Creating Value Through Innovation Management: UGB 269 Report

This report, based on the theme of 'Creating Value Through Innovation Management', delves into the critical role of innovation within organizations. It emphasizes how innovation contributes to improved products and services, fostering value for customers and enabling businesses to achieve a competitive edge. The report discusses the methodology used, including qualitative research and secondary data collection, and an inductive research approach. The findings highlight the importance of capabilities, structure, culture, and strategy in fostering innovation. It explores different types of innovation and emphasizes the importance of R&D in aligning innovations with market needs and organizational culture, using examples like Apple to illustrate value creation. The report provides insights into how businesses can assess their innovation culture and processes to achieve a long-term competitive advantage.

UGB 269 Innovation
Management
Assessment for 2019

Table of Contents
Theme: Creating value through innovation management................................................................3
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
METHODOLOGY..........................................................................................................................3
FINDINGS.......................................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION & VIABLE SOLUTIONS.....................................................................................9
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................9
Viable solution............................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

Theme: Creating value through innovation management
INTRODUCTION
Innovation is consider to be most crucial factor within an organisation as it contribute
toward improving its product or services that help in developing the value among customers. In
context of a business, innovation is something that adds fuel to the changes within a company.
The competition within current business environment is relatively higher which require an
organisation to keep on improving their product or services in order to achieve competitive edge
(De Massis and et. al., 2018). Therefore an organisation is required to remain adaptive to
changes in order to constantly innovate and thing long term. The organisational success can be
achieved by regularly innovating the business processes and practices that support in creating
value. The current research paper is based on the theme “creating value through innovation
management”. This will contain a detail description regarding the importance that innovation
management holds for an organisation and ways through which it support in creating value
among its stakeholders. Additionally, it also contain information regarding the methods used for
performing this study.
METHODOLOGY
Research methodology refers to a framework that provide an information regarding type
of tools and techniques used in gathering, evaluating and analysing the information available
over a particular theme in order to provide appropriate findings (Del Vecchio and et. al., 2018) .
The tools and techniques used for this research paper is mentioned below:
Type of investigation :- It is a method that support in determining the manner in which
an investigation must be performed and type of data to be consider for presenting information
about a particular theme. There are mainly two type of investigation such as qualitative and
quantitative. Among them qualitative investigation is based on observation which gather non-
numerical information to explain about a particular phenomenon. It focuses toward determining
the thinking and behavioural pattern of people to answer the questions like “what” they think and
“why” so.
On the other hand, quantitative research is defined as the process of performing
systematic investigation over a particular phenomenon by gathering the quantified data and
performing the mathematical, statistical or computational techniques (Dembek, York and Singh,

2018). This method relies over measuring the variables with the help of numerical system which
analyses variables and represent relationship among them for explaining a particular
phenomenon.
Among these two, qualitative method will be taken into consideration as this method
make it easier for the researcher to understand the perspective and social phenomenon much
effectively by considering the theoretical framework as it remains more descriptive and
communicative. The main benefit of using qualitative method is that it help in capturing the
changing attitude among the targeted group and support the investigator to determine the
particular area to be adopted for performing study.
Sources of data collection :- The sources to be selected for gathering information plays a
significant role over the outcome of study. It basically refers to the ways that investigator adopt
in order to collect information. There are two sources of data collection such as primary and
secondary. In this primary data collection refers to one which support in gathering the first hand
information which is not yet been collected, as per the area of study chosen. On the other side,
secondary information is refers to the process of gathering information which is already being
investigated by among person previously (Frishammar and et. al., 2019). For this research paper
secondary information will be gathered as it help in representing the concept much effectively.
Research approach :- There are mainly two type of research approaches that an
investigator use for performing study, such as inductive and deductive. Among them inductive
approach focuses toward observing the particular phenomenon and with the help of this it
focuses toward generating new theories for providing a particular outcome. On the other side,
deductive approach starts with hypothesis and then focuses toward gathering quantified data to
prove hypothesis wrong or right. For performing this study, inductive approach will be taken
into consideration as it is based on qualitative method and support investigator in determining the
area of study in detailed and effective manner.
FINDINGS
Innovation is defined as the process of improving the existing product or services in order
to meet up with the demand of target market toward a particular brand. Effective business
management required an organisation to continuously work over improving its operations or
services in such as manner that it can provide maximum satisfaction to changing need of
consumers (Leonidou and et. al., 2018). According to the view point of Jesse Nieminen, 2018,

