Rockpool Digital: An Examination of Innovation and Commercialization

This report examines innovation and commercialization strategies for Rockpool Digital, a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) providing personalized computer services. The report explores the significance of innovation compared to invention, and how vision, leadership, culture, and teamwork shape innovation and commercialization. It analyzes the 4Ps of innovation, including pressure, people, product, process, position and paradigm, and the use of an innovation funnel to generate unique ideas. Furthermore, the report highlights the importance of a commercial funnel in the new product development process, and outlines the steps to build an innovation process, including accessing funds. The report also evaluates various tools for developing, retaining, and protecting knowledge and intellectual property, offering insights and recommendations for Rockpool Digital to improve its innovation and commercialization efforts. Case studies of Apple Inc. and Virgin Group are used to illustrate effective strategies and approaches.

Innovation and Commercialization

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................3
TASK 1.................................................................................................................3
P1. Explaining the innovation and its significance for employees in
comparison with inventions.............................................................................3
P2. Explaining how vision, leadership, culture and teamwork shape
innovation & commercialisation.......................................................................5
TASK 2.................................................................................................................6
P3. Explaining 4Ps of innovation and the use of innovation funnel to shape
unique ideas....................................................................................................6
P4. Explaining how frugal innovations can be developed through supporting
evidences.........................................................................................................8
TASK 3.................................................................................................................9
P5. Importance of commercial funnel & its application for the new product
development process.......................................................................................9
P6. Building an innovation process, including ways to access fund...............10
TASK 4...............................................................................................................12
P7. Evaluating different tools to develop, retain & protect knowledge and
intellectual property.......................................................................................12
CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................13
REFERENCES......................................................................................................14

INTRODUCTION
In today’s competitive landscape and uncertain market conditions, it becomes a tough
challenge for companies to remain their competitiveness so as to run operations successfully in the
market. Finding complexities to survive in the market makes it essential for corporations to focus on
continual innovations of their goods, offerings and operational processes as well. Innovation
becomes a key priority of the establishments under their growth and success strategy. It is the
process of converting or transforming unique, new and creative ideas along with inventions into
reality to provide increased value to the consumers for deriving better success.
The central focus of present assignment is to develop the best innovation plan to gain better
outcome and business growth of Rockpool Digital. It is a SME (small and medium sized
enterprises) that has only 50 digital experts and provides personalized computer services to the
clients to combat acquisition and retention problems. To attain this, two leading innovative
organizations, that is, Apple Inc and Virgin Media have been taken into consideration for examining
the way in which they developed innovative practices in their business and attained global success.
Moreover, the report will also discover that how various innovations are affected by the culture,
teamwork and other factors. Lastly, frugal innovation and commercial funnel has been demonstrated
for developing the new product process.
TASK 1
P1. Explaining the innovation and its significance for employees in comparison with inventions
In the dynamic corporate age, establishments are continually focusing their efforts to
promote innovativeness in their business for gaining distinctive competitive strength and long-run
success. Innovation is a diverse concept that mainly depends on the transformation or successful
exploitation of creative business ideas and thoughts into reality. It is different from the invention
because it just requires bringing creative and new thoughts along with concepts and ideas. However,
its conversion into practical manner is called innovation (Arora and et.al., 2016). The main
objective behind innovative practices is to deliver great value to the consumers through offering
them innovative goods and services to strengthen the competitive position. Rockpool digital
targeted at connecting huge data and upgraded technology so as to offer personalized experience to
the clients. It requires innovative thoughts and ideas which are needed to be converted and
developed practically in the business for superb growth.
Boston Consulting Group (BCG) ranked Apple Inc as the world’s leading innovative
business that designed excellent innovation strategy for the development of terrific goods.
Moreover, it not only delivers fabulous hardware, software and multimedia devices i.e. iPod &

