Leading Innovation Report: Innovation for Sim Hardware Business

This report focuses on Sim Hardware, a business facing declining sales due to a lack of innovation and competition from e-commerce giants. The report delves into innovation theories, such as disruptive and open innovation, and highlights techniques and tools like brainstorming and mind mapping to boost innovation. It reviews the industry, emphasizing the importance of leadership styles like transformational leadership, and suggests communication channels to foster innovative ideas. Strategies for innovation, including providing employee freedom and adopting a holistic approach, are presented, along with an analysis of potential risks and mitigation measures. The report recommends that Sim Hardware implement these strategies to improve business operations, increase efficiency, and regain its market share in the competitive Australian hardware market.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Innovation and Business..................................................................................................................2
Techniques and Tools to boost innovation......................................................................................3
Industry and Business review on innovation and creative thinking.............................................5
Leadership style and positive thinking and innovation...................................................................5
Communication channel for innovation ideas.................................................................................6
Strategies and process of innovation...............................................................................................6
Risk related to innovation and measure to overcome......................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Sim hardware was initially started as Sim’s home goods in Australia in 1921 that was specialized
in the manufacturing and selling of household furniture. At present, Sim hardware has 138 stores
with 10,000 staff employed across the country. In 1950, business was renamed as Sim hardware
and focused to sell all hardware, housewares, and tools. Currently company is facing problem
related to declining sales and declining profit. The reason that is identified behind this declining
sale is lack of innovative and new product range in the market. Due to fast changing pace most
of the companies in this industry are giving tough competition to Sim hardware and especially
from ecommerce giants due to that sale of the company declined and profit get affected. Further,
problems that company is facing include obsolete technology, traditional processes, and old
practices. This resultant in declining revenue and sales for the year ended 2017. This report
focuses on the innovation theories and creativity techniques that company can use in order to
change its process and to boost up the innovation in their business so that they can compete and
survive in the industry or retain their market share in the Australia market (Hardware, 2019).
Innovation and Business
Innovation is a process of implementing ideas to change process, products and to improve
services in order to succeed in the business to take an edge over the competitors. Innovation is an
important aspect for any business as in this technological era and digital era innovation brings
uniqueness in the brand. There are few theories that can be applied in the business and that
focused broadly on collaborative work environment, creating balanced workforce and to induce
workforce to think out of the box. Further through implementing innovation an organization get
cost effective and become more efficient. Some of the innovation and thinking theories are

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discussed below that are disruptive innovation, open innovation and lean business and portfolio
management (Giffin and Mitchell, 2016).
Sim hardware is struggling because of lack of innovation and in order to boost innovation in
organizational processes and operation it is necessary to follow this theories of innovation and
thinking. Sim hardware can increase its sale as the company has strong human resource, covered
both platform that is brick and click and has strong market share in the Australia. With the help
of lean innovation, open innovation and disruptive innovation company can implement advance
technology in its business operations such as inventory management software and can adopt lean
manufacturing method. Disruptive innovation is one of the most important innovation theory that
focus on developing a totally different or new idea that disrupt or obsolete the current one and
customer can substitute old way in order to adopt new way (Hidalgo and Albors, 2008). Open
innovation is creating an environment in which most ideas can be gathered from different
sources that can be from the organization or from outside the organization. At present techniques
that can be used to manage and evaluate ideas are idea management, open innovation, and
innovation management system. Lean innovation is basically related to minimizing waste in
development of product through continuous improvement (Clegg, 2009).
Techniques and Tools to boost innovation
Tools and techniques that are used to boost up the innovation in an organization are
brainstorming, mind mapping, creative thinking matrices, DeBono tools, Scenario analysis, and
nominal group techniques. Brainstorming is used to generate new ideas from employees by
influencing them to think outside the box so that they can contribute best of their ability. It is an
informal approach to solve problems or to get various innovative solutions of a problem from

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employees so that they get encouragement to share their mind in front of other (Albors et. al,
2018). Sim hardware can use this technique to boost innovation as this encourage employee to
participate as brainstorming gives an open and free environment that induce people in
organization to participate and develop more creative solutions. Through that company get ideas
on different processes and operations that can be changed in order to increase efficiency and to
reduce operation cost.
Mind mapping is a tool that begins with setting a central idea that address the topic and then
developing ideas that comes into mind with relation to that idea. From main ideas sub ideas can
be generated and this pattern helps to encourage people to lime light their ideas and to focus on
idea generation and feasibility. Creative matrix is another tool that helps the company to spark
new ideas to create things that are “greater than the sum of its parts”. In this creative matrix an
idea gets points and highest number wins the game. Scenario analysis is related to analyzing
future scenario according to current strengths and weaknesses of the organization and lastly
nominal group techniques is used to encourage team innovation as team or group come together
to solve a complex problem with help of team members (Meinel and Voigt, 2017).
Industry and Business review on innovation and creative thinking
In hardware and home retailer segment in Australia, competitors are gaining advantage over Sim
hardware such as Bunnings, home hardware, Mitre and Trade links. In this industry companies
are quite innovative with regards to their process and product offering and creative thinking level
is at high phase. It is also analyzed from the case of Sim hardware that there are various factors
that affect innovation in an organization these factors can be seen at organizational level,
individual level and at team level. Individual factors include motivation, individual creativity

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level, knowledge, and pressure. At organizational level factors that affect innovation are
organizational culture, work environment, availability of resources, structure and practices. At
Sim hardware the factors that affecting innovation and creativity in the organization are culture,
working environment, traditional practices and processes. All this factor are at organizational
level that can be solved and this will develop an environment in which innovation can be
prompted. Changing trend in this industry require the company to change is processes and
practices as innovation cannot be implemented with old practices and change can help Sim
hardware to move towards upward direction.
Leadership style and positive thinking and innovation
Lead innovative thinking and practice is important in an organization as leadership style is one
factor that affects the innovation and creativity at individual level as well as at organizational
level. Currently at Sim hardware transactional leadership style is followed that involves task
oriented focus where leader only focus on completion of task by providing rewards and
punishment to in order to boost performance of employees.
On considering the leadership style used in this company it is recommended that
transformational and participative leadership style can be chosen as it benefits the organization
and encourage employees to think out of the box as they feel that their opinions are important for
organization and involving them in decision making process may boost up their creativity level.
This style can be applied in work by welcoming suggestions from employees, conducting face to
face interaction sections, providing environment to employees to put their ideas, and by
motivating them take lead and initiative (Odoardi et. al, 2015).

