Innovation and Commercialization: A Business Report on Waitrose

This report delves into the concepts of innovation and commercialization, using Waitrose as a case study to illustrate key principles. It explores the importance of innovation, organizational factors that foster it, and the distinction between invention and innovation. The report outlines the 4Ps of innovation, the innovation funnel, and frugal innovation principles, including their application within a business context. It further examines the importance of the commercial funnel and new product development, presenting a Waitrose innovation business case. Finally, the report evaluates different intellectual property (IP) tools, providing a comprehensive overview of innovation and commercialization strategies for businesses.

INNOVATION AND
COMMERCIALISATION

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
L01...................................................................................................................................................3
Innovation and importance of innovation:-..................................................................................3
Organization, vision, leadership, culture and teamwork help in shaping innovation and
commercialization........................................................................................................................4
L02...................................................................................................................................................5
4Ps of innovation and innovation funnels:-.................................................................................5
Frugal innovation and its principle:-............................................................................................6
LO 3.................................................................................................................................................7
Importance of commercial funnel and application of new product developments......................7
An innovation business case for the Waitrose: ...........................................................................9
LO 4...............................................................................................................................................10
Evaluation of different IP tools:.................................................................................................10
Conclusion:-...................................................................................................................................12
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Innovation refers to introduction of new ideas, products, services, process, technologies
etc. whereas commercialization refers to the process of replacing the transactions. It also
includes the introduction of the new products and method of the production in the company.
They are important part of the company as it helps in surviving the company efficiently.
Waitrose is the branded name of the supermarkets. It has many stores and shops in the
UK. It deals with the groceries. The head offices of the company are located in Bracknell and
Victoria. It also started its online services for supplying the products and the services.
In this report the topics for the discussions are tools and techniques used by the Waitrose,
difference between invention and innovation, types of innovations, process and business plan
required for the commercialize innovation and different methods of protecting the ideas. This
helps the company in launching new products efficiently.
L01
Innovation and importance of innovation:-
Invention:-It refer to new ideas and it is the creative thinking and a unique imagination which
can be used in methods.
Innovation:- It is a development, creation and action implementation of new product and
services which focus on improving the effectiveness, efficiency and advantages. It is an
exploitation of idea to success.
Importance of Innovation:-
Effectively Responding:- Innovation helps in understanding the situation and helps in solving the
issues which are going in the organization. Effective responding refer to know how to think on
different situations and differently from other to solutions.
Complex challenges:- Complex challenges are the factor that an innovator took and solve the
situation with its different thinking and creative idea and to solve the solution of the level (Kahn,
2018).
Innovation product:- Invention , the company introduce new unique product to the market which
can help the company in cost effective and can help in completing the demand of customer.
Methodologies:- Working of an organization in rough patch at some time in the business need
better and hard workers which can effect in strategies that discover new markets and innovations.

As compare to invention, innovation provides more opportunities to business which are less time
and cost consuming as well.
Customer demands and increasing competition: With globalisation organisations are facing
good competition from local as well as global service providers. The customer demands and
needs are also changing regularly. To meet these demands and to maintain competitive
positioning it is vital for the companies to regularly introduce innovation in their services and
products.
External factors: The changes in technologies, economic factors like inflation, demand and
supply rates, climate changes as well as regulatory factors demand for new services which
effectively establish balance between customer satisfaction and profitability. To cope up with
these changes company need to make innovation process as integral part of their business
operations.
Comparison of invention and innovation:-
1. The happening of idea for any procedure or commodity that been never devised is called
invention, And the process of implementing of those ideas for the procedure for debut time
called innovation.
2. Inventions are the creation of any product or process and in innovation it works on adding
values to change in existing product.
3. Invention comes with fresh up ideas and fresh theories, innovation adds making value change
In the product.
4. Inventions required skills and innovation required marketing, technologies and strategies
skills.
5. Invention are limited to its research development of organization, and innovations are
spread in all over of the company and organization (Amabile, 2016).
Organization, vision, leadership, culture and teamwork help in shaping innovation and
commercialization
Vision:- Vision is the picture of a company which can be developed in the future, Vision is
something which inspire a person or a company to develop the strategies and framework or
objectives which are to be achieved by the company in near future. Developing the guidelines for
the employees so that they can work in effective way and conducting them with help in work