Innovation managemnet is basically refers to the process of handling the set of activities that are
required for “introducing something new” and in practices it basically refers to the things which
means coming up with some ideas, prioritizing, developing and implementing them and putting
them in practices. This may include launching a new product or introducing some new internal
processes. There are endless variety of innovation that can be made by an organisation. This is
also consider as the root cause of many kind of disagreement that are related with innovation, as
people sometime use it as a generic term when they are referring to small subset of innovation
from the view point of their past experiences or organisation (Miethlich and Šlahor, 2018).
Virtually, a new kind of development within an organisation consider to be innovation but it can
be better understood by considering four major sources that commonly form up the innovation.
These factors are explained below,
 Capabilities :- It is basically consider as an umbrella term which covers up different
abilities as well as resources that an organisation have in order to create and manage
innovation. These capabilities mainly revolve around the people that belongs to a
particular practices, as innovation heavily relies over the abilities of both a team as well
as individual collectively. It mainly refers to the ability, know-how, unique insight and
practical skills of people that are working within an organisation.
 Structure:- It mainly support in enabling the effective use of available capabilities but in
practice it actually means that organisational structure, infrastructure and processes of
organisation. The right set of structure which an organisation follows help in allowing the
organisation to operate and innovate much more effectively. For example, by making use
of right communication channels, right processes for making better decisions and right
infrastructure for implementing idea and very few idea that people coming up with actual
light of day (Nußholz, 2018). In case each innovation initiative went through same chain
of command and processes as minor changes to the existing company, it likely to be
happen that many innovation get smothered. Teams working over the innovation is
required to be move fast and adapt to their environment which support them in forming
up decisions independently in the traditional manner for doing things with in
organisation. Therefore, an organisation must not try to impose each rules and regulation
to every innovation rather it must focuses toward moulding the practices as per the
requirement of particular change.

 Culture:- when structure allows the effective use of capabilities, culture is something
that enables the organisation to capture the capabilities related with the people. By
making use of right kind of pro innovation culture, the organisation is more likely to
recruit and keep the suitable people within the organisation (Ozeren, Saatcioglu and
Aydin, 2018) . This right kind of pro-innovation culture support an organisation in
recruiting and keeping the people ready for the upcoming changes.
 Strategy :- It refers to the process of putting the plan into action that an organisation has
made in order to achieve the long term success. Strategy is mainly about making
deliberate choice among the number of feasible options in order to have a best chance of
winning and this choice is connected with the execution phase. Hence it can be said that
the key for innovation activities performed by an organisation is to be aligned with the
strategy which provide guidance regarding the actions to be taken and in what manner. In
practices, it is required to provide organisation with enough freedom in order to allow
them to actually innovate something, but still it required to take into account certain sort
of practical constraints which include strategic focus, available resources and
organisational capabilities.
As per the view point of Richard K Lee, 2013, value innovation is one which support in
improving the efficiency of operations throughout the organisation for delivering positive
outcome. Now government has increased its efforts toward improving the quality of life for their
citizen. At the same time companies are focusing toward driving sustainable and profitable
growth by regularly presenting the innovation in order to compete at global level.
According to him, innovation can belongs to several things such as doing things
differently, bringing new ideas or products to offer, thinking out of the box, remaining creative
and taking risks. The ability of an organisation for brining innovation is not only limited to the
functions of particular processes or tools but it also focuses over improving the organisation's
culture and stakeholder behaviour. It is mainly believed that to bring innovation an organisation
mainly have to be much focuses toward R&D practices, but it is a myth. As innovation mainly
upraised through an attractive and unique idea which support an organisation in standing out of
the crowd by offering something different out of ordinary (Ranta, Aarikka-Stenroos and
Mäkinen, 2018). For example, Apple which is one of the most innovative company throughout
the world which offer very appealing products and deliver great value to its customers. But it