iPhone but also created innovative business models like iTune and Appstore which are the perfect
examples of it. CEO Steve Jobes focuses on cultural innovation instead of process driven. During
the beginning period, Apple’S CEO put more emphasizes on the innovation without any formal
hierarchical structure but following a disciplined system. Apple’s innovation practices have proven
to be of great importance for the employees because they are being promoted and encouraged for
presenting their creative ideas through following a friendly business culture. It strengthens the
innovative skills among workers and motivates personnel to actively participate in the innovative
business strategies (Bain and Kleinknecht, 2016). They can come up with their excellent ideas
which offer opportunity to them for better career growth and advancement. Apple has built an
excellent innovation strategy to stimulate unique ideas, streamline the processes, launching
profitable innovative goods and services successfully. Innovative workplace inspires workers to
share their ideas, thoughts and creative thinking with their colleague. They can also come up to the
management and participate actively results in exceeding staff productivity at a greater satisfaction
level.
Virgin Group operates in British telecommunication industry that has excellent portfolio
comprising Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Rail, Virgin Blue, Virgin Net, Virgin Bride, Virgin Mobile, Virgin
money and many others. As per the scenario, growth of business has been credited to the curiosity
of company to explore new horizon and entrepreneurial aggressiveness as well. The Group supports
their employees for their entrepreneurial efforts; as a result, every individual has become able to
present business ideas which practical application is based on its funding applicability. It also
provides flexibility to the workers to run their activities innovatively as per their wishes that require
less supervisions and control (Amara and et.al., 2016). As a result, it increased efficiency and
capability of workers to complete their job responsibilities within less time and at less cost. In the
current era, cultural diversity is also a challenge for Virgin Group and innovative workplace has
proven to be really an important thing that promotes workplace diversity. Employees are also
benefited in terms of monetary as well as non-monetary rewards for their unique ideas such as
praise, appraisal, higher position, more responsibilities, awards and others as well as increased their
motivational level.
After analysing these, it becomes clear Rockpool digital that can design innovative business
strategies for achieving superb growth in the market. Owing to this, workers will also be benefited
from creative work culture and active participation in the management along with high motivation,
better possibility of career growth and others.

P2. Explaining how vision, leadership, culture and teamwork shape innovation & commercialisation
There are various factors that has a strong effect on innovation & commercialisation (I&C)
in Rockpool Digital. In context with the Apple Inc and Virgin Group, the effect of different
elements on I&C have been examined here underneath:
Vision: It is the main goal of the business that provides direction to the personnel and align
all the business strategies, planning and policies with this, so that, targets can be attained easily.
Recently, Tim Cook has changed Apple’s vision statement to “we are at the face of the world and
pay constantly focuses on innovations”. The statement aligns all the personnel’s effort and inspires
them to make substantial and significant contribution in innovation for having distinctive
competitive strength (Rownload, 2017). In contrast, Virgin group is technology centered venture
which vision is “To make great contribution to improve sustainable lifestyle exceeding all the
stakeholder’s expectation” aims that embedded the core business principles and objectives in
exploring growth opportunities. It promote every individual and foster innovation for increasing
sales, profitability, competitive strength and business reputation as well.
Leadership: It is regarded as the process of leading, administrating, monitoring &
supervising an individual or group of individual. Different leadership style influence subordinates in
diversified manner and have a strong effect on the I&C. Referring Apple Inc & Virgin Media, both
the organization follows participative (democratic) leadership style that promotes and encourage
people to come up with their ideas, thoughts and creative thinking skills and involve them in
management. They also motivate people to participate in the decision-making process by inviting
their suggestions for the growth, which in turn, build familiar and healthier environment and
promote creativity. However, autocratic leaders do not give importance to the workers and put high
control and strong regulations to the personnel, hence, do not provide any assistance to promote
innovation.
Culture: It has been described as the set of belief, attitude and perception how people
interact with the others. As discussed earlier, that Apple Inc provide freedom to the people and put
lesser control over regular functions which support an individual to express his thoughts directly to
the top management. Likewise, Virgin Group also praise their personnel for their entrepreneurial
efforts and such culture motivate members for innovation. However, rigid hierarchy, strict policies
and rules may dissatisfy workers and not considered helpful in fostering innovation &
commercialisation (Adelowo, Akinwale and Olaopa, 2017).
Teamwork: It is the process of working collaboratively within the group of people to
achieve a common defined team goals and objectives. Strong bonding, effective communication co-
operation, regular interaction and friendly workplace promote team-working practices in Apple Inc