effective in style to attain the goals and objectives in appropriate manners. Vision develops
services and product in quality and value. Offering quality service and product with innovations
helps in development of loyalty among customer and employees. Statement of vision to a
company helps in innovation completion and commercialization as company plan strategies in
the company accordingly to its vision they develop (Khan, 2019).
Leadership:- It refers to areas of research as particular skills in the organization which helps
company to achieve the objective in proper manners. It also involves many activities which
shared vision to the employees and others also so that it helps in accomplishing the work in
proper manner. In many organization Leaders also include the employees in many of their
decision-making process which help them feel connected with the management, employees and
company need to be connected and if it happens on good situations then it can increase in better
performance and employees give their full effort in the organization to attain the objective and
goals and develop unique products.
Culture:- It refers to the working in the environment of the organization, innovation culture is
the environment the leader make to helps in order to nurture the old school method thinking and
its application. Innovation culture in the organization is not province to the leaders as innovation
can be come from any of other employees in the organization. Culture is prized by organization
that complete the market by rapid changes, and making the innovation in the culture of the
organization helps in success (Etriya, 2018). If an organization is having a proper vulture in it
then it will help in better ideas and innovation and commercializations. Happy atmosphere makes
employees happy and it reflects in their performance and satisfy their working and enhance its
skills.
Teamwork:- It refers to the working of a team in the organization and how it can effect in the
innovation in the organization which lead them to better performance in the organization. It
conducts the working in groups and bulk of employees in the process to obtain the goal and
objectives in proper ways. Working in team are effective as it includes many minds and ideas
and it can also help in innovation as working with employees give strength in the skills and
creating better ideas in the workplace & obtaining the goals and objective of the company.
Company leaders get variety of ideas in teamwork; they provide unique ideas in helping the
organization and working as a team led work with more efficiency. For instance different teams

such as marketing, operational, financial team and production department work in coordination
with each other. Without coordination of these cross functional teams it may be impossible for
the organisation to complete its entire task on time with better efficiency. The lack of
communication between these departments can also have miscommunication between different
stakeholders and profitability can be affected adversely.
L02
4Ps of innovation and innovation funnels:-
4Ps of innovations:- The 4Ps of innovation are further classified in 4 ways:-
Product:- Product is common in innovation category, innovation are compared to products
thinking. It is the process of development of goods and services, For example amazon echo is a
product innovation.
Process:- Process innovation focus in change in operations process of the organization. It helps
in the efficiency and profitability of the company, there are many frameworks and tools which
can stimulate to innovation.
Positioning:- Positioning in the innovation is referred to the repositioning, it refers to goods and
services which are repositioned in new market by new offering.
Paradigm:- It is the shifting of a mental model to a change, It shows how the company changes
its operations and working to a new way to grow and solves issues.
Innovation Funnel:-
Innovation funnel model is the process of mechanism which start a constant stream of many
ideas and after that screened for viability. It also refers to Funnel process management, which is
popular for finding the innovation that can be used by company to create action plans and
innovative ideas. The idea of funnel is originated from sales and it shows the potential customer
to make deals to a company (Chen, 2016).
1. Mouth of funnel:- This gather many ideas as possible which help organization to its
knowledge and information. The more ideas comes to organization the more they get a chance to
find a better ways to develop the things. Its benefits are plenty and variety of ideas and its
negative effect is it utilize a lot of time and money.

Figure 1: Innovation funnel
(Source: Innovation funnel, 2016)
2. Narrowing the Funnel:- In this the ideas which were collected at first stage of the model are
screened by which they can find the best ones from bunch of ideas. The ideas are screened so
that they can choose the best of the ones from them and can use those which can help in
organization goals. Cleansing helps in making things easier to choose and it also effect in loosing
better ideas on particular situations.
3. Narrowed Part of the Funnel:- In this the process of first text phase starts, In this stage the
selected ideas from screening used further in actions to obtain company goals and
objective which company have registered in first place of working. Narrowed part helps
in obtaining and using the best ideas from bulk, It also creates confusion what to choose
as there are many decisions and confusion can be created.
Frugal innovation and its principle:-
Frugal innovation is the process of maintaining the complexity by reducing the cost of
good in productions. In this the non-essential items are removed with durable goods. Frugal
innovation aims at eliminating the non essential features of the product so that cost can be
improved and company can get more profits. For instance Tata Nano car is used to be considered
as one of the effective example of frugal innovation in automobiles. The vehicle is considered as
the cheapest one particularly for capturing low income group customers. For this purpose the
organisation emphasised on eliminating several unnecessary features like single wing mirror,

