Innovation and Commercialization: A Report on Business Strategies

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of innovation and commercialization strategies, using Softwire Group as a case study. It explores the differences between innovation and invention, emphasizing the importance of organizational vision, leadership, culture, and teamwork in shaping innovation. The report delves into the 4 Ps of innovation (Paradigm, Product, Process, Position), explains frugal innovation and its effects, and highlights the significance of the commercial funnel and New Product Development (NPD). Furthermore, it discusses the importance of an innovation business case for securing funding and outlines tools for knowledge development, retraining, and intellectual property protection. The report aims to provide insights into how businesses can foster innovation and successfully commercialize their products and services.

Innovation and
Commercialization

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................3
P2. How the organisational vision, leadership, culture and teamwork help in shaping the
innovation and commercialisation..............................................................................................4
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................5
LO 2............................................................................................................................................5
P3. Explain 4 P's of innovation process......................................................................................5
P4. Explain the approach of Frugal innovation and its effect.....................................................7
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................7
LO4.............................................................................................................................................7
P5. Importance of the commercial funnel and New Product Development(NPD) for the
commercialisation.......................................................................................................................7
P6. Innovation business case to access the better funding..........................................................9
TASK 4..........................................................................................................................................10
LO4...........................................................................................................................................10
P7. Different tools to develop, retrain and protect the knowledge and intellectual property of
an organisation..........................................................................................................................10
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
Innovation is the key to success and having better idea of meeting requirements of a
company. The innovative approach that are been undertaken into the company will help the
organisation to gain a better idea of the improvements that will be can be undertaken by business
firm in order to get market success (Aryal and et. al. 2016). For the report, we have taken
Softwire Group as organisation of context. It is a UK based firm that works for the software
development. The report focuses on various types of innovations that are being taken by the
successful enterprises. In addition, the importance of innovation and its difference with invention
has been discussed. Effect of the various factors on the commercialisation and innovation and
4P's of innovation are been discussed in the report. Also, the importance of frugal innovation and
that of the commercial funnel has been undertaken along with the New Product Development
(NPD) process. Also, various tools and measures are been discussed to protect knowledge and its
development (Ashton, Richards and Woods, 2015).
TASK 1
LO1
P1. Explaining difference between innovation and invention along with its importance.
Innovation is a process to develop or improvise a product or service to get better
utilisation of that. It is the use of an existing product or technology for the problem solving and
providing better satisfaction to the customers. On the other hand, invention is the process to
come up with something better and new, for the first time. The Apple Group and Virgin group
were not the first in their respective market but they used the existing technology present in the
market to come up with a better and innovative product, that will be used for the problem-
solving approaches by the customers (Breznitz and Etzkowitz, 2017). With respect to this, iPod
of Apple and innovative services of Virgin group like Virgin mobile, Virgin Net etc. are
examples of the innovative approaches that are being undertaken and followed by the company
to solve the issues faced by people and thus, lead to development of these successful products
and services. These products and services not only helped the companies to have better
understanding of their customer's need but also motivated their employees to adopt and develop
furthermore, innovative services and products. Softwire, like Apple and Virgin Group, can use
these innovative approaches for the commercialisation purposes and meeting customer’s demand
along with employee's involvement. The major difference between invention and innovation is:

Invention Innovation
It is the process to develop something new, for
the first time.
It is the process of improvisation of the
existing or a new technology for the
commercial and problem-solving purposes.
It uses the scientific approaches to get the work
done.
It uses the scientific, marketing and other
approaches to get the innovation done.
It is the process or work of only Research and
Development unit of the company (Chun and
et. al. 2016).
This includes the involvement of all the
departments working in the company.
It the use of a principle or theory to develop a
product or service.
It involves the practical implementation of the
principle or the theory that is been used for the
invention.
It occurs when a new idea or theory Found by
a person.
It is the process that is being taken into
consideration by the company to get the better
idea of the demands and needs of people and
develop a product or service to fulfil it.
Only one product or process is being
developed.
It is the complex combination of multiple
processes that are being taken into the
consideration (Etzkowitz, 2016).
P2. How the organisational vision, leadership, culture and teamwork help in shaping the
innovation and commercialisation.
Softwire group will use various factors that will contribute in better innovation of
services and products. The factors like vision of the organisation, leadership, organisational
culture and team work will play significant role in development of the innovative services and
products along with the contribution in its commercialisation. The various factors that are being
taken into the consideration are as follows:
 Organisational vision: The vision of Softwire Group will play a very crucial and
important role in implementation of the innovative process and services by the company.