& Virgin Group, which in turn, all the members willing to work collaboratively by exercising their
best efforts to attain targets successfully. It helps to explore and develop innovative goods, services,
business processes & others and achieve long-run success.
On the basis of the above analysis, it becomes clear that RockPool Digital must designed its
vision keeping into account the main corporate goals. For instance, “To design the most effective
omni-channel network to deliver great digitalized experience in the world” should be the vision
statement of it. Moreover, all the digital expertise must be leaded through using democratic
leadership strategy and promoted via friendly workplace, innovative culture and health culture. It
must reward workers for their significant contribution in innovative strategies, so that, personnel
can be promote & encouraged for giving creative ideas for the success & growth.
TASK 2
P3. Explaining 4Ps of innovation and the use of innovation funnel to shape unique ideas
The term innovation not only means designing product or service distinctively from the rival
firms to attract crowded audience to the business, but also involves other factors. The innovation
mix encompasses 4Ps that are pressure,people,product, process, position and paradigm explained
underneath:
Press :As Apple is one of the leading brand therefore lots of internal and external pressure
imposed on the organisations because as the organization grows the pressure also grows on this is
divided into two forms internal and the external. The internal pressure is created inside the
organization among the staff in an organization due the conflict between but sometime it create
huge trouble for the organization. Where the external pressure depends on lots of external factor
that affect the organization such as the political factor, economical factor, social factor, economical
factor and technological factor that may cause huge impact on the growth as well as on the
reputation of the organization. Every organization suffers from such internal and external pressure
but for the growth of the organization they have to make a balance between the internal and external
pressure because of excess pressure the organization may face adverse impact on the growth of the
organization.
People: Apple is one the well known brand among people of different background due to
this the organization has a huge customer crowed. The organization has two category of people
associated with the organization where the first group belongs to the user of where the Apple
product. And the another group belongs to the people who are working for the organization in order
to bring the organization into the new level in this group the people are classified as Team working
on the development product, team involved on the marketing of the product, and people who are

working at leadership and entrepreneurship level. Every people associated with the organization is
equally important for the success of product of the organization.
Product: Apple is the most creative and innovative organization in the world that deliver
variety of innovative goods & services to the customers like iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, Apple Watch,
Software, iPad, Mac, Laptop & others with unique features. (Source: (4Ps of Innovation & Design
Thinking, 2012)) Currently, its intensive product development growth strategy also focusing on
production of Apple electronic vehicle with the collaborative business practices with Tesla motors
(Curtis and Sweeney, 2016). In addition, it also built an innovative ecosystem to maintain
ecological integrity. In contrast, Virgin Group’s strongest division, Virgin Media offers great quality
telecom products to the users such as broadband packages, movies, sports, phone packages, devices
i.e. SIM, TV, games and others.
Process: Process innovation refers to putting continual efforts to bring improvement in the
organizational process. Such changes help to improve the existing business process for maximizing
efficiency and control cost, which in turn, drive larger return to the Rockpool Digital (Rasmussen,
2010). Apple Inc’s corporate model is based on the design thinking as a key tool for the marketing
& business strategy. It also creates innovative culture, focus on understanding consumer
expectations and market need to satisfy global audiences. Moreover, it also focus on bringing
continus improvement in their regular operations through quality management tools like Total
Quality Management (TQM) six sigma, pareto analysis, kaizen costing and others. Best engineer
expert, R&D operations are the ways to drive technological changes for the innovation.
On the other side, VM put investment in upgraded and newer technologies for the
automotive practices. Its high quality products delivered great satisfaction to the customers and
enable firm to exceed satisfaction level of the clients to gain long-run success.
Position: It is quite similar to the promotion in the marketing mix decisions, which, lay
emphasizes upon the advertising and promoting Rockpool Digital’s offerings into the market to
attract greater audiences (Chowdhury and BorChetia, 2016). Apple developed premium reputation
in the market through online advertisement, personal selling, sales promotion & public relationship
strategies. Moreover, talented employee base render product specific information to the visitors to
encourage them to buy the item. Moreover, discounted prices, events, introducing unique features,
press release & exclusive interview developed distinctive corporate image. In despite, Virgin group
advertise their offerings through TV ads, social media marketing (SMM), YouTube, Facebook,
Twitter, blogs & Customer Relationship Management as well.