only 3 nuts per wheel and many more so that cost reduction can be made possible and bigger
differences can be made in appearance of product as well as its pricing.
Principle of Frugal innovation:-
Engage and iterate:- It shows the engagement of the customer and employees with the company
and how company maintain the relation with its people, the more they engage with them it helps
in better results. Organization can engage the employees and customer by providing organic
coffee stations as promotion and it will connect more audience.
Flex your assets:- Organization need to be flexible with new things which can change in the
environment of the company as it include changes in tools, supply chains etc. It also includes
collaborations in the manufacturing in the company. Flexing the organic coffee machinery by
giving machines which can make a lot of coffee in one times.
Create sustainable solutions:- These solutions refer to the sustainability of the product and how
versatile the product is and how multi-purpose the product works. It also helps in regenerating
business to the company so it's important to use frugal innovation. Providing machine which can
be sustainable to customer (Grimpe, 2017).
Shape customer behaviour:- Organization need to focus on the customer mind and choices and
need to develop the product according to it, it helps the business as it satisfy the demand of the
customer and attracts customer towards company.
Co-create values with presumer :- Frugal need to focus on the creation of their new design and
marketing branding etc. The new design comes it can attract the customer which can help in
company performance.
Innovation friends:- Partnership, collaborations are very beneficial for a company as it can help
the company in new start-ups and hybrid value chains. Collaboration with other company can
help in promoting the machine and it can also help in promotion to other places.
LO 3
Importance of commercial funnel and application of new product developments
A commercial funnel is the tool of the marketing, which helps the company in finding,
qualifying and trading with the customers. It is the process basically used for convincing the
customers. The process of new product development is as follows:

Idea generations: this stage refers to the identifying the opportunities from the market and
creates a large number of ideas from the external and internal methods of collecting the data.
Internal sources refers to the employees of the Waitrose or the department of research and
development, whereas the external sources refers to the customers, competitors, channel of
distribution etc.
Idea screening: After collecting ideas form different sources next stage involve the screening of
the ideas collecting, which helps in identifying whether the ides are suitable or not (Sethibe,
2018). It also includes that the idea which is to be implemented is valuable or not.
Concept development: ideas are different from the concepts, ideas are mental constructed for the
profit earning possibility whereas, the concept is an idea which will be gone through the process.
For example: waitross is dealing with the groceries, it is an idea but waitross is dealing with
groceries in the stores as well as providing door to door service It is concept.
Marketing strategies: after the finalizing of the concept. The next step is developing the
marketing strategies of the new product. Marketing strategies includes the target market, pricing,
and marketing mix plan for the long term survival of the company. The company will launch its
product only where there is proper scope of the products. The company has to identify the area
and their demands, as it is base of the company.
Business Analysis: After preparing the marketing strategies, the next focus will be on analysing
and identifying the business (Akgun, 2017). It involves evaluating the business attraction of the
product. This process further involves the cost, sales, and profit margin of new product. The
analyses can be done by the marketing surveys or consulting the experts. The company should
focus on the price of the product, the price should be according t the products, customers will
pay only when they get proper results.
Product development: up to the stage of business analysis the product is just a word, but once
the analysing is done, product is transferred to the department of researches and development.
Final product takes many days, moths or week, as it goes through different test i.e., Alpha and
beta tests.
Test marketing: After product development, the product is now ready and labelled with the
brand name and also sent to the market for testing. The main motive of this stage is to test the
final product as well as marketing strategies. This stage is helpful for the positive results.

Commercialization: After gaining information about the marketing strategies, next step involves
the introduction of the new product. It is the highest cost stage. In this stage the company started
producing the product according the needs and supply (Weyrauch, 2017). This stage also include
the important decisions such as the decision of introducing the time, place and the future strategy
of the products.
Therefore it is concluded that commercial funnel and the application of the new product
development are important in the process of commercialization of innovation of the new
products.
Figure 2: Importance of commercial funnel
(Source: Understanding AIDA marketing model with example, 2019)
An innovation business case for the Waitrose:
Waitrose is one of the branded supermarket which deals with the groceries and for
making it more innovative and creative, company should make the process and prising strategies,
different awareness program for the customers etc. It helps in attracting the customers and
promoting the new product.

New idea : the new product launching by the Waitrose is “organic coffee”.
Analysis: Organic coffee is an opportunity and also the profit making for the company, because
people in UK are highly aware about their health and organic coffee will help them in fitness.
The customers targeted for the organic coffee are youngsters and adult.
Resources: The resources need for the organic coffee are cash, coffee machines, labour,
technician, disposals etc.
Project plan: this project takes eight months in implementing and introducing in the market as it
takes the time in searching the appropriate place, where customers can approach easily. The
infrastructure of the company should be according to the locality, as the infrastructure plays an
efficient role, because it helps in attracting the customers.
Financial analysis:
Particular Amount (in £)
Technological requirement 300
Human resource 450
Marketing 600
Research expenses 300
Other expenses 400
Total £2050
Particular Amount (in £)
Raw material 700
Cash 1650
Machinery and equipment 2250
Physical outlet (on rent) 1150
Other assets 500

