Innovation Management: Role, Challenges and Attributes in Business

This report delves into the multifaceted realm of innovation management, focusing on its pivotal role and impact within the global business landscape. It begins by defining innovation management and highlighting its significance in fostering growth and competitive advantage, emphasizing the value it adds to products and services. The report then explores the benefits and limitations of open innovation, including the development of new products, the enhancement of existing ones, and the building of strong stakeholder communities. It also analyzes the negative impacts, such as increased competition and coordination costs. The report further investigates the strategic, tactical, and operational challenges in establishing a viable innovation management culture, including lack of empowered staff, insufficient strategy, centralization of innovation, lack of diversity and collaboration, and intellectual property issues. Real-world examples, such as GE and Samsung, are used to illustrate open innovation strategies and practices. Overall, the report provides a comprehensive overview of innovation management, its challenges, and its importance in the contemporary business environment.

INNOVATION
MANAGEMENT

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................4
Analysis of the role of innovation management and its impact on global business....................4
Strategic, tactical and operational challenges in establishing a viable innovation management
culture..........................................................................................................................................7
Investigation on the key attributes in retaining learning from effective innovation management
practices.......................................................................................................................................8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

Introduction
Innovation management refers to managing the various activities which starts from
introducing something new in an existed product. As per the brief, the theme is considered in the
report is benefits and limitation of open innovation (Park, Bae and Hong, 2019). It is a term
which is used to encourage and divert the mindset towards innovation. Its benefits and driving
forces helps in increasing the openness in the research & development. From the learning
outcomes it is analysed that skills and knowledge of the role of innovation management and its
influence on business and for this it is critically use the strategies, tactics and operational
challenges in order to establish an innovation culture (Naqshbandi, 2018). Moreover, it also
investigates the key attributes which in retaining the effective innovation management practices.
In order to analyse the abilities, various theories of innovation are used and also evaluate the
concepts, techniques and models to identify the application of innovation.
MAIN BODY
Analysis of the role of innovation management and its impact on global business
Innovation in today’s business environment plays a main role in enhancing growth and
success of an organisation (Su and Huang, 2018). It drives a significant factor in business that
adds value to products and forms a major breakthrough for developing improvement in existing
ones. But improper management in implementation of new technology or procedure for creating
innovation, also leads to arise risks for business also. Therefore, innovation management helps a
firm in examining the fundamental as well as growing importance of applying a new concept,
theory, models and tools to create innovation (Park, Bae and Hong, 2019). In global context,
providing capabilities and development of skill of such management cultivates a culture of
continuous improvement, which is essential to derive a high competitive advantage for a modern
business. Along with this, understanding such concepts helps a firm in building the management
of innovation processes in systemic manner into an enterprise, with minimising risk (Bogers,
Burcharth and Chesbrough, 2019). Managers at global level, can support innovation as well as
maintain momentum of innovation by providing resources within organisation, in terms of time,
money and manpower. Furthermore, organizations can promote the idea of innovation with
market potential via offering a budget for development and allocation of human resource staff to

a project team. While leaders of a firm can give their support to innovators by bringing a
balanced perspective within team members to the project.
To connect external sources of international market, a firm at global level, can adopt the
concept of open innovation. It refers to a combination of internal and external resources which
helps in boosting the innovation culture and morale of company. It put positive impact in the
small and medium sized organisation as they do not have their own image and through
innovation they set up good image which helps in their survival. Concept of open innovation is
mainly used by organisations that operate business at large level. But small companies can take it
as an approach for start-up or launching a new website in creative manner (Naqshbandi, 2018).
Open innovation provides a platform for organisations in integrating the concept of innovation
management. hereby, innovation management can be defined as a structured process to generate,
capture, discuss and improve the valuable insight for a business, for diversification at
marketplace. The impact of innovation management through integration of open innovation can
be defined in both negative and positive terms, as explained below –
Positive impact of open innovation on global business –
Illustration 1: Open
innovation
(Source: Open innovation, 2017)

 Develop new product and service: When a firm moves its business at global level, then
through adopting the concept of open innovation, they can offer new product and service
at new marketplace. But as it is risky to invest more time and money on controlling
business operations, therefore, innovation management hereby gives advantage to utilise
resources and managing the risks in effective manner. Developing innovation in existing ones: As moving at international level gives advantage
to a firm in access the new market, where they can offer existing products. Therefore, for
this purpose, open innovation also gives advantage in attracting the new potential
customers. Along with this, it also helps in thinking how to make operations of business
more better to satisfy demand of new marketplace with existing products.
 Building a strong community: Open innovation gives advantages to a firm in engaging its
stakeholders and new customers with business (Su and Huang, 2018). This would help in
building a strong community with stakeholders and take their ideas for generating new
idea of innovation. In this regard, innovation management helps organisations in turning
innovative idea into business concept, for high success and growth.
Negative impact of open innovation on global business
There are two sides of open innovation first one is bright and another one is dark which are
mentioned below:
Types of open innovation Description
Competition An innovation in a firm will give competitive
advantage only if other companies are not able
for replicating the same, into their own
businesses. However, patents and other
intellectual rights provide legal protection to
organisations, but for it cannot protect any
innovation to replicate. Through open
innovative, company gets benefits to easy
market entry but arise a risk of competing with
fierce competition too.
Coordination and implementation cost: For generating innovative idea as per open

