Case Study: Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship at DRAX (UK) Ltd

This report provides an analysis of corporate innovation and entrepreneurship at DRAX (UK) Ltd, identifying barriers to creative thinking and organizational innovation. It examines various models of organizational creativity and innovation, including Woodmen's multi-level model, Teresa Amabile model and the Change Kaleidoscope, to provide a comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing DRAX's innovation capabilities. The report further discusses the cultural background, adaptability to change, organizational climate, and analysis paralysis as significant barriers to innovation. The study concludes with recommendations for DRAX to improve its organizational creativity and innovation, regain its market position, and leverage technological advancements such as AI and machine learning. Desklib offers a range of resources including past papers and solved assignments for students.

Running head: CORPORATE INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
CORPORATE INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
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Executive Summary
The aim of the paper is to identify the barriers to creative thinking and organizational innovation,
carry out an in-depth analysis of various models of organizational creativity and innovation such
as the Woodmens’s multi-level model, the Peter Senge frameworks and many more. The study
will also provide some recommendation’s that can be carried out by the organization under study
to improve organizational creativity and innovation.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Analysis...........................................................................................................................................4
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................5
Recommendation.............................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
Critical thinking is the process of using the information that is gathered through
observation or experimentation for the purpose of analyzing, synthesizing and conceptualizing
for the purpose of carrying out any actions (Guimaraes and Paranjape, 2017). Critical thinking is
equally important in the organizations or the workplace because it helps the people in the
organizations’ to find solutions to the problems after properly diagnosing the problems. It
broadens the thinking capability of the organizations and its people such that they can look at the
problems differently and from a broader perspective to find the solutions. The main benefits of
carrying out critical thinking in the organization are that of empathizing with others and help the
individual have to carry out the process through self-control, self-directional and others (Brettel,
Chomik and Flatten, 2015). The organizational innovation is the process of carrying out the
activities of the organization in a new way or even innovating some new products or services.
Organizational innovation can act as a competitive advantage to the company by developing new
products and carrying out innovations which will help to make the company better from others
(Jafri, Dem and Choden, 2016). DRAX is a British company from Yorkshire, that is engaged in
providing electrical power generation and its major products are the power generation products
and the byproducts of these. The company is known for its traditional methods of occurring out
its business and it has been successful using the same (Drax. 2019). However, recently it is
facing many problems due to lack of technological innovations and in order to regain its position
it is important to carry out the innovations such that it can gain a competitive advantage. The
main aim of the study is to show the importance of innovation and creative thinking. DRAX can
regain its lost position in the market by doing the same. The following paper will discuss about

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the problems that is being faced by the DRAX which is acting as a barrier and to overcome those
with the help of innovative techniques.
Analysis
There can be different types of barriers to the process of creative thinking in an
organization due to which it is not easy to carry out innovations and changes in the organization.
The company was using traditional techniques for carrying out the operations of the organization
and was running a profitable business but the company recently lost its market share due to fierce
competition from competitors and because the company is lacking technological innovations.
This has resulted in new strategies being formulated by the company directors to rethink the
process by which it was carrying out its operations. The company has decided to carry out a
paradigm shift from the traditional hardware and software selling business to a modern business
that will make use of AI or artificial intelligence, machine learning and internet of things. For
this the company has established a separate department to look after the innovative capabilities’
of the company called the knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) funded by the UK (Drax. 2019).
However, this approach of the company can improve its innovativeness failed because of lack of
availability of in-house expertise. The company then decided to take help of some academic
Computer Science Technology to help the company in its acts of innovations. This has led the
company to innovate an centralized dashboard by which all the operations can be centrally
controlled and that will be established by the company at the clients house such that the fire
alarm system can give alarms in case of any critical situation and on a real-time basis. The fire
and maintenance system of UK is in need for innovation and creativity in order to become

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successful. This scenario has however has seen some major barriers within the organization to
creative thinking.
Cultural background
The cultural backgrounds of the employees determine their openness to change and their
creativity. According to Hofstede, there are various cultural factors that define the way a person
behaves (Block and Walter 2017). Power gap is one of the cultural dimensions defined by
Hofstede that defines how the people react to change and for creation of an environment in the
organization. If the country is one that follows hierarchy then the environment of organizations
in those countries will be such that employees will not feel free to share their views and ideas.
On the other hand, the employees’ belonging to countries where the power distance is less, the
managers will support the participation of the employees and there the employees can give their
opinions. Therefore, the country from which the individual belongs also determines the way they
perceive change and open-mindedness. If an employee is from a country that follows more
power gap, he needs to be motivated so that he can share some ideas. The culture of UK is the
one with more follows the heueacghy structure and that is why companies that are established in
UK find it difficult to share their ideas as they do not get a friendly atmosphere and fear that their
ideas will not be heard (Pesämaa, Shoham and Ruvio, 2017). Therefore, it is DRAX’s duty to
create such an environment where the employees feel free to share his views.
Adaptability to change and organizational climate
Organizational climate refers to the organizational environment of work and the level of
motivation an employee gets in the organization (Iljins, Skvarciany and Gaile-Sarkane 2015).
The employee’s adaptability to change affects the way they look at innovations. There are many