Paradigm: It indulges radical changes which is the important part of innovation strategic of
commercialised business.
(Source: Lee, 2016)
Apple’s exclusive class of products like iPhone, iPod are the perfect example of it. Firm is
highly committed to foster innovation in their designs, product features and services offered to
satisfy workers. However, VG’s aims at delivering broadband, multimedia, telephonic and other
services for gaining the leading position in the telecom industry.
Innovation funnel demonstrates the steps that will be followed by the Rockpool Digital to
innovatively design their goods, services and processes to offer better integration experience to the
clients such as mobile apps, service tools, website, prototype & others (Dincer, 2017). There are
various steps involved in innovation funnel that helps to shape the unique and creative ideas of the
Rockpool Digital’s employees that are discussed below:
(Source: Weyrauch and Herstatt, 2017)
Idea generation: In the first step, Rockpool Digital has to generate larger number of
creative ideas, concepts and thoughts through promoting workforce, R&D operations, partners,
researches & others for innovativeness.
Screening: After collecting ideas, company has to match the idea with its mission & vision.
In the screening process, it involves assessing and examining possible return and risk from the
prospective idea and matches the adequacy of resource availability to implement the idea into
reality (Adelowo, Akinwale and Olaopa, 2017).
Practical applicability: Final step is about to transforming the best idea into practical
manner to bring innovation in the business. By the technological advancement, digitalized services
and prototyping, Rockpool Digital can maximize sales, profitability, audience base and attain global
success.
P4. Explaining how frugal innovations can be developed through supporting evidences
Innovation are of different types that can be developed by Rockpool Digital in their business
i.e. blue ocean, red ocean, incremental, process, service, sustainable, business model, Frugal and
others. Frugal innovation is an engineering process that is used to minimize complexities,
production cost and maximizes efficiency (Weyrauch and Herstatt, 2017). It mainly aims at
removing non-essential or unnecessary features that is not useful and incorporate uniqueness to
offer greater value to the users.

Apple offered variety of electronic devices to the consumers of best design and high quality
also. Its product design process requires trained, experienced and talented experts or engineers for
offering high quality goods to the audiences. Initially, in order to design goods exactly as per the
consumer specification, it conduct market research activities to identify the desires and needs of the
users and also measure their ability or willingness to pay (Johnston and Marshall, 2016). Thereafter,
in order to test the practicality, it conducts R&D operations which enable Apple Inc to generate
unique and creative ideas to convert consumer expectations into reality. Thereafter, at the last stage,
its engineers put value to the products through adding unique features.
(Source: Johnston and Marshall, 2016)
The above illustration clearly reflects the distinctive features of iPod such as central scroll,
music system, unique design, icon, surface and so forth. It also created frugal innovations through
separating unnecessary features like Apple Inc make their phone thinner by cutting non-required
components for making it lighter. Currently, it is finding ways to make iPhone highly water tight,
its iPhone 7 also has been launched with a pressure-sensitive home button by removal of
mechanical button in iPhone 6. In addition, plugging headphone into the lightning connector
provided better sound and removed the headphone jack (Lee, 2016). Further, it separated little used
ports inside its Mac books that results in longer battery life to the users. Apple laptop removed CD-
ROM drive and included razor thin for making it thinner.
It provided various benefits to the Apple to minimize their product cost and delivered greater
net profitability as well. As a result, operational performance of the firm got improved which
maximized its competitive strength to compete with the rival organizations successfully.
Looking to the above RockPool Digital’s process, it can be advised to the company to create
frugal innovation through removing that services from the business that are not providing any value
to the consumers. For instance, it can remove unnecessary options in data silos, integration,
iterating, software and other platform. It can also eliminate unessential features from its mobile
apps, websites and service mechanism to drive more value to the business.
TASK 3
P5. Importance of commercial funnel & its application for the new product development process
After new product development, Rockpool digital is required to introduce the new item and
services in the market, called as commercialization. It covers various functions such as production,

distribution, marketing, advertisement and various other functions. Thus, commercial funnel
comprises bringing innovation in the commercialisation activities like marketing funnel, sales
funnel, purchase funnel, e-commerce funnel and others (Lin and et.al., 2014). It is important for the
companies to incorporate commercial funnel into business practices due to varied reasons such as
driving crowded audience, more return, high turnover, better competitiveness and others.
In the competitive landscape, it is extremely important for the Rockpool Digital to
incorporate commercial funnel practices in the new product development (NPD) process. It refers to
convert the idea of new goods development into reality For instance, under the marketing funnel,
company can use various strategies like promotional campaign, sales reps, customer relationship
management (CRM) strategies, SMM practices and others to attract larger people. It can be evident
from the Apple and Virgin Group’s online CRM strategies, in which, it interact with the users via
online to know their desires and solicits feedback also to overcome consumer complaints. AIDA
concept (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action) also can be beneficial for Rockpool Digital to gain
deeply understanding of the consumer preferences and exceeding their expectations through
delivering them right services (Rhéaume and Gardoni, 2017). Further, Apple and Virgin Group’s e-
commerce funnel is the key strategy that boost its customer base via e-mail traffic, viral traffic,
direct traffic & others and improved its website performance. With this, it can be advised to the
Rockpool Digital to engage in online advertisement for gaining global reach.
On the contrary, it can exercise purchase funnel that demonstrate customer journey covers
awareness, opinion, consideration, preference and buying decisions at the end. Through using this
commercial funnel, Rockpool Digital can design their marketing practices and strategies on the
basis of the client expectations and achieve success (Adelowo, Akinwale and Olaopa, 2017). In
such regards, it can aware consumers through e-mail, advertisement, social media marketing, word
of mouth publicity & others to educate them about their product features. After this, user can
evaluate the goods comparatively and will be encouraged to buy the product of excellent quality.
P6. Building an innovation process, including ways to access fund
Both the cited organizations, Apple Inc and VG requires excessive fund in the
innovativeness procedure for generating ideas, R&D activities, screening, testing, goods design,
technological advancement & so forth. Apple has innovative goods portfolio by having superb
products like iPhone, iPad, iPod, gazettes, watches, laptops and others whilst on the other hand,
Virgin Media focuses focuses on fostering strong connectivity through excellent telecom and

