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Discussion 1: Explore New Technologies and uses of new technologies.
The idea of innovation of having new technology has have the power to change customer
expectations in a way of delivering effective and fast communication process. Such customer
expectations are very high in the light of modernization and innovation and they cannot be
satisfied by offering a general solution to their problems. They cannot be satisfied without
meeting their explicit and implicit expectations. Specific situations may require the retail
managers to act with wisdom and customers approach the managers as they believe that the
managers can find solution to their problems and suggest the alternatives. If they do not receive
the expected treatment the customers would be disappointed and customer satisfaction would be
greatly affected.
This also has the power to change the basis of competitive advantage. The competitive
advantage is the factor which could be in any form to business providing the upper edge to
business over its competitors. this could be in the form of business model, technology
innovation, human resources, or organization design. Competitive advantage helps companies to
enjoy profit to some period of time until competitors get their own competitive advantage. Good
organization design leads to competitive advantage when it’s clear what the organization has to
do very well to drive the strategy. And there are always trade‐offs. Specialization, for example,
delivers strong functional excellence and cost effectiveness, but usually creates silos that can be
difficult to integrate. Organization design is core work for leaders today, and it helps to learn a
few simple frameworks.
This idea also have the power to change the industry economics. Economies of scale are table
stakes in many businesses, and potential sources of competitive advantage in others. Unless the
organization is a true holding company, where there is no strategic reason to connect the
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operating units, most companies today are looking for smart ways to consolidate activities to
bring efficiency to them. In many companies it’s about creating more cost headroom to allow
more spending in new growth targets. Others look for a different kind of leverage – bringing
together product‐development organizations in order to deliver fewer, bigger bets into the
market. Consolidating product development across regions can also be a path to globalizing
products. At Johnson & Johnson, the quality function reports to the CEO today for reasons that
are clear to anyone who’s followed business news. The same thing can be said for the safety,
health and environment function at BP. This is the simplest way to make something a priority –
to elevate it in the structure. Today, growth is critical to all businesses and many, like Tyco, are
elevating emerging market leaders who run China or Brazil to sit at the executive table. Others,
like Cisco, are separating out new product incubators in an effort to provide special focus for
potential orphans. Management attention may also show up as a functional czar for a process,
such as brand marketing or supply chain management that has been weak or missing in the past.
However, innovation may have some risk that could affect some parts or within the company,
such having enough knowledge to handle the new technologies. lack of training, and breaches
that might be happened.
Patent & Trademark Office on Innovation
A patent can be considered as a technology or research that an organization has
developed which allows them the exclusive right to be the proprietor to the technology.
Copyright can be considered as a form of protection that is granted to the owner, the author
which has created the work be it artistic, architectural or musical and protect their rights against
the use and claim of their own material by another. Trademark can be considered as a design,
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word or even a symbol with which we can recognize a particular organization/individuals, which
are patented or trademarked at the trademark office.
Discussion 2
In this exploration, the problem to be solved is that, how to increase the collaboration among
department. Since, many companies today who really experienced difficulties in communicating
or collaborating with the other departments/ filed within the workplace. In this problem, the ERP
(SAP) could help increase the collaboration within the company. It was created to increases the
efficiency of the organization and its employees as well. The repetition of work gets decreased
and work don’t get repeated and employees don’t need to enter the information manually. Due to
use of ERP system the work get easy and faster than before. The work gets accurate and
increases efficiency overall. With the use of the ERP system software will give advantages to its
users and department manager to forecast the trends and business position for future and with
accurate data and information being entered in software its make business very effective and
successful.
The innovation and technology acts as a competitive advantage for SAP. The company in order
to maintain its competitive advantage needs to develop products which are different from the
competitors and offer better functionalities to the customers. It needs to exploit its brand image
and technological expertise to exploit its competitive advantage.
Gamestorming:
Threats of new
entrants
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Competition
Threat from the
substitutes
Bargaining power of the suppliers
ERP SAP
Lists of Solutions
1. Threats of new entrants: This is medium as the high capital requirements and technical
expertise required acts as an entry barrier in the industry. The products are highly
differentiated and the switching cost to the new products is also high. But at the same
time there are organizations which may grow and can act as a potential threat for the
organization. Therefore this threat is moderate.
