Innovation Theories and Made.com's 3-in-1 Kingsize Bed: A Case Study

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Managing Innovation
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
1) To describe, in detail and in your own words, one or more innovation theories of your choice
(deep knowledge of one major innovation theory will be enough as a basis for a high mark, and
you should not choose more than two innovation theories)............................................................4
2) To apply each of your chosen theory or theories in explaining the historical development of
one or more products and/or services, and the possible future development pathways of your
products or services.......................................................................................................................10
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................13
Reference list.................................................................................................................................14
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Introduction
All organisations need innovation to survive and grow in competitive market. The meaning of
innovation is to not only implement or generate new ideas but it is also a process of various
activities involve to expose the new methods of executing things. In order to introduce
innovations, people need to think beyond the imagination power and the people should have a
creative thinking ability. Innovation provides several opportunities and advantages to the people
for their survival. In this study, various innovative ideas and theories of innovations will be
discussed and how those theories help the Made.com to develop their business.
Made.com is a brand based retailer company in London. Ning Li, Julien called, and Chloe
Macintosh founded the company in 2010. The company has 350 employees who are highly
skilled and experienced. Furniture is the main product of the company and varieties of furniture
are there in the company. The innovative idea of the company is that a bed can split from the
middle and it can be transformed into two sofas (Made.com, 2019).
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1) To describe, in detail and in your own words, one or more innovation theories of your
choice (deep knowledge of one major innovation theory will be enough as a basis for a high
mark, and you should not choose more than two innovation theories)
In this 21st century, the world is running through a fast-paced and competitive environment,
where the advanced technologies and globalisation force the world to become advance in their all
phase of operation. As a result, the competition among the organisation has increased, the
customers’ expectations have also changed with respect to the advanced world, and that results
in fluctuations in the economy of the organisation. In order to sustain the market in the
competitive advantages, an organisation should be able to innovate and adopt the new ideas
based on the changing trends.
Figure 1: Innovation lifecycle
(Source: Visnjic et al., 2018)
People get various opportunities from the innovative ideas and the survival, growth and success
of an organisation depends on innovation. The organizations that can bring innovations in their
products and services are able to fix a target for the organisation and set the business to a new
concept to identify the new opportunities for the growth of the organisation and solve the
problems regarding the organisational operations. Innovation also motivates the workers in the
company to give more efforts in their work to produce the newly designed product. They get
more energy to meet the target of the company.
The innovation process is defined as the approach towards translating new or existing
knowledge into profitable solutions. The businesses that go through a successful innovation
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process have some decisive features, which make it ahead of the other competitors in the same
industry. Innovation consists of challenges, such that if a business lacks in even only a single
systematic step, it may have to face the consequences accordingly. Managers of a company play
an important role in meeting the challenges associated with innovation. Moreover, a manager can
also implement a culture of innovation (Salerno et al., 2015).
Made.com Company focuses on the simplicity of interior decoration. They manufacture
furniture like beds, tables, sofas and many more; also, they renovate new interior decoration. The
company recently came up with an innovative idea that incorporates the use of a king size bed as
two sofas.
Components of Innovation Process: A successful business goes through the five basic
innovation stages as follows-
 Generation of new idea and mobilisation: At this very first stage, new ideas are
generated. The generation of a new idea does not occur all of a sudden. Further, it
requires more practice and experience. A long-term disciplined business plan can give an
outcome of the newly generated idea. Mobilisation refers to the implication of the new
idea into physical and practical applications, where a logical base is addressed along with
it. For example, Made.com invented an idea in the interior section for using a product as
two products that are more different. They understood the market values of these kinds of
multipurpose products before they went to launch the service. As the mobilisation
purpose, the company researched for this new innovative form of the product before they
implicate this new idea into their good designing.
 Advocacy and Screening: Advocacy and screening aid the evaluation of potential
facilities and problems against the idea. One of the most convincing benefits of these
combined procedures of screening and advocacy is refinement. Discussions and
arguments can enhance the idea if it has the required potential. Coming to the refinement
process, the concerned multipurpose product has potential facilities like its three in one
feature of usage. It also helps to decrease the area of operation.
 Experimentation: The experimentation stage tests the innovative idea. Experimentation
tests an idea using applicability in a particular business, rather not by its objective merits.