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employees who get a sense of security and safety from the work they are doing presently and do
not want to change from that because they get accustomed to it (Klimas and Czakon, 2018).
They feel that the changes will lead to many more difficulties. They have a fear that they would
become obsolete in the organization in case any changes take place especially any technological
changes and therefore they do not support these new innovations and create resistance for those
innovative actions. This is something that has happened with the company DRAX, the company
was operating in a traditional industry and the company was using traditional methods for
varying out its operation’s and was in the business of selling various hardware, software and
others. The employees were habituated to the traditional techniques and when the company made
decisions to use modern techniques for carrying out its operations and making use of artificial
intelligence, machine learning and other technique, the decisions was strongly resisted by the
employee’s and also from people from different levels of the organizations.
Analysis Paralysis
It is a process by which an organizational group analyzes a situation so deeply that it
leads to paralysis of the ultimate solution that is the group is unable to come up with some
decisions due to this act of over-thinking (Haupt and Shockley 2018). Sometimes the
organizational group identifies a problem as so difficult that it is not possible to find a solution
for the same as that may result in another problematic situation which the organization wants to
avoid. Many times the organization wants to make a perfect decision and that is why it fears that
the solution may be error prone and the organizational group thinks that the best solution is just a
step away and delays their thinking process and as a result do not take any decisions. Whenever
an organization is stuck in an analysis paralysis situation, they are actually losing an opportunity
to become successful by overcoming this overthinking and taking an actual decision on a right

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time. This act sometimes also results in taking an action at the last moment when it is already too
late and someone else takes the opportunity. This is what has happened with DRAX, the
company decided to undertake innovation activities after it started losing its market share. If the
company has started doing these activities prior to the actual market share it might have become
a market leader.
Contemporary models for in-depth analysis of the organizational entrepreneurship and
innovation
Woodmen’s Multi-level model
According to Woodmen, creativity is a process by which individual’s working together
on a system that is complex, they try to generate something new that adds value such as products
, services and others. The first multi-level model was developed by woodmen for understanding
and relating the individuals, the groups and the organizational creativity outcome. Level of
analysis has to be understood for the purpose of understanding the multi-level model of
woodmen. According to the theory, the analysis of the focal level; is central to other following
activities such as frame and others. Therefore according to the multi-level theory of Woodmnen
there is relatedness between the Level if analysis and creativity. The LOA can also be understood
with the help of a new approach of Sense-making. Organizational creativity at the macro-level
occurs not only through the efforts of a person but through the changing and dynamic process of
sense making. Therefore interpretation can occur simultaneously at multiple levels with various
levels interacting with each other.

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Figure 1: the multilevel model
Source : (Gong et al. 2018 )
From the above diagram of the multilevel model it is clear how the various
individual, organizational and organizational characteristics’ affect the creative situation and
creative behavior and which ultimately leads to organizational creativity. DRAX can use this
technique to improve its organizational creativity by overcoming all the barriers of the
organizational level.
Teresa Amabile model for creativity
The Amabil model of creativity is based on the model of Xu and Rickards models of
creativity. The main advantage of the Amabil model is that it is based on a robust model of
creativity. There are three key elements in the model that are the- domain skills, intrinsic

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motivation and the creative thinking process (Rigolizzo and Amabile 2015). The models are
aimed at solving the conflicts between creative thinking and the management. According to
Amabil, the traditional management practices have a negative impact on the organizational
innovativeness because when people feel pressurized from external sources they do not feel like
working innovatively. Whereas, people are motivated to work innovatively through their
personal interest, the challenging work and satisfaction. The interrelatedness between the three
key elements are given in the diagram below. The present scenario in DRAX is that they are
facing severe competition from the small suppliers in the same field due to lack of
innovativeness. By applying the model of Amabil, the company can carry out creativeness and
innovation within the organization through interconnecting the three main elements- the domain
skills of the people, the ability of the people to think creatively and through a sense of intrinsic
motivation.
Figure 2: Amabil Model for creativity

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Source: (Amabile 2018 )
Change kaleidoscope
Figure 3: Change Kaleidoscope
Source: (Baird and Boak 2016)
Hope Hailey and Balogun have developed the change kaleidoscope model of managing
organizational change. The world is changing constantly and it is very important for the
organizations to adapt to these changes and the change needs to be managed effectively in the
organization. This model of change kaleidoscope is divided into two rings. The outer rings
discuss about context of the organizational change that are- preservation, time, scope, power,
capacity, readiness, capability and diversity. The inner ring discusses about the choices of
design, start point if change, the change path, change intervention, the change style and the
change roles. The time of the external ring represents the time limit within which the change

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needs to be implemented, the scope discusses about the extent of the change that is goes into
separation between transformation and realignment. The outer circle discusses about types of the
change path- the adaptation, the revolution, the evolution and the reconstructions. The starting
point for the change can be ether top-down or can be bottoms-up, or can be a pilot plan or there
can a good practice pockets. There can be different types of the change style and change targets
can be in terms of behavior, values and outputs. The change levers discusses about intervention
needed for the organizational change. This model is used by the change agents to carry out the
change properly. Since the DRAX company has decided to shift from traditional methods of
working to making use of artificial intelligence, machine learning and other techniques thereby
adapting to new techniques, the organization needs to adopt this model and needs a change
leader to carry out all the change management operations effectively and to overcome all the
resistance to changes.
Peter Senge learning organizational framework
Peter Senge developed the concept of learning organization to define an organization that
is continuously engaged in learning for the purpose of transforming itself and it is also important
to improve the skills and the knowledge of the members through learning (Gould, 2016). Many
times people of the organization are ready to learn for the purpose of improving their capacity
but the company sometimes not provides the structure for the same. The main elements of the
concept are systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, carrying out shared vision and
team learning. The systems thinking is the capability of the persons in the organization to look at
things as a whole or from a broader perspective of understanding the working of the different
parts of the whole. It is actually focused on seeing things from the long term view and that makes
the process of feedbacks important. The people of DRAX are required to understand the long