Hybrid Cars and Innovation: Features, Impact, Categories, and Analysis

This report provides a detailed analysis of hybrid cars and the innovation surrounding them. It begins with an introduction to innovation and its importance, focusing on hybrid cars as a prime example. The report explores the features of hybrid cars, such as the Hybrid Synergy Drive technology and various driving modes, and discusses their environmental and financial benefits. It also delves into the history of hybrid cars and their impact on society and the economy. The report further examines different categories of innovation, including incremental, disruptive, architectural, and radical innovation, along with technology push versus demand-pull dynamics. It also covers various approaches to innovation, sustaining and disruptive innovations, and the success and failure factors for new product development (NPD). The report concludes with a discussion on the diffusion of innovation, offering a comprehensive overview of the subject matter.

Management/Innovation

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Importance of Hybrid cars and what made it innovative.......................................................1
Background and features of hybrid cars...............................................................................1
Importance and Impact of innovation on society and economy.............................................3
Various categories of innovation............................................................................................3
Technology push vs Demand-pull..........................................................................................4
Various approaches to innovation..........................................................................................5
Sustaining or disruptive innovations......................................................................................5
Success/failure factors for NPD.............................................................................................6
Factors that are contributing to the failure of new product development...............................6
Objectives of NPD..................................................................................................................6
Diffusion of Innovation..........................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Innovation can be simply defined as the process of devising something performing
something in a new way (Amit and Zott, 2012). In the sector of business, innovation also
involves the terms of improvement. For creating it, it is not necessary to do something unique but
it is important for doing that in better ways. The present report is based on the innovative hybrid
cars. Hybrid electric vehicles have been experiencing an essential rate of growth from the last 12
years. It is very necessary innovate cars as this is a significant means of transportation.
Importance of Hybrid cars and what made it innovative
Generally, a hybrid car is one which uses more than one engine that is a traditional
engine and an electric motor. The electrical engines gives power to the car at lower speeds but
gas engine is gives powerfulness at higher speeds. A hybrid car can be like as Civic Hybrid and
Toyota Prius that are not only conserving fuels but are also producing minimum carbon dioxide
emission. It is very important to produce innovation based hybrid cars as this provides several
benefits. Some of the advantages of Hybrid cars are listed below:
 Environment friendly : one of the greatest advantage of hybrid car in comparison to
gasoline powered cars is that it runs cleaner and gives a good gas mileage which is
making it more environment friendly (Jaffe, and Lerner, 2011). It is running on twin
powered engine that is cutting the consumption of fuel and are conserving a lot of energy.
 Financial benefits : They are supported supported by a lot of incentives and credits that
assist in making it affordable by the ordinary people. Minimum tax bills and exemption
from congestion cost arises annually in the form of very less amount of money spend on
the fuel.
 Less dependence on fossil fuels : It is much cleaner and are requiring very less fuel
which states that they are creating minimum emission of carbon dioxide and have less
dependence on fossil fuels. This ultimately reduces the cost of gasoline in the domestic
market.
Background and features of hybrid cars
The history of hybrid cars stretches back over 100 of years. The first hybrid car was
created in the year of 1899 by the great engineer 'Ferdinand Porsche' that is known as System
Lohner – Porsche Mixte. It uses a gasoline engine for supplying power to an electronic motor
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that will drive the front wheels of car. It was the ability of Ford to produce gasoline powered cars
and were offering them at minimum costs. This dramatically shrunken the market of hybrid cars.
For example, the product of Toyota, Prius, an electric car has various features of hybrid cars that
are listed below:
 Superior Hybrid Synergy Drive technology : This is the most innovative or advanced
feature in the world. Toyota had refined the 4th generation Hybrid Synergy drive in
creating a lighter and more effectual system (Jiménez-Jiménez and Sanz-Valle, 2011). It
has a feature of more compact size and has a reduction in the weight on both the battery
and motor in comparison to the past models. This also increases the space for storing
luggage. Prius are using 1.8 L petrol engine while running on road. It also consist of
highly refined electrical motor and switches.
 Three alternative driving models : Prius permits users to set the mood of driving while
running at road. If some one wants to drive freely then they can switch to power mode.
One can switch to EV mode for using only battery and producing zero or no commissions
if they want to drive slowly in quiet streets. And at the time of general city driving, one
can switch Prius to Eco mode for the uncompromising efficiency.
 EV Mode : At the lower speed, car can be switched to Electric Vehicle mode. In this
mode, car will run only on the electric motor alone. This will effectively reduces the
noise at night in built up residential areas.
 Regenerative brakes : Hybrid cars consist of a regenerative brake which assist in
recharging the battery while driving the vehicle. In conventional vehicles, the energy
which is being created as a vehicle brakes got wasted as heat energy. But now in hybrid
cars, that kinetic energy gets converted into electrical energy and are getting stored in the
battery through the use of regenerative brakes. This states that each and every time users
are driving their cars can easily recharge the battery by using the energy again that is
required to give power to the cars. These cars also utilises an electronic generator that is
present inside the ICEs. It helps in recharging of the battery or giving direct power to
the motor.
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Importance and Impact of innovation on society and economy
The importance and influence of innovation on society and economy are following:
 Direct job creation : The innovation and technology is creating direct job opportunities.
In US alone, the jobs of computer and information technology are supposed to grow by
25 % up to 2020 and creating 758,800 new jobs opportunities (Rosenbusch, Brinckmann
and Bausch, 2011). The market of auto mobiles also creating a large number of jobs for
the civilians and aids in increasing the economic conditions of the country.
 Contribution to GDP growth : The increment of innovation and technology also assists
in increasing the growth of gross domestic product of the nation. For instance, a 10 %
increment in the broadband penetration is linked with a 1.4 % increase in the GDP
growth in emerging market.
Various categories of innovation
There are various types of innovation. Some of the main categories are listed below:
 Incremental innovation : This is the most common form of innovation. It effectively
uses the current technology and increases its values in the eyes of users within the
existing market. For example, adding new features to the current products or services.
Removal of features can also be considered in this.
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source 1: How Hybrids Work, 2017