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Transformational style promotes innovation and positive thinking and implements change in an
effective way in the organization. Transformational leader inspire employees to look forward and
focus on their goals through continuous improvement and changes. A leader analyze the
situation, identify needed improvement and apply necessary changes for improvement this helps
organization to reduce resistance to change, promote disruptive innovation and redefine core
values. In order to develop leadership style the company can conduct various programs and
workshop on personality and image management and training can be provided to improve
leadership skills (Khalili, 2016).
Communication channel for innovation ideas
In an organization effective communication cannel is important in order to ensure that
employees and employers can communicate on regular basis as this help the company to reduce
any gap in their communication and to connect each and every individual with the organization
overall goals. Communication channels that Sim hardware can use in order to communicate
innovative ideas are company meetings, presentations, monthly newsletter, internal social
network, by adopting open door policy, using social intranet software, reports, data, emails, by
taking regular updates from employees, and communication can be boost also by using mobile
tools. Further in order to support innovation and to ensure that innovation can be done on regular
basis some mechanisms can be used by organization that include broadcast research,
brainstorming, networking, and expert teams as these mechanism can help in promoting
innovation in the organization (Epstein, 2018).

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Strategies and process of innovation
Innovation process includes five steps idea generation, screening, experimentation,
commercialization, diffusion and implementation. These steps help the company to ensure
innovation and creativity so that the organization can survive and achieve its organizational
goals. “An innovation culture is a strategy towards becoming a market leader”. Furthermore,
“organization that has an innovation culture enjoys larger profit margins and is an authority in its
area of industry although there are risks involved with the innovation process but the benefits are
more to the organization”. So creativity and innovative thinking leads to growth and profitability
of the organization (Pisano, 2015). In relation to Sim hardware the company can adopt various
strategies in order to boost and ensure continuous innovation in workplace. Following are the
steps that Sim hardware can take or strategies that the company can follow;
 Providing some sense of freedom to their employees so that they can contribute to
creative process.
 Time can be invested in creative nourishment of workers and by demonstrating the
effective ways to them that boost up innovation and creativity.
 Implement holistic strategy of innovation by including each and every department in the
process of innovation to get more ideas and to support innovation culture this is essence.
 Cultivate creativity in behavior of employees by providing flexible and free working
environment by changing policies and practices so that they can perform best of their
ability that support innovation in the organization as less stressed employees can prove to
be more innovative and creative.

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 Adopting transformational leadership style in order to nurture the attitude and to develop
a culture of innovation by giving room to employees to experiment more without any
hesitation
 Acknowledgement is important in order to ensure creativity and innovative thinking in
the workplace so the company should value the efforts of their employees and
accordingly provide rewards and benefits.
Risk related to innovation and measure to overcome
The innovation process includes certain risk such as failure of technology, market failure,
financial strain, lack of capacity, redundancy, and some organizational risks. The risk that Sim
hardware can face while implementing innovation process can be product failure as new product
can be worked well or not is difficult to pretend so to overcome that risk company can do trial on
small scale or in any area in Australia and according to customer feedback can make changes to
reduce the risk of new product failure. Another risk can be market failure of product that means
it doesn’t meet the requirements, needs and preferences of targeted customers as Sim hardware
focus on timber, hardware, tools, housewares, garden and outdoor products and services.
Another risk of innovation can be seen in implementing new process and practices in the
organization and theses organizational risk can be employee resistance to change, poor
communication and complex organization structure. These innovation risks can be reduced by
aligning innovation to goals, clearly stating the need of change and creativity, implementing
innovation at the right time and by clearly understanding the customer preferences and needs
(Korableva et.al, 2017).

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Conclusion
Innovation and creative thinking is important for adapting to change, solving business problems,
facing up the competition and to evolve workplace dynamics. From the case it is analyzed that
Sim hardware profits and sales were declining because of obsolete technology and traditional
policies and practices. In order to implement change and boost up the innovation and creativity
in the organization they have to change their organization structure and made policies that help
in developing innovation culture so that employee engagement can be increased. Further it is
concluded that developing and implementing innovation is not an easy task it also includes some
risks and to overcome these risks some measures are taken. Considering all these things
recommendations and strategies can be implemented by Sim hardware that is stated above.

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References
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Clegg, B., 2009. Creativity and innovation for managers. Routledge.
Epstein, B., 2018. The only constant is change: Technology, political communication, and
innovation over time. Oxford University Press.
Goffin, K. and Mitchell, R., 2016. Innovation management: effective strategy and
implementation. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Hardware, S., 2019. Australian Hardware.
[Online]
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theory and practice. R&d Management, 38(2), pp.113-127.
Khalili, A., 2016. Linking transformational leadership, creativity, innovation, and innovation-
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Korableva, O.N., Gorelov, N.A. and Shulha, M.V., 2017, September. Risk component of
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Entrepreneurship (pp. 837-843). Academic Conferences International Limited.

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Meinel, M. and Voigt, K.I., 2017. What do we really know about creativity techniques? A review
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