broadband services (Rasmussen, 2010). Recently, it tied up with the Techstars, called Virgin Media
Accelerator that provided phenomenal opportunity to the business to build the strongest network
connectivity and grow the business.
Ways to access funds for the innovation purpose
In order to generate required funds for the innovativeness, both the companies utilized
various sources like borrowings, share capital, retained profits & others. With reference to
RockPool Digital, for the prospective frugal as well as commercial funnel it can access funds
through internal as well as external sources. In the first, it can make use of earlier years profits,
called retained profits for bringing out innovations in their goods, services and operations.
However, under the external sources, it can contact banks and financial institutions to borrow
required capital in the form of bank loan, in return, Rock Pool Digital will be liable to make interest
payment as per the implied rates. Further, it can also use “go to public” option by listing their shares
for issuing it in the marketplace for the fund collection. In return, investor will be provided return in
terms of dividend, shareholders also have right to participate in the business decisions. Apart from
this, UK government also promote the innovation practices by delivering financial assistance to the
firm in the form of grant, thus, Rockpool Digital can also get governmental grant for monetary
collection.
Improvement for innovations:
It is essential for the Rockpool Digital to pay continuous focus on the prospective innovation
and expansion for bringing significant level of improvement in the competitive strength and
performance. In this, in order to accomplish the vision statement of Rockpool Digital which is “To
design the most effective omni-channel network to deliver great digitalized experience in the
world”, it can be suggested to bring innovations in the form of network mode.
In this, firm will design high performance digitalized design using experts and specialists. In
this, there is an opportunity for the company to build innovation for developing an innovative
business model through bringing together all the expertise with advanced digital tools, creative
solutions and so on.
Support from the entire team:
For the potential innovation, it will require support from all the project team, therefore,
Rockpool Digital must create a collaborative environment, friendly culture and adopt participative
style of leadership to encourage and motivate their personnel, so that, everyone is being promoted
to work collaboratively with the others and reach the outcomes.
Timeline:

The potential innovative plan will required a time period of 2 month and for the successful
completion, it will be monitored on a continuous basis for completing the innovation process within
set time frame.
Resource allocations
As per the earlier resource, it has been founded that Rockpool Digital can procure funds
from borrowings, share capital, retained profits & others. In order to ensure optimum utilization of
it, it is essential for the firm to allocate it optimally and efficiently as per the actual requirement of
every activity at minimal of wastage. Further, budgeting provides assistance to put control over the
day to day functions for the effective utilization of money. Moreover, it will require workforce
which will be assigned with the following roles and responsibilities.
Staffing Roles and responsibilities
Project manager  To prepare plans, ensure on-time project completion,
preparation of schedules, estimations, administration and
effective communication system
 To align all the activities with the overall objective of the
innovation plan and boost motivation among employees
Technical experts  To ensure smooth functioning of the technological systems
without any error and give technical assistance also
System administrator  To configure systems and create user profiles and ensure
security of the network
Training manager  To create training schedules and organize sessions accordingly
TASK 4
P7. Evaluating different tools to develop, retain & protect knowledge and intellectual property
Now-a-days, to remain competitiveness in the market, companies use variety of tools to
safeguard their design, knowledge, ideas and IP by prohibiting other parties legally.
For instance, copyright, patent, trademark, trade secrets and industrial design etc. are the
most often used tools that is utilized by Apple, Virgin group and other establishments also to protect
their knowledge & IP (Zhang and et.al., 2016). IPMS provided legal rights to the companies to
create improved value through inventions, artistic work, literary, logo, design, packaging & others
and restrict other parties to not use the same otherwise; it will give rises to the legal consequences.