BSBINN502: Build Innovative Work Environment Assignment

This management assignment explores various aspects of building and sustaining an innovative work environment, focusing on BSBINN502. The assignment delves into leadership strategies such as brainstorming, customer involvement, and local sourcing of finished goods. It examines the importance of understanding innovation through a systems concept, emphasizing the interconnectedness of different departments. The student's answers highlight the benefits of employee involvement, the risks associated with innovation, and the need for contingency plans. The assignment also covers leadership characteristics necessary for building effective relationships, and the ways in which stakeholder consultation contributes to innovation. Overall, the assignment provides a comprehensive overview of key concepts related to fostering innovation within organizations and managing related challenges.

Running head: MANAGEMENT
Management
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author Note:

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BSBINN502 - BUILD AND SUSTAIN AN INNOVATIVE WORK ENVIRONMENT:
Activity 1.
Answer 2.
The following are the three examples of innovations which leaders might undertake:
Brainstorming:
The managers should encourage their subordinate employees to engage in forming
decisions. Oppong (2017) mentions that brainstorming encourages the employees participating in
particular decision making activities to express an array of ideas. This leads to generation of
ideas of different types including ‘out of the box’ ideas. This enables the managers to choose the
appropriate ideas expressed to form the business strategies.
Customer involvement:
Managers can adopt the innovative strategy of customer involvement while forming
business strategies. Cui and Wu (2017) mention that business organisations can involve their
customers in the process of product development. Here the customers here act as value co-
creators and co-develop the products. The managers should gain customer reviews and feedback
about products to identify the expectations of the customers from the products. The managers
should incorporate the feedbacks and suggestions gained from customers to form their product
strategies. This innovative NPD approach involving customers would ensure that the products of
the companies are more aligned to the needs and expectations of the customers. The products as
a result are able to ensure higher levels of customer satisfaction and generate higher revenue.
One can point out that this method of customer involvement in forming of product strategies are

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helpful for smaller firms with limited resources and business networks which prevent them from
carrying out open innovation to develop products (Kimita et al. 2016).
Local sourcing of finished goods:
The managers overseeing procurement of finished goods should source materials from
the local suppliers instead of sourcing finished goods from foreign companies. The procurement
managers should procure goods like food products, skincare products and apparel from local
producers which would enable the companies keep their procurement costs low. The companies
would also be able to support the local suppliers in generating revenue which would eventually
bring about economic development in the local community. The local suppliers would also
supply superior quality goods to the companies at lower rates, which would result in lowering the
procurement costs of the latter.
Answer 3.
It is important for managers and leaders to understand innovation in terms of systems
concept because operations of all the departments or systems are interrelated. For example, the
marketing departments gains customer feedbacks about their expectations from the companies in
terms of product innovation. The manufacturing department checks whether the raw materials
required to manufacture innovative products are in the stock. If it is found that the inventory
available with the companies are insufficient to process the orders, the manufacturing department
informs the procurement department about the amount of inventory which has to be procured.
The procurement department informs the finance departments to release funds to procure the
inventory. The procurement department then procures the inventory of raw materials which the
manufacturing department channelizes into manufacturing of the innovative goods. The
marketing department then delivers the finished innovative products to the customers and the

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revenue generated is once again received by the finance department. Thus, it can be established
on the basis of this discussion that the process of manufacturing of innovative products is
dependent of different systems/departments like marketing, procurement and finance which
points out to system concept.
Activity 2.
Answer 1.
Managers should encourage employees to give ideas, opinions and suggestions regarding
improvements and changes which would be beneficial to the business organisations due to the
following reasons:
Accurate decision making:
Generation of ideas and suggestions from employees results in innovation in the decision
making process. Woods et al. (2018) mention that generation of ideas in large numbers enables
in more creativity in decision making. For example, availability of large numbers of creative
ideas, suggestions and opinions enable the managers to consider an array of alternative strategies
which could be considered to achieve the business targets or overcome business challenges. They
are as a result able to make more accurate business decisions which ultimately leads to
improvement in the business.
Employee participation:
When managers encourage employees to express more opinions and ideas, employees are
encouraged to participate in the decision making processes. They feel a sense of belongingness
to the company which encourages them to proactively participate in the attainment of business
goals (Niesen et al. 2018).