innovation concept, a firm to implement a
heavy cost on research and development. The
aim behind this is to create ideas which is
different from others, so that risk of replication
can be reduced. Therefore, investing such
amount on R&D to create market search seems
to not possible for larger organisations.
In order to understand the concept of open innovation strategy, a number of examples of
established firms like Samsung, Google, Apple and more can be taken. For an instance - GE
which is one of the leading organization, used to implement various open innovation models, to
stay competitive (Bogers, Burcharth and Chesbrough, 2019). It’s Open Innovation Manifesto is
mainly focuses on bringing collaboration among management team of experts as well as
entrepreneurs, to share their ideas and work with passionate to solve problems. As per basis of its
innovation Ecomagination project, this project is mainly aims for addressing the environmental
challenges via innovative solutions. For this project, GE has spent near about $17 billion on its
Research & Development department, that helps in receiving more than $232 billion as total
revenues (Open Innovation: Benefits, Case studies and Books, 2019). This firm is also famous
for its open innovation challenges as well as initiatives on the same, where it familiarizes itself
for future prediction of potential talents. It includes concept of Un-impossible Missions, which is
an University Edition challenge that mainly targeted those learners who are creative and possess
a certain level of high technical skills so that they can hire to work in this organisation. Giving
such a challenge, GE also seeks to get smart and more creative students to complete their
internship at its workplace. Similarly, First Build is another main project which is based on ‘co-
create collaboration platform’, connects the various experts, designers, engineers as well as
innovators, for sharing their ideas with each other to generate innovation. This project considers
as one of the open innovation models which aims for providing a platform that give opportunity
to both internal and external individuals for working in collaboration, to share ideas to reach
innovative ideas for products and services.
Bright side
Organisational Knowledge Management Legal

 Easy market entry
 Advantages in
acquisition of resources
 Diversification of R&D
investments
 Ideas which are based
on broad knowledge
 Improvement in the
internal learning
capacity through
transferring the
external knowledge
and routines
 Use of intellectual
property as an asset
 Monitoring of the
protection level of
patents
Dark side
Organisational Knowledge Management Legal
 Coordination and
implementation cost
 Loss of creativity and
flexibility
 Dependence on
external knowledge
 Lack in legacy for
additional tasks
Strategic, tactical and operational challenges in establishing a viable innovation management
culture
As there are number of factors present of open innovation that impact negatively on a
business. Therefore, to minimise the risk of negative impact of open innovation in global
business like replication of same products and services, a company needs to adopt the concept of
innovation management. For this purpose, a number of ideas can be taken to manage innovation.
It includes creating transparency, which helps in boosting the culture of innovation. For this
purpose, it is essential for s firm that its employees must know what is the main objective behind
doing innovation. Otherwise, it possess the operational challenges that may create chaos as well
as trust issues within entire innovation initiative. Some other challenge that come as barriers for
establishing a viable innovation management includes –
 Less empowered staff to create innovation – when employees of a firm do not get
adequate training and development programs for contributing their efforts in making

innovation, then this would highly impact on their performance. Lack of motivation to
get high rewards and recognition of performance at workplace, also lead to arise issues in
front of management of a firm.
 Lack of innovation making strategy – for establishment of innovative culture, proper
strategy is crucial. It describes the direction of innovation and process to implement
operations, otherwise whole process might get misaligned with business aim. Therefore,
lack of innovative strategy will affect the major operations of innovation negatively.
 Innovation in business is centralized towards one-functional group only – When
innovation is being centralized for one department of business only like R&D, then under
such condition a company cannot integrate innovative culture equally at workplace.
Because involvement of each department with every associated worker is essential for
driving innovation successfully at global level in a firm.
 Lack of diversity – innovation can drive successfully, if a firm has diverse culture
because it would help in taking different-different perspective for creating value of
business. Therefore, lack of diversity also affects the process of innovation in business.
 Lack of collaboration – when workers deny to work in collaboration then it will become
more complex for a firm to drive innovation in set period of time with desired way. As
open innovation strategy is basically centred on collaboration among managements of the
firms for developing innovation. Therefore, lack of collaboration may create strategic
challenge in front of employers to achieve objective goals. Collaboration between
management is essential for creating a strategy that could address other challenges in
terms of collaboration with company’s partners. Thus, lack of collaboration makes
process of innovation more complicated as well as harder to be achieved.
 Intellectual property issue – as for moving business in global market, a firm adopts a
number of market entry modes like licensing and franchising, therefore, it would prove
risky to protect business ideas from other competitors. Therefore, under such condition,
protecting intellectual rights also taken as strategic challenge of innovation.