doesn't spend much over R&D, instead it uses technology from multiple sources for enabling the
innovative lines of product or services which it produces. There are around eight types of
innovation being practised throughout the world which includes customer centric, management,
disruptive, open, management, outcome-driven, strategic, value and radical. But the most
commonly adopted forms are open, value and disruptive.
But on the other side, it has been considered that Research & Development practices are
crucial for creating value with the help of innovation management. This is so because by
performing study about the innovation to be made it become easier to determine that the
innovation that an organisation is brining would get accepted by the target market. In addition to
this it also help in determining the additional factors to be include within an innovation so that it
can fit within the criteria that comes under the actual requirement of its target market. As per the
information provided by Arthur D. Little there are number of times when it has been explored
that why some companies are becoming more successful in term of harnessing the power of
innovation as compare to other organisations. But the key success factor behind the high street
clothing giant Zara, automotive manufacturer Volvo and Scania, electronics behemoth Philips
etc. is all become possible due to innovative programmes which deliver real value. This is so
because bringing up new innovation required these businesses to firstly determine several types
of value which they want to create and then try to tailor them in its innovational process as the
businesses' specific marketplace (Rubin and Abramson, 2018). As according to him, Innovation
for creating value basically focuses toward articulate manner in which businesses can
strategically assess its innovation culture and processes for creating business value and achieving
the long term competitive edge. This is so because an innovation can become successful only if it
is being formulated as per the requirement of situations and solution to a particular problem.
Therefore in order to achieve this, it is required that customers' requirement must be firstly
determined and then to check the compatibility of new innovation, analysis of organisational
culture must be performed. This support in determining that whether there is adequate
availability of internal capabilities for brining up new innovation in such a manner that it support
in fulfilling the requirement of target market. Several companies throughout all the sector are
focusing toward developing the sophisticated approaches toward solving the business goal in
order to deal with varied climate change, IT infrastructure, new product development etc. Hence,
these Research & Development related practices support in determining the most impact that get

created with these practices through innovational efforts, where it focuses toward firstly
identifying the sources of value creation.
On the other side, according to the Matthew Rogers, 2017, it is believed that the only way
to create value is by brining innovation which might necessarily come through the delivering of
new product to the market or to a new place. But innovation is not any kind of stand-alone
development which is linked to a single department such as R&D, rather it involve a whole
ecosystem which often spreading further than that of business alone. This means that value can
be created at marketplace in lots of different ways and also support in fundamentally changing
the way company operates such as both internally and externally (Smith, 2018). Therefore, it can
be said that the development of new product or services do not said to be the only limit of
innovation rather innovation can be performed within several areas of business. These support a
business in several ways for creating value such as,
Open communication :- Within the age of Internet, smartphone, cloud computing,
communication and microchip, provide several benefits to an organisation for bringing
innovation. Tesla make it happen in year 2015 by opening up its patent portfolio and sharing it
throughout the world. This remains a damaging move for small car manufacturing companies,
but Tesla has decided to outweighed the company's potential. With this step Tesla has
encouraged the other players to innovate in order to build over what it already done with an aim
to foster the innovation and future value. This unpredictable move has shocked the car world but
at the same time Tesla become able to gain value by hosting up different fronts, increased use of
charging points, new collaborations and press coverage.
Risk-taking culture :- Many of the organisations mainly release a successful product or
services that perform well in market for some period of time but that doesn't result into value
creation. By depending over a particular product, a company will only become complacent and at
the end get stuck when one of its competitor come up with same product or services at more
cheaper rate. Therefore, risk taking environment of an organisation also support it in thinking out
of the box and support it in brining better innovation as per the market requirement or
competition present. For example, Richard Branson consider as a risk taker, as at a time when
market of record was about to impenetrable, Branson launched Virgin record by taking huge risk.
For making it work, he took more risk in signing with little controversial acts, which something
not done at that period. But eventually he sold Virgin Record in order to keep its company float