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Answer 2.
 Encouraging the employee to analyse the suggestion which he wants to present and
provide a more detailed picture.
 Hold a meeting with all the employees (including the employee having the idea) to
discuss on the suggestion.
 Motivate the employee to be more innovative while putting forward ideas.
 Interact customers to a greater extent to develop his customer management skills.
 Arrange training sessions to further improve the skills, knowledge and competence of the
employee.
 Encourage the employee to express more ideas and suggestion in the subsequent team
huddles.
Activity 3.
Answer 1.
Innovation involves risks of different types. Bustinza et al. (2019) mention that carrying
out innovation has emerged as a necessity before the business organisations in order align their
business operations with the changing macroeconomic conditions. However, they do not always
guarantee positive returns on the capital invested which results in risks. For example, business
organisations invest immense amount of financial resources to introduce innovative products into
the market in order to ensure higher level of customer satisfaction. However, if a competitor firm
introduces a more innovative product which is more aligned to the customer preferences, the
former company fails to generate the target revenue and incurs losses. Thus, failed innovations
expose firms to immense amount of risks like revenue risks.

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Answer 2.
The risk which The General Confectionary Company would face owing to introduction of
the new product and recalling an existing product would be revenue risks. This because the new
product may not generate the target revenue in case it fails in the market. This would give rise to
revenue risks as the firm would lose revenue owing to failed NPD instead of gaining revenue
(Etriya et al. 2018). The firm can control this risk by promoting the new product aggressively in
the market in order to generate a strong demand among customers prior to launching the product.
The second risk which the confectionary company would face owing to the failed NPD
would be capital generation risks. This is because, if the company generate low amount of
revenue owing to failed NPD, it would not be able to give high ROI to investors. The investors
as a result would reduce their investments in the confectionary firm which would weaken its
operations. The confectionary firm can control this issue by ensuring that after successfully
tackling the revenue risk and generating high revenue, it should give high returns to the investors
(Grimpe et al. 2017).
Answer 3.
Contingency plans are alternate plans that are required to be implemented once the
original plan in the process fails to impress. These plans enable the business organisations to
manage challenging situations. For example, the companies in order to sustain in the market and
ensure that their products have minimum negative impacts on the environment, are compelled to
introduce products made from environment friendly raw materials which are usually more
expensive compared to their synthetic counterparts. Thus, one can point out that the firms in
order to bear this increase in the cost of procurement (Katsikeas, Leonidou and Zeriti 2016). One
can also point out that the firms may face shortage of raw materials which would capsize the

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entire product strategy, thus leading to immense financial losses. Thus, in this case business
organisations have to maintain contingency plans like maintaining stand by financial resources to
minimise the loss they would incur due to the shortage of environmental friendly raw materials.
The term contingency plan can is not restricted to financial resources. The business organisations
may maintain human resources, inventory and even technology to tackle sudden business
challenges (Sharma 2018).
Contingency plans are necessary which introducing new or innovative change. This is because
adopting innovative or innovative changes usher both benefits and create challenges before the
companies. For example, business organisations in order to streamline their operations with the
market requirements often bring about innovations like restructuring their management structure
and redesigning the jobs of the some of the managers. These steps may result in alteration of the
jobs of certain managers and the latter may view these changes as threats. The managers may
enter into conflict with the management which would impact productivity, thus causing revenue
risks. Thus, the firms have to maintain alternative plans to deal with these issues (Micu et al.
2018). They may offer training, counselling and mentoring to the managers to cooperate in
implementation of the innovations (change in management structure). Introduction of new and
innovative changes can bring about risk in terms of failure and thus the adoption of contingency
plans is required. It can help in ensuring that alternate strategies are adopted so that sliding of the
initial failure can be taken into account for the failure implemented during the process.

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Activity 4.
Answer 2.
The leaders should exhibit several characteristics to build effective relationships based on
mutual respect and trust with their subordinate employees. First of all, the leaders should exhibit
a diversity management leadership. Kundu, Mehra and Mor (2017) mention that diversity
management leads to ‘Employee personal development, self-esteem, morale, involvement toward
organisation.’ When leaders exhibit diversity management by accepting and respecting
employees from diverse diversity dimensions like gender, race and cultural origin, the employees
develop trust in those leaders. Secondly, when managers train and mentor employees, it creates
greater amount of trust and mutual respect between them. When managers instead of merely
assigning targets to employees, train and mentor them to achieve the targets, it creates a sense of
collaboration between the two. The employees feel more related to the respective teams and the
company as a whole. This boosts mutual respect and trust between the management and the
employees.
Activity 5.
Answer 2.
Consultation with stakeholders including employees can contribute to innovation and the
success of innovations in several ways. Doran and Ryan (2017) while shedding light on the
importance of innovation in the business generation and the very survival of the firms mention
that, ‘Today a firm’s growth and survival depend on its ability to innovate.’ This statement
clearly points out that importance of innovations in firms. Firms in order to boost their
innovation prowess, can engage stakeholders. For example, when management bodies of