Some ideas may not be suitable for a particular business scenario but can be stored for the
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use in future purposes, such that it might be suitable for a situation in future. The
mechanical structure of the new product is made by Made.com experiments. During this
process, the focus was kept on the simplicity of use of the product. Otherwise, it will not
gain its market values. The company should also provide a “limited edition stock” based
on the experimentation purpose of this particular product. The functional operations are
also kept as a key aspect. The splitting of the bed should follow the process, which does
not contain any complicacy. Moreover, after the splitting of the bed, the two portions
must provide comfort to the users.
 Commercialisation: Commercialisation is the process of creating a market charge for an
idea depending upon its potential impact. This stage makes an idea attractive to the
consumers, thus increasing its market values. An essential part of commercialisation is
that it builds the provision of a given data. After the complete commercialisation, an idea
is said to be ready for application purposes (Martens and Casey, 2016). The said product
of Made.com can be commercialised very easily if it can be maintained properly as it can
serve multiple purposes. For considering another reason, the product can reduce the
budget for the customers who are wishing to buy the sofas and beds differently. The
multipurpose product can save the cost rather than buying two different items and
summing up the amount together.
 Diffusion and Implementation: Implementation and diffusion are the two sides of a
coin, where diffusion is the process for the acceptance of a creative idea, and it occurs at
all the levels of an organisation (Stummer et al., 2015). Implementation builds all the
requirements to set up and utilise the innovation. After successful experimentation and
commercialisation, the product can be said to be ready to diffuse and implement in the
market (Kjellberg et al., 2015).
Made.com can come up with this innovative idea of manufacturing the multipurpose furniture
which can serve the purposes of both as a king size bed and two sofas. In this innovation
perspective, the larger bed is split into two sofas, and the bifurcation would be a completely
systematic process. This innovation enhances the increase in the product line as that added a new
feature to the company’s existing products, thus helps in gaining profit attracting new customers.
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Various innovation theories give the idea about innovative strategies to be implemented by the
management of the organisation to change the workplace based on new trends.
Diffusion of Innovations
Everett Rogers, an American sociologist, gave an idea about the Diffusion of Innovation theory
in his book, “Diffusion of Innovation”. The theory is based on the factors that the people in a
particular culture (Xiong et al., 2016) should implement the innovation. Rogers stated that
diffusion is a structure by which innovation is communicated through the members of the social
system. Rogers also stated that spreading the innovation is affected by four main elements and
that arean invention, time, channels of communication and the social system. In addition to that,
the diffusion process is focussed on five aspects:
i. The types of innovation that affect its implementation in the organisation
ii. The decision-making process builds up when the individuals in terms of new ideas,
services or products implement the innovation.
iii. The characteristics of the individuals that make them to implement the innovation in the
system.
iv. Consequences for the individuals and society of implementing the innovations
v. The commucation method in the implementation of the innovations
Rogers assumed that the diffusion of innovation relied on the human resources and that for the
innovation; it must be implemented to sustain itself. The theory also covered the five major
approaches:
 Innovators: These people want to be the first to try the innovation. They always look for
the new ideas and always want to take challenges
 Early implementers: These people want to signify the opinion leaders. The people enjoy
the leadership roles and hold changed opportunities. They always want changes in the
system and much comfortable with the new ideas.
 Early majority: In this type, the people are not often in the leader category but they
implement the innovations much earlier to the average people. The people can implement
the changes before the innovation occurs.
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 Late majority: These type of people try the new ideas after following the majorities to
notice whether the ideas have worked in the system or not. These people also focus that
whether the innovations have worked successfully in the organisation or not. The best
technique to change them is to provide
 Laggards: These are the people, who hardly change with the new ideas implemented in
the system. The best strategies to change their intention are to put pressure from the
group who have already implemented the new ideas.
Figure 2: Five established adopter categories
(Source:Liu et al., 2017)
Various limitations of the Diffusion of Innovation theory:
i. Most of the evidence including the implementer categories did not originate in the
health of the people and it is not developed to clearly apply to the implementation of
new behaviours.
ii. The theory does not promote a participatory aspect to the implementation of a public
health activity.
iii. The theory focuses on the adoption of the behaviours and not on prevention of the
behaviours.
Henderson-Clark Model:
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Henderson and Clark noticed that only incremental and radical aspects are not sufficient to
explain under what situations and position, the company should implement the new ideas in the
workplace (Mustaquim and Nyström, 2017). In that context, they started to research about their
theory and the research led them to divide the technological knowledge needed to create new
product and accordingly set up innovations. The two new dimensions are knowledge of the
components and knowledge of the linkage between them and it is called Architectural
knowledge.
Figure 3:Henderson-Clark Model
(Source: Mustaquim and Nyström, 2017)
The model consists of four components. The four concepts of the Henderson-Clark Model are
important to understand the methods in which the innovations are carried out in the organisation.