 Disruptive innovation : This is also known as stealth innovation. New technologies or
procedures gets applied into the corporation under this type of innovation. It is stealthy in
nature since the new technology will often be of low-level to the current technologies of
market (http://innovationexcellence.com/blog/2016/08/16/how-many-types-of-
innovation-are-there/, 2017). This new one technology could be of high costs and has less
features which can be harder to use.
 Architectural innovation : This innovation is just taking the skills , lessons and overall
technology. It is applicable within a different market. This type of innovation is
surprising or amazing and assist in enhancing new users as long as the new market is
assimilative.
 Radical innovation : This is what that some one thinks of commonly when considering
innovation. This creates new industries and also give birth to revolutionary technologies.
Technology push vs Demand-pull
When the research and improvement or breaking through of technology aids in driving
the launch of a new product or service, this is known as technology push. For instance, Apple
Newton PDA launched in the year of 1993 or Samsung Galaxy had launched with touchscreen
technology in the year of 2012. Where as demand pull policy serves different functionalities for
technologies with different characteristics. For mass produced products, such policies are
necessary to attain economy of scale and learning by performing, for complex goods that enable
interaction of user producer.
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Various approaches to innovation
There are commonly three approaches of innovation that are listed below:
 Ideas driven approach : This approach gathers and creates a number of ideas which are
filtered until once is chosen. If an idea is chosen for development, it is often then
discarded. The leading time for this process is 1 to 5 years.
 Research driven ideas : This approach gathers a huge amount of ideas that are created
from research which are filtered even after the selection of number of them for
improvement. However, large number of such promising projects would be rejected at
any step development process until its completion (Sawyer, 2011).
 Analysis driven innovation : This approach is drawing ideas in an organized way from
the investigation of market, from interior capabilities of company and its competitors.
There is a fixed plan of action control which is started by the projects.
Sustaining or disruptive innovations
A sustaining innovation is an incremental or additive innovation that are sustaining a
current product (Schaffers and et. al., 2011).
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source 2: Analysis of Strategy Focus vs. Market Share in the Mobile Phone Case
Business, 2017