Illustration 2: Innovation management culture
(Source: Innovation management culture, 2018)
For an instance - Samsung which is known for its innovative products, has also adopted an
open innovation concept for building its external innovation strengths via Samsung Accelerator
program. At initial stage, the initiative aim of this firm is to build a proper collaboration among
innovators, designers and thinkers for focusing on different solutions (Open Innovation: Benefits,
Case studies and Books, 2019). For this purpose, it has concerned more implementing innovative
culture at workplace so that such kind of collaboration can be developed. But due to diverse
culture, it would arise a number of issues for sustaining collaboration, Therefore, Samsung
accelerator program helps in providing office spaces and support to entrepreneurs for building
software and services through taking perspective of each people in developing innovation.
Samsung has also opened up the innovation collaboration with start-ups because it would

become easy to include their participation and support in making innovation (Park, Bae and
Hong, 2019).
Investigation on the key attributes in retaining learning from effective innovation management
practices
For implementing and integrating the innovative culture at organisation, a firm can adopt the
concept of innovation management. This would help in developing a number of practices that aid
to overcome from challenges of open innovation in following manner –
Illustration 3: Innovation management practices
(Source: Innovation management practices, 2018) Involve participation of each and every employee – As for making innovation culture is
efficacious, therefore, it is essential for a firm to involve each and every employee
participation in decision making process (Naqshbandi, 2018). Innovation cannot prove
effective if people worked in isolation manner, so, bringing employees to work together
will help in driving better opportunity for success. In this regard, crowdsourcing could be
taken as one of the best techniques for a firm in involving the perception of each
employee in innovation. This would help in generating a pool of ideas as well to integrate

the new business ideas within organization. Hereby, the best way for encouraging
workers and inspiring the innovative thinking is creating an ongoing conversation, rather
than forcing a brainstorming session. This will also provide an interactive platform for
bridging the gap among management and employees, which encouraged them to work in
collaboration to create innovation in business. Run campaign for awareness : Creating innovative ideas which drive growth and success
in business requires a proper strategic orientation, in terms of adopting the culture as well
as generating new ideas. This strategy will encourage the employees to give their
participation in developing innovation (Su and Huang, 2018). Creating awareness at
workplace about current demand of business and importance of innovation by running
campaigns, also aid to generate interest among them to utilise the ideation space. This
would help firm in directing influence the people and capturing their creative ideas that
enhanced level of productivity as well. Along with this, it may cut down the operational
costs when workers work in collaboration, which may drive improvements in innovation
procedure within a short time period. This campaign can be run within the organization
through social network company’s sites via emails, announcements, news and events,
posts etc. Utilise innovation management tool: Incorporating innovation management software or
tools like Wave can play a major role in fostering employee engagement and involvement
in innovation using techniques like gamification. Employees might not have a separate
place and time to meet to discuss ideas addressing a common challenge. Introducing
an innovation management platform can create a digital workplace environment in which
employees can interact, collaborate & contribute ideas, and evaluate, select and provide
the best innovative strategies across the organization from anywhere anytime. Creating transparency: Transparency boosts the culture of innovation. It is essential that
employees should know what the buzz is around the ideas shared, challenges posed by
the organization, etc. Often employees are left in the dark having no clue on further steps
on the ideas posted (Bogers, Burcharth and Chesbrough, 2019). This may create chaos
and trust issues in the entire innovation initiative. In such instances, social collaboration
tools can provide a platform to employees where they can collaborate, communicate,
engage and share the selection process updates in real time.’

 Motivating staff through reward and recognition: Building an effective reward and
recognition system is a key aspect of maintaining and encouraging innovation.
Appreciation and recognition are essential to an outstanding workplace. Employees want
to be respected and valued by others for their contribution. When employees and their
work are valued, they seem happy, loyal, satisfied with the organization. Therefore
developing an effective tool for rewards and recognition can encourage and keep
employees continue to post their ideas to get recognized and rewarded their effort.
CONCLUSION
It has been concluded from this assignment that to run business effectively at global level, it
becomes essential for every organisation to create innovation. For offering existing products in a
new marketplace, companies are required to develop innovative ideas in marketing strategies.
While to sustain in existing market, they need to create innovation in their products to increase
their value for targeted audience. For these purposes, open innovation and innovation
management both are essential to adopt to enhance productivity of business effectively.

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