on a great risk and at last it launched Virgin Galactic that aims toward commercialise space
travel. This make it one of the most successful brand.
Empowerment :- In order to brining innovation one is required to have an empowered
team. A great leaders is one which drive empowerment among its staff and a clear objective that
get applied throughout the departments ensures that everyone works toward achieving one
solution. But in order to get empowerment one is required to develop a culture where staffs get
inspired and remain motivated toward solving a particular problem by using up their own
initiative (Tidd and Bessant, 2018). The best example for this is Google which has done this
incredibly well by making them allowed with spaces and channels related with empowerment. In
this Google Cafe mainly work toward encouraging the cross departmental interaction where
staffs can directly email to company's leader. Additionally, Google Moderator is another
innovation management tool which allow anyone to ask questions and TGIF is Google's week all
hand meeting where anything can be discussed easily.
CONCLUSION & VIABLE SOLUTIONS
Conclusion
From the above mentioned information it can be summarised that innovation
management plays a significant role in improving the organisation practices and its performance
at marketplace. As the competition is getting higher day by day, due to anticipation of
technological development, several organisations keep on practising their studied in order to
brining up innovations. This is so because it become crucial for businesses to keep on innovating
their products, services, processes or business practices by brining new ideas which support them
in keeping ahead at the marketplace. In addition to this it also support in making an organisation
capable of regularly evaluating the requirement and problems of its target market and then try to
brining new ideas to resolve those issues. This support an organisation to keeping its customers
and other stakeholders satisfied with the services which in turn further contribute toward creating
value in front of them.
Viable solution
Innovation within an organisation is all about brining something new to the organisations
existing practices which is different from that of other competitors dealing in the market. But this

task is quite difficult as not each innovation get successful. Therefore, in order to ensure the
success of innovation following recommendation are being provided to organisations such as,
 An organisation should firstly try to study market and demand that consumers have
toward company. Then try to bring up innovative idea in the form of solution to the issue
that customers are facing which support in getting maximum satisfaction from the
customers.
 An organisation must focuses toward determining the internal capabilities and focuses
toward developing these skills or capabilities that are required by employees by providing
regular training to them.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
De Massis, A. and et. al., 2018. Innovation with Limited Resources: Management Lessons from
the G erman M ittelstand. Journal of Product Innovation Management. 35(1). pp.125-
146.
Del Vecchio, P. and et. al., 2018. Creating value from social big data: Implications for smart
tourism destinations. Information Processing & Management. 54(5). pp.847-860.
Dembek, K., York, J. and Singh, P. J., 2018. Creating value for multiple stakeholders:
Sustainable business models at the Base of the Pyramid. Journal of Cleaner production.
196. pp.1600-1612.
Frishammar, J. and et. al., 2019. Opportunities and challenges in the new innovation landscape:
Implications for innovation auditing and innovation management. European
Management Journal. 37(2). pp.151-164.
Leonidou, E. and et. al., 2018. An integrative framework of stakeholder engagement for
innovation management and entrepreneurship development. Journal of Business
Research.
Miethlich, B. and Šlahor, Ľ., 2018. Creating shared value through implementing vocational
rehabilitation in the corporate social responsibility strategy: A literature review.
In Vision 2020: Sustainable Economic Development and Application of Innovation
Management, 32nd International Business Information Management Association
Conference (IBIMA), Seville, 15-16.11. 2018 (pp. 1444-1460). King of Prussia, PA:
IBIMA.
Nußholz, J. L., 2018. A circular business model mapping tool for creating value from prolonged
product lifetime and closed material loops. Journal of Cleaner Production. 197. pp.185-
194.
Ozeren, E., Saatcioglu, O. Y. and Aydin, E., 2018. Creating social value through orchestration
processes in innovation networks. Journal of Organizational Change Management.
Ranta, V., Aarikka-Stenroos, L. and Mäkinen, S. J., 2018. Creating value in the circular
economy: A structured multiple-case analysis of business models. Journal of cleaner
production. 201. pp.988-1000.
Rubin, G. D. and Abramson, R. G., 2018. Creating value through incremental innovation:
Managing culture, structure, and process. Radiology. 288(2). pp.330-340.
Smith, R., 2018. Winning at New Products: Creating Value through Innovation. Research-
Technology Management. 61(2). p.60.
Tidd, J. and Bessant, J., 2018. Innovation management challenges: From fads to
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Online
Lee. R. K., 2013. Where innovation creates value. [Online] Available through:
<https://www.business-standard.com/article/management/where-innovation-creates-
value-110012600078_1.html>.
Arthur D. Little. 2020. Creating value through innovation. [Online] Available through:
<https://www.adlittle.com/en/insights/press/press-release/creating-value-through-
innovation>

Matthew Rogers., 2017. How innovation can create value in your business. [Online] Available
through: <https://www.businesswest.co.uk/blog/how-innovation-can-create-value-your-
business>.
Nieminen. J., 2018. Innovation Management – The Complete Guide. [Online] Available through:
<https://www.viima.com/blog/innovation-management>.