Total £6250
Way to access funding: For introducing the new product, Waitrose needs to access the funding,
because company cannot introduce any innovations without the funds. There are many ways for
accessing the funds. The company can access the funds by external and internal factors. But
before accessing the funds company must have to identify the exact requirement of the funds,
because funds have to be paid back. So the owner have to access the initial amount which can be
easy for him to pay it back to the particular individual. The best way for the Waitrose to access
the funds are Bootstrapping.
Bootstrapping is one the most important and most preferable way. It is one of the perfect
way for the company who have its own funds and are willing to start the innovation. This is
beneficial because in this, the company don't have to give the ownership to the other. The
company is not depended on the other external factor. The only drawback of the bootstrapping is,
it is not scalable and in case of the bankrupt, the only owner have to face the loss as the money
earned will vanish.
Bootstrapping is a valid way to use their valuable resources at any time for the growth of
the company. It is the effective way for ensuring the positive cash flow in the company. I also
means that owner has borrowed very less money and have to repay very less amount also the
cost of the interest reduces.
LO 4
Evaluation of different IP tools:
Open innovation is defined as the organisational approach to incorporate the external
source of knowledge for managing its innovation. On many occasion open innovation can
provide a more sustainable solution to the innovation needs of company and helps in gaining
competitive positioning. Intellectual property is the category of the property. It includes the
creation that is intangible in nature. The intellectual property is playing a very important role in

the today's market. There are many types of intellectual properties (Leliveld, 2018). The types of
intellectual properties and there importance and limitations are as follows:
Patents: Patent is a type of intellectual property, it is nothing but only the sets of rights granted
by the government. It is the legal right which excludes others from taking and making the
innovation or invention. It is basically for the limited period of the time. Patents do not give the
guarantee for earning the money also it may result in the liabilities and assets for the company.
Importance: Patents helps in protecting the designs and styles of the innovation. The
government of the country provides the monopoly protection to the patent owners.
Limitations: patents are expensive in price. It is a costly process, which includes the direct costs
for the legal services and soft costs for the technology of the patent's offices. The life of the
patents are shorts in compare with the other intellectual property. The maximum life of the
patents are 20 years. Company has to provide the exact information and procedure of the
innovation including the problems and everything, which can leaked and competitiveness can
use it without any fear.
Copyrights: Copyrights are also the same as the patents, as it also includes the legal rights
proved by the government for the innovation (Trott, 2008). Copyrights gives the owner an
exclusive right i.e., the right of copying their own creative ideas. The creativity only includes the
artist, educational, literary and musical form. The owner can copy the ideas but cannot use the
original creation.
Importance: the life of the copyrights are more than patents. The life of the copyrights are more
than 70 years. The owner of the company is entitled to the actual damages. The calculation of the
damage are easier with the comparison of patents. It is less expensive as very easy to register.
Owner get the protection immediately after the order from the government agencies.
Limitations: it protects the expression of the innovation but not the innovation itself.
Trademarks: Trademark is also the type of intellectual property. Trademark is consists of the
designs, sign and expression, which identifies the products and services on the particular basis.
The owner of the trademark may be an individual or the company or organization. A trademark
can be displayed on the packaging, vouchers or the product itself. It can also be displayed on the
buildings of the company.
Importance: the main importance of the trademark is its life depends upon the life of the
business. There is no statutory limitation for the life. Trademarks are to be used regularly and

also enforces the owner's right. The registration of the trademark is easy and less expensive. The
owner simply have to fill the form and send the registration fee (Cooper, 2019). The trademarks
are unique in their own brands and also create the demands for the other uninteresting brands or
the products.
Limitations: trademark only represents some basic brands. Trademark possess large number of
amount of the volatility in market. Popular trademark are in the risk for genericise. These brands
can also loss there values because of genericised.
Conclusion:-
Innovation and commercialization is important in a working of an organization and it also
includes the process by which they can help the company in its working and solving the things.
This report ell the importance of innovation in the organization, it also explains the difference of
invention and innovation. Further it tells the ways in which the innovation can differ from
inventions. Innovations including the strength of leadership and culture effect as it can enhance
the working in the performance and it also develops the skills if a proper leader work and try to
innovate in the employees skills. Teamwork creates ideas which led to proper working and
innovation as innovation is not only relates to top leaders and it can be come from any employee.
Report explains the innovation in business cases and the ways in finding funding, and the ways
in which organization can use to develop & retain the property.

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