the organisation
Each organisation follows certain steps or processes for innovation (Liu et al., 2017). This leads
to the growth of the company and the proper process helps in executing the ideas in a smooth
way. Given below are the steps of the innovation process followed by an organisation.
 Organisations observe their customers to find out the problems and opportunities (Witell
et al., 2016). They try to understand the pain points of the customer and then think of
giving some solution. A proper customer journey map ensures that all the points are
covered. This gives the companies an idea to innovate something new for the customers.
 New solutions are created for customers. The organisation tries exploring different ways
to gain profit. They look for customer insights and through different tools, they plot their
ideas and opportunities. Mobilization of idea or innovation is required as the idea has
moved a step forward.
 During the development process, the organisation have to find new suppliers for its
products (Nonaka & Toyama, 2015). A proper supply chain and manufacturing plant
have to be created. Next step is where a software development kit has to be made for the
third party vendor. Last relationships need to be developed with the channel partners.
 The organisation learns from the market in order to get their final product. They follow
the latest principles of innovation and creativity. They first produce the basic offer for the
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product in the market so that customer behaviour can be understood. It also helps the
organisation to understand if the offer is accepted or rejected and hence accordingly they
can change their offers for the product.
 To make the product innovation successful the organisation needs to set prices and make
a marketing plan (Unsworth&Luksyte, 2015). This will not create any kind of
communication break in the departments of sales and marketing, research and
development.
 The organisation tries its level best to implement the ideas. They take prototypes that are
successful and hence they keep learning from it. This learning cycle gives them a chance
and flexibility to find new opportunities in business and select the best idea out of it. This
helps in the overall growth of the company.
 The complete innovation process the most important part is to manage each of the phases
(Palmiero, Di Giacomo & Passafiume, 2016). The organisation feels that they should
spend their maximum time in the discovery phase (Biemans, 2018). This will also help
them in overcoming any kind of delays. It will maintain discipline in each step of the
innovation process. Emphasis is given in the needs of the innovation.
About the company
Telstra is one of the largest telecommunication companies in Australia (Telstra.com, 2019). The
company was founded in the 1975 and is headquartered at Melbourne, Australia. The key people
of the company are Andy Penn the CEO, Warwick Bray the CFO and John Mullen the chairman.
The revenue of the company is A$26 billion and net income is A$3.9 billion. There are 32,000
employees working all over the world and there are 150 subsidiaries. The main products are
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mobile and fixed line telephony, data services, and the internet, Pay TV and network services.
The company is now focusing mainly on customers as it is fully privatized.
Innovation and Creativity within Telstra
Telstra is following Radical Innovation (Hutchins, 2016). They believe in using new
technologies for the new market. They run an innovation challenge (TIC) so that they can get
creative, innovative and technical potential people from different schools and colleges. Every
year the company keeps a focus on some specific technology like the Internet of Things. This
technology can be used in its logistics and transport departments. The company gives an
opportunity to the winning team to present their ideas and creativity. They allow the team to
represent real-world ideas and applications using Telstra's CAT-M1 and IoT narrowband
networks. These innovative bands of the company can easily cover more than three million
square kilometres of Australia. This network is useful for people having a small amount of data.
The company join hands with Linfox for challenging different teams to solve the issues related to
the transport and logistics industry. They give the liberty to the teams so that they can choose the
specific area of interest. This could be improving the operational experience, field staff or brand
development for the market. For innovation and creativity, the company will be giving all the
required materials. The selected teams can present their ideas of innovation in the Telstra Lab.
Telstra is having the latest innovation in stationary fuel cells at remote locations (Stroyov, Patel
& Ali, 2017). The fuel cell is of methanol and proton exchange membrane that electrolysis based
(PEMFCs). Telstra tried to overcome the challenges related to traditional techniques along with
the key operational benefits.
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The innovation process within Telstra
Telstra follows a particular innovation process for yielding success in the market. The process of
innovation is mentioned below.
 Entrepreneurs’ recruitment is the key ingredient to any kind of innovation culture is its
people (Bosch‐Sijtsema& Bosch, 2015). The company spends a large amount of time in
recruiting people with entrepreneurial thinking. Telstra feels that they need technical
experts with commercial acumen. The company provides training and development
programs to the employees. The company gives different challenges and ideas so that
they can gain diverse ideas from the employees.
 It is required to appoint innovation ambassadors in the company. A proper innovation
pipeline is built through the end-to-end innovation process (Jensen et al., 2016). Hence
innovation champions are required as they can perform many functions. They can be
from any location, divisions and seniorities. The innovative ambassador tries bringing
changes and is influential in nature (Amabile& Pratt, 2016). This is a continual process
and it depends on lean start-up methodology.
 Telstra tries to busting boundaries by doing new construction and practices (Burgess
&Paguio, 2016). This method is revolutionising in nature but gives manufactured
modular solutions. It also quickly delivers innovation.
 Going high-tech is a great step in the innovation process. Using new technologies and
thinking out of the box will help the company to solve complexities. The processes will
be streamlined through a self-service model. A broad range of technical solutions will be
given.
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 The company encourages cross-collaboration as great ideas can come from any part of
the world. The global cloud accounting software allows innovations with the help of
diversity and collaboration through cross-team. When a new product is developed various
features are added and this is encouraged from the starting stage. The company allows
people to give a diverse set of ideas so that the product is put forward. Companies
partnering with Telstra will make them innovation leaders in the market.
Own reflection on innovation
According to this paper, I got to understand the basic concept of innovation and creativity.
Although there is a huge difference between the two but without creativity innovation is not
possible. These days there are many technologies coming up in the market and companies are
trying to adopt them. With these technologies, they are trying to make innovation plans and
implementing them. The understanding of innovation and creativity is done through two articles
where I feel that these papers were quite helpful in understanding the background. The
importance of innovation and creativity taught me that an organisation needs both of these for
their proper functioning. The theories of creativity and innovation gave me an idea about
investment creativity and various types of innovation. It showed me that creativity could easily
be sold at a higher rate. Out of the four different types of innovation, radical and incremental
were the most important ones and were usually accepted by the organisations. The innovation
process showed me that each step is necessary while innovating new products or services. The
process started with understanding the customers and their needs while it ended with managing
the product and offers in the market. A single step cannot be skipped and no short-cuts can be
taken during the innovation process. The company taken for this paper is Telstra and I got to
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know many details of the company. While doing the research work I got to know about their
innovation challenges and how to take innovative people. The company’s innovation process
was also understood.
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