This will help the company to motivate and guide its employees to work with more
determination and dedication that will help it to gain better market share, identify the
needs and requirements of its customers and incorporate the effective measures to
develop a better market share.
 Leadership: The leadership at Softwire Group will help the company to guide its
employees to work in a better way to get an innovative outlook at the organisation. The
leaders at the cited organisation will act as the communication channel between the
management and the employees and provide them with the best of the guidance and
solution that will help the employees to take better innovative approach (Ge and et. al.
2017). This will help the company to get an idea of the needs and requirements of their
consumers.
 Organisational culture: The work culture of the organisation also plays a very important
role in the determining the innovative approaches that will be undertaken at the company.
Furthermore, the supportive culture of the organisation helps the company to gain a better
idea of the innovative approaches that will help cited firm to gain an insight of the
customer's requirement and demands and meet it in the most effective manner.
 Team work: It is the most crucial factor that plays a very important role in the
management of innovation in the company. The effective and skilled team will work
together for the better implementation of the innovative approaches that will help the
company to gain better productivity and profit (Ke and et. al. 2016). In addition, the team
members will coordinate in the organisation like Softwire to identify and assess
requirements of customers and use the most appropriate and significant measures to get
the innovative solution to their problems.
TASK 2
LO 2
P3. Explain 4 P's of innovation process.
Various types of measures are being undertaken by the company to take effective
measures that will help the organisation like Softwire Group to come up with efficient running of
the business and implement the innovative actions that helps the customer to get better services
from the organisation (Kolychev and Prokhorov, 2015). The innovation process in an
organisation follows the 4P's approach to identify and implement the innovation in the

organisation. This approach will help Softwire Group to get the best idea regarding the needs and
requirements of the company and meet demands of customers. The approach is as follows:
 Paradigm: It involves the measures and methods that are been taken by the company to
identify the innovations that are been taken to improve the work quality of the company.
It will include all the possible changes that will help the company to gain a better share in
market. This may involve the change in the technology, work process or even the
business model to get the innovative approaches implemented at Softwire Group to get
the innovative approaches.
 Product: This will involve the measures that will help the company to gain a better share
of market and profitability. It will help the Softwire group to improve its products or
services in order to gain a better share of market (Kuratko and Hoskinson, 2016). The
improvement in the quality of products and services that will be innovated in order to
gain a better customer satisfaction and meet the targeted goals.
 Process: the processes are the measures or the steps that are been followed in the
organisation to get the work done and implement the innovative approaches. It will
include the measures like supplying, work flow or training processes that will determine
the quality of the service and the extent of the innovation that is been kept by the
company. This will help the company to improve the profit margin and also help the
Softwire to provide its customers with the better satisfaction level (Rasmussen and
Eliason, 2017).
 Position: This will help the company to identify the effective market position and help it
to have a better idea about its capacities. This will help the company to identify the
effective measures to communicate with its customers, having a better understanding of
their requirements and the measures that are been taken by the Softwire to improve its
market position.
Besides this, the innovation process will use the measure of the innovation measure that
will help the company to gain a better idea of the operations of the company and help them to
meet the requirements of the customers (Song and et. al. 2016). This will help the company to
increase the focus of the employee's on the innovative processes on wide scale, identify and
analyse the factors that can affect the innovation process and coming up with the best solutions
to deliver to the customers.

P4. Explain the approach of Frugal innovation and its effect.
The frugal innovation is the effective measure that allows a company to improve the
quality of its services or products by making the small but effective changes using the low
resources to gain high productivity and profitability. The Frugal innovation helped the Apple Inc.
to gain a better productivity and profitability. This approaches will help the company to have a
better idea of hoe to meet the growing and specific demands of the customers so that their loyalty
towards the company is been increased and helps the company to meet the requirement of the
customers (Westland, 2016). The motive behind the implementation of the innovative
approaches is to get the better productivity and an effective solution to the problem that is been
faced by the customers. The major advantage of the products made through the frugal
innovation helped the successful firms like Apple Inc. and Virgin Group to make the best of the
available resources and tackle the problems faced by the company. Softwire too, can opt for the
frugal innovation approach which will help the company to gain a better control of the
operations. As the frugal innovation is an economic approach, it enables the company to
implement and try them without less occurrence of risk factors. Also, the goods can be produced
easily on the vast scale without much use of resource and measures that are been required in
other measures.
TASK 3
LO4
P5. Importance of the commercial funnel and New Product Development(NPD) for the
commercialisation.
The commercial funnel helps the company to get a better insight of the commercialisation
process. Also, known as the sales funnel it helps the company to gain a better share of the market
and meet the requirement of the company. It helps the company to identify the various measures
and innovative approaches that will help the company to gain a better share of the market.
Besides this, it helps the company to identify the potential and actual customers of the products
or services. The Sales funnel is as follows:

 Awareness: This process will help the company to generate the awareness about its
products or services. This will help the company to make the customers curious about the
services or the product that helps the company to gain a better share of the operations in
the company but this will help the company to gain a better productivity.
 Interest: In this process, when the marketing is been done, the customers will look after
the effective measure to get more knowledge about the product or services that are been
produced or developed by the company (Westland, 2016).
 Decision: In this step the customer will decide whether to buy the services or not. This
will help the customers to get the best of the measures that will be implemented by the
company to gain a better profitability. Besides this, the company will get to know about
its actual customers.
 Action: In this stage the customer either drops the idea to make the purchase or buy the
product or the services.
Illustration 1: Commercial funnel
Source: Rouse, 2017

Besides this the New Product development(NPD) process will be held that will help the
company to gain a better productivity and profitability. It includes the following processes that
helped Apple Inc. to gain a better success:
 Discovery: In this stage, Apple identified the problems that are been faced by the
customers in the market, related to a misc player product or service.
 Definition: In this stage the Apple will decide which of the problems thy have to sort out
what solution it can implement to that problem (Rasmussen and Eliason, 2017).
 Design: In this stage, the management or the experts at Apple Inc. will look after the
solution and find out its feasibility to cater the customer demand. They can come up with
the product like iTunes and iPods.
 Development: In this stage the idea is been tested and developed to gain a better
knowledge about the effectiveness of the product or service and the final statement is
been made on it.
 Delivery: In this stage the product is been launched, sold and delivered to the customer's
who are willing to buy it.
P6. Innovation business case to access the better funding.
An innovative business case will be taken into the consideration by the company to get a
better idea of the funding of budgeting (Song and et. al. 2016). For the better understanding of
the business model that will help the company to gain a better idea about the business plan that
will help the company to get better funding like Apple Inc. and Virgin Group. For this purpose,
Stage gate process is been taken into consideration which has following stages:
 Stage 0: It includes the discovery of the idea or the opportunities that can help the
company to get a better funding. Apple and Virgin Group, both made detailed research to
get the idea of better product to generate better funding.
 Stage 1: It includes the process to find the feasibility of the idea that is been identified in
order to make the suitable decision regarding the process of the idea (Yu and et. al.,
2016).
 Stage 2: In this stage the companies like Apple and Virgin Group will develop a strategy
to identify the sources of its funding and what measure it can implement in order to gain
a better share of market. It will also include the development plan for the product.

 Stage 3: In this stage, the product or service is been developed and is been taken into the
production after the fund is been generated.
 Stage 4: The testing of the product is been held in this stage to identify its success and
efficiency of the product or the service that is been developed and is been approved by
the management of the company to further sales and revenue.
 Stage 5: The product or the service will be launched now to get a better idea of the
market share and selling of the product to the customers (Yu and et. al., 2016).
TASK 4
LO4
P7. Different tools to develop, retrain and protect the knowledge and intellectual property of an
organisation.
The Softwire has to look after the effective measures to protect the work done and
knowledge gained in the company. This is necessary to secure and safeguard the knowledge of
the company in order to gain a better share of the market that will help the Company to make the
innovative products and processes and sustain in the market. The information or the knowledge
gained is the life and blood for the company and helps it to gain a better productivity. Some
major data or knowledge protection and intellectual property of the company.
 Patents: The patent is the registration process that can be taken into consideration by the
company to safeguard and protect the knowledge and safeguarding of the products and
services. It is usually done with an invention but can be implemented with the innovation
too, in order to gain a better productivity in the future (Yin, Shi and Yan, 2014).
 Trademarks: The Softwire can get certain names, symbols and images as the trademark
so that it can be implemented on the product or services of the company, providing it the
uniqueness in operation.
 Copyrights: Softwire can get certain codes or programs as copyrighted in order to avoid
any sort of alteration or imitation of the knowledge by any outsider.
Besides this, the company can opt for the technical measures like encryption or data
protection in order to avoid the theft or misuse of the technical data owned by the company (Yin
and et. al.2014). Apart from this, the company can look after the effective appraisal and reward
processes to sustain the good employee's in the company and avoid their moving out.

CONCLUSION
Thus, from the report it can be said that better innovation and commercialisation process
is necessary for the SME like Softwire to have a better market growth. With the reference of
Apple and Virgin Group, we can say that innovation is core for the company. The report focused
on the various types of innovations that are been taken by the successful enterprises. The
importance of innovation and its difference with the invention is been discussed. Effect of
various factors leading to the commercialisation and 4 P's of innovation are been focused. Also,
the necessity of the frugal innovation and its importance with commercial funnel is been
considered along with the New product development (NPD) process in context of Apple and
Virgin Group. Besides this, various tools were discussed to protect knowledge and intellectual
property.

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