The four components of the model are:
Incremental Innovation:
The incremental innovation clarifies and expands a recognised design. In this type,
improvements occur in individuals components underlying the core design approach. The
linkage between them remains unchanged (Fagerholm et al., 2017).
Radical Innovation:
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It establishes a new dominant design, as a result, a new set of core design approach embodied in
the components that is a new link form (Sharma et al., 2017).
Modular Innovation:
In this innovation, the core design approach of a technology is changed and the relationship
between them is changed. The statement means that the innovation changes the core design
concept and the product’s architecture remains unchanged (Schramm, 2017).
Architectural innovation:
The innovation that changes the products’ architecture and the core design remains the same
(Faludi, 2017).
The Henderson-Clark model of innovation provides a concept of different types of innovation
and their different methods of taking action.
The Made.com Company should follow the above mentioned theory in the company workplace
to get innovative ideas and that makes the company’s products innovative and creative. The
innovation also helps the company to transform their workplace according to the concept of the
new ideas. The innovative idea of the Made.com Company will get a vast idea about the
innovation to transform the product into a newly designed product.
2) To apply each of your chosen theory or theories in explaining the historical development
of one or more products and/or services, and the possible future development pathways of
your products or services
The two chosen theories that will be utilized in this study are Henderson-Clark Model and
Diffusion of Innovations for Made.com. The determined innovation that is considered for the
company is introducing a bed that can split from the middle into two parts and shall become two
separate parts that will act as individual sofas. This innovation will give the consumers three
products in just one purchase. This new bed can be called ‘3 in 1’Kingsize Bed.
When looking at the historical development of the company, it has been noticed that the
company that initially started as modestly as a small business with just few normal furniture and
other home wares products has changed dramatically. It is through time that the company started
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to hire several big designers for the products of the company such as Kirsty Whyte,Steuart
Padwick,and James Harrison (Chalcraft, 2012). These designers have been able to implement
minimalist designs that have positivity effected the sales of the company and helped the
company in achieving more recognition in the market. Some of the products that have effectively
and successful in the market are Scott 3 Seater Sofa, Hayllar Kingsize Bedand others which have
been successful in the past (Dawson and Andriopoulos, 2014).
Figure 4: Prototype of ‘3 in 1’Kingsize Bed
(Source: johnryanbydesign.co.uk, 2017)
The possible effects that might take place in the market after the introduction of ‘3 in 1’ are that
the company through which there would be higher growth in the target audience of the company
might acquire new customers. In order to implement a new product, Diffusion of Innovations
will be used so that the idea and existence of this product spread quickly in the market through
marketing strategies. These marketing strategies will include ways such social media
advertisements, offline advertisements and other methods. Means like this will help the product
of the company and the organisation itself to gain more recognition in the market. With the help
of this innovative method, technological advancement existing in the market through research
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and development can be considered as well so that there is ease of use in the ‘3 in 1’ product
(Weigel et al., 2014).
Another innovation that can be implemented for the new ‘3 in 1’ product is Henderson Clark
model. Through a model like this, different situations will be explored where a company like
Made.com will evaluate different strategies. From the Henderson Clark model, disruptive
innovation has been selected, which would introduce Made.com’s new technology of the brand
new bed into the existing market of United Kingdom. Through a method like this, a new product
is introduced into the product line of the company that will enable the company to differentiate
the product from other commodities of the company. This innovative technique will make this ‘3
in 1' product stand out from the rest of the commodities that are present in the Made.com.
Furthermore, an innovation like this would help the company to make marketing department
stronger as well. The way the company’s marketing efforts through the means of online and
offline advertisements can become stronger is by focusing on aspects such as the bed’s new
cheap rate when it possesses so many features (Foss and Stieglitz, 2014).
Through the application of both of these innovation theories, the company cannot only attain
competitive edge in the market, it can know also determine which strategies would be best for
the product placement in the market.
Some possible recommendations that can be made for the future development of the products
and services will be enumerated here down below so that there are more pathways that can be
taken in the future:
 The company can implement a differentiation strategy, through which Made.com can
implement any price on the product. This strategy dictates there being high quality, since
that is the case above, the company has the liberty to charge high prices if they like or
even low price if they wish to.
 Another strategy which the company can implement is to create some degree of
innovation in its services as well. Innovation in the services can be brought through
hiring employees of diverse skill set, whereby which they can address issues the
consumers is has that relates to not only one product but several . This would assist the
customer to not only have addressed the problems in the product but would also enable
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