Where as a disruptive innovation is an innovation that assist in creating a new market and
value network. This yet interrupts the present market and value network by displacing it with an
previous technology.
Success/failure factors for NPD
The major factors that are impacting on new product development are listed below:
 Marketplace need : The first step in marketing is conducting a research for the market
place for discovering the requirements and preferences of the customers. This assist in the
improvement of solution of marketable products that consist of high potential of success.
 Product benefits : Only knowing about the demand of consumers will not give
confirmation of success. There is a gap in the capability of the marketing function for
controlling results existing in development of products. Marketing should know what is
need of users and how benefits can be achieved. Still a good quality product that is
needed by customers is important.
 Effective promotion : Promotion is one of the main factor that is contributing in the
success of marketing of products. This involves paid advertising, public relations, etc.
This can be also be done by using social media like Face book, twitter, What's app, you
tube, etc.
Factors that are contributing to the failure of new product development
Some of the factors that causes the failure of new product development are following:
 Lack of consumer focus : If proper focus is not given on the needs of customers then
definitely the new product will fail.
 Poor control of cost : In addition to the normal price of product, there are some hidden
costs within an enterprise, frequently related to complexity of the products. There is poor
control of cost which leads to the failure of new product development.
Objectives of NPD
The objectives of new product development are listed below:
 Differentiating the product : One of the objective of NPD is manufacturing goods that
it must be different from others (Stokes, 2011). Company should offer unique
functionalities in comparison to their competitors' product.
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 Acquiring customers : Other objective is to acquire large number of customers so that
company can improves their turn over and earn more profits.
 Building the brand : Corporation wants to make their brand more popular in the eyes of
customers. This will increase the demands of their products or services globally.
Diffusion of Innovation
Diffusion of innovation is a theory that describes how, why and what rates of new ideas
and technologies are spreading (Strayer, 2012). Diffusion research identifies how ideas are
spreading among the people. It goes beyond the two step flow theory, focussing on the situations
that are increasing and decreasing the probability of an innovation, a new thought, product or
service will be followed by members of a given culture.
CONCLUSION
From the above based report, it can be conclude that innovation is nothing the creation of
new ideas or device or method. There are various innovation done in this world. One of the
example of innovative product is hybrid cars. This is environment friendly and produce less
emission of carbon dioxide. This reduces the air pollution. Various approaches of innovation are
discussed here like Ideas driven approach, Research driven ideas and Analysis driven innovation.
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REFERENCES
Books & journal
Amit, R. and Zott, C., 2012. Creating value through business model innovation. MIT Sloan
Management Review. 53(3), p.41.
Drucker, P., 2014. Innovation and entrepreneurship. Routledge.
Goldberg, D.E., 2013. The design of innovation: Lessons from and for competent genetic
algorithms (Vol. 7). Springer Science & Business Media.
Huizingh, E. K., 2011. Open innovation: State of the art and future perspectives. Technovation.
31(1).pp.2-9.
Jaffe, A. B. and Lerner, J., 2011. Innovation and its discontents: How our broken patent system
is endangering innovation and progress, and what to do about it. Princeton University
Press.
Jiménez-Jiménez, D. and Sanz-Valle, R., 2011. Innovation, organizational learning, and
performance. Journal of business research. 64(4). pp.408-417.
Rosenbusch, N., Brinckmann, J. and Bausch, A., 2011. Is innovation always beneficial? A meta-
analysis of the relationship between innovation and performance in SMEs. Journal of
business Venturing. 26(4).pp.441-457.
Sawyer, R.K., 2011. Explaining creativity: The science of human innovation. Oxford University
Press.
Schaffers, H. and et. al., 2011. Smart cities and the future internet: Towards cooperation
frameworks for open innovation. The future internet. pp.431-446.
Stokes, D.E., 2011. Pasteur's quadrant: Basic science and technological innovation. Brookings
Institution Press.
Strayer, J. F., 2012. How learning in an inverted classroom influences cooperation, innovation
and task orientation. Learning Environments Research. 15(2). pp.171-193.
Online
How Many Types of Innovation are there?. 2017. [Online]. Available through :
<http://innovationexcellence.com/blog/2016/08/16/how-many-types-of-innovation-are-
there/>. Accessed on 30th August 2017.
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