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companies consult employees, who are internal stakeholders prior to making product decisions.
The employees dealing with the customers directly have greater knowledge about the
expectations and requirements of the customers. These employees as a result can express ideas
which are more aligned to the expectations of the customers, thus leading to innovation (Gaur et
al. 2017). Similarly external stakeholders like bankers of firms can also contribute towards
innovations in the operations. For example, the banking partners can provide the management of
the firms with innovative investment methods and financial products which would likely give
higher profits to the companies concerned (Stern 2017). Thus, in order words external
stakeholders can lead to innovations. Thus, one can transpire that consultation of internal and
external stakeholders leads to innovation in the firms.
Activity 7.
Team leaders and managers leading the management bodies of certain organisations have
to take steps to implement innovation within the teams under their respective leadership and the
organisations as a whole (Khandakar, Huq and Sultana 2018). The following are the ways in
which these team leaders and apex managers can implement innovations within their teams and
organisations under their respective control.
Participation leadership:
The managers heading organisations should gain participation of the departmental heads
while making important decisions. They should encourage the managers to use their knowledge,
experience and skills to come up with ideas which would ultimately contribute towards making
apex decisions. Similarly, the departmental heads should encourage the employees holding
different positions within the respective departments like the managers and assistant managers to

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participate in their strategy making activities (Mwakajila, Kessy and Sanga 2020). They should
even encourage the lower level employees to express ideas but the right to take. However, the
managers both at the organisational and departmental levels should reserve the right and power
to take the final decisions to themselves. This would ensure that ideas expressed by employees
are actually streamlined in order to align the requirements of the company. Thus, the leaders
would be able to reject less appropriate ideas and incorporate ideas into their strategies. Thus,
adopting of participative leadership would enable the leaders both in the departmental and
organisational levels to maximise the opportunities to bring about innovation in the departments
and companies respectively under their control.
Training the employees:
The managers should train employees in order to align them to participate in the
innovations. One can point out that the first step to which the managers can implement in
adopting innovation within their respective loci of control namely, participation leadership. This
is because, in order to ensure that the employees are able to put forward appropriate ideas to
implement innovations with operations like financial management and marketing strategies
would require certain amount of training (Gupta and Barua 2016). For example, in order to
acquire new customers using innovative products, the front line employees would have to
develop knowledge about the innovative products they would market. Similarly, in order to
manufacture goods by using more innovative techniques, the manufacturing department
employees require to be trained in the innovative techniques. Thus, one can establish that
managers both at the organisational levels and departmental levels would be required to offer
training to employees in order to implement innovations. This would in fact encourage the
employees to participate in the innovations. The employees on the contrary without proper

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training would resent innovations which would lead to conflicts, thus ultimately leading to the
failure of the innovations on the whole. Thus, training of employees on innovations can enable
the organisations to implement innovations more successfully.
Challenge the employees:
Team leaders and organisational managers need to provide challenges to the team so that
team bonding can improve. It is also necessary that during innovation ideas be welcomed so that
development of each of the ideas can help in determining the positiveness of the actions
undertaken. At the same time, it is also necessary that every employee be provided with an
opportunity to display their talents so that proper positioning of the teams can be made
(Khandakar, Huq and Sultana 2018). Thus, overall, it can be said that the adoption of the
democratic leadership style can help in the building and leading of successful teams within an
organisation.
Activity 8.
Answer 1.
Managers and leaders can reward innovations in financial and non-financial ways. Freitas
et al. (2017) mention that firms should provide financial incentives to employees to reward them
for taking initiatives in the implementation of the innovation strategies. The employees could
also be given special bonuses to reward for participation in innovations in the companies. The
managers can reward employees for innovations using non-financial strategies like providing
them with awards and appreciations.
It is necessary to reward employees for their participation in innovation. Gloet and
Samson (2017) mention that rewarding employees for participating in innovations motivates

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them to participate to a higher level in the future innovations. Dhir (2019) strengthens the
argument by mentioning that embracing innovations enables companies to embrace changes.
Thus, if the employees are motivated to participate in the innovations, this paves ways for the
companies to lead them towards embracing organisational changes more collaboratively. Thus,
one can clearly point out that gaining employee support in innovations leading to organisational
changes enable the management of the companies to minimise resistance to changes among
employees. Thus, it transpires from the description that it is necessary for managers to reward
employees for innovations in order to gain their participation and voluntary support in future
innovation strategies as well as change management strategies.
Answer 2.
It is important to celebrate innovations and the successful implementations of innovative
ideas in order to encourage future innovations. Vlados (2019) mentions that innovations are
usually triggered by organisational changes which attract resistance from employees. If this
resistance from employees are not managed in suitable ways, it would lead to preventing the
organisations from embracing changes. The organisations would consequently fail to adapt to the
changing business environmental factors like changes in customer preferences and would
ultimately fail in the market. Celebrating innovations and successful implementations of
innovations would motivate the employees to participate in the innovation strategies which
business organisations take. This would ensure that the employees offer less resistance to change
embracement which would ultimately enable the organisations to adapt to the changing market
conditions more seamlessly which ensures greater degree of market performance.