2. Threat from the substitutes: This is low as SAP is the market leader in the industry and
its products are highly differentiated. The company enjoys a strong brand image and this
helps it to retain its customers. The switching costs are also high which keeps the
customers from switching.
3. Competition: The competition is high with many competitors like Oracle. The industry
is growing at a fast pace and the technological changes are rapid. The technology also
acts as a source of competitive advantage for the firms.
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4. Bargaining power of the suppliers: This is low as there are no major external suppliers
it is knowledge based industry with all the expertise present in house.
The innovation and technology acts as a competitive advantage for SAP. The company in
order to maintain its competitive advantage needs to develop products which are different from
the competitors and offer better functionalities to the customers. It needs to exploit its brand
image and technological expertise to exploit its competitive advantage. With the use of the ERP
system software will give advantages to its users and department manager to forecast the trends
and business position for future and with accurate data and information being entered in software
its make business very effective and successful.
Mind Map
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Discussion 3. Explore Methods of Innovation.
In actual, the basic principles of the disruptive innovation theory is not well-understood
by the Entrepreneurs in its true sense due to which it is not applied properly in a Company.
Moreover, in spite of the alterations and amendments made in the primary theory of disruptive
innovation, the initial theory is so popular among the Entrepreneurs that it has overridden the
significance of its subsequent changes thereby adding to the misapplication of the theory in any
given industry.
In addition, Entrepreneurs further fail to realize that different types of innovations would
resort to different types of strategies. Hence it is concern. If the innovation is not based upon
integrated insights of the researches to that of the theory of disruptive innovations, then the large
organizations would end up applying wrong tools for the application of this theory thereby
resulting to lesser chance of success of disruptive innovations. This can help with my team in
terms of formulating different type of marketing strategies. Since, it is a technology which can be
able to affect a function of a market and with that create a new market and thus disrupting the
existing old market. When new market is created, new network also gets created.
In a Business environment , innovation has been essential one for survival and sustaining.
Information Systems enabled an open innovation and their innovation process used to collaborate
with their external partners such as customers, suppliers or organization that can provide
valuable ideas or complement of innovation activities. The model of innovation challenges the
traditional closed view, where invention and design is restricted to internal resources. There are
different styles of open innovation in industries as diverse as consumer goods, semi-conductors,
automotive engineering and software engineering. Open innovation get benefits from external
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resources for innovation and it includes user innovation, mass innovation and distributed
innovation.
Creative Commons is a global nonprofit organization that provides free, easy to use
copyright licenses to create a simple and standardized way to give the public, permission to use
and share your creative work as per the conditions laid out by you. It is a common platform
website with over 500 research and volunteer Global affiliates based out of more than 85
countries.
Crowd sourcing is the use of large crowds either by internet or any other way to gain
information about a topic . This helps me in understanding the opinion of customers so that they
can take correct decisions. This will also help the managers in avoiding conflicts and giving
tough competition to competitors. Crowdsourcing can be used by any organization where for
example the transportation system users can be termed into the real-time sensors on the system
related performances. that helps in reducing the cost and provide the high quality of data.
This ideally helps in segregating the task for a rapid work development of the process.
Crowdsourcing requires a large undefined community to work so that there are people enough
people in the large community to work for the small tasks or donate and act as initiators of the
project. A small defined community would create a bias and a narrow point of view as compared
to a large community where people belonging to different backgrounds have varying points of
views.
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Discussion 4: Prototype
Building an ideas and concept is not easy. Since, it needs deep collaboration and
evaluation outcomes. designer should obtain as much feedback as possible, as early as possible.
The first step of the prototyping evaluates the cost of intricate in a construction of module
system. It is essential to construct models and prototypes for user approval, to facilitate the
integration the information system within a of huge system. Idea generation refers to creations,
development and implementation of creative actions, decisions and solutions to solve a defined
problem or to improve a thing. It is important because, it helps in identifying innovative ways,
and know new ways or unknown alternatives to solve the issues or to bring betterment. One must
consider what is the area need to be provided with solution or improvement, then take into
account constraints related to it, apply thinking or brain storming, select the best option and
make it a reality or implement the selected idea.
Prototypes are used in design thinking process to evaluate the behavior of users with
prototype which gives the best solution to problems and helps to find out whether or not the
implemented solutions have been successful. From a user’s viewpoint, the interface is the most
critical part of the system design because it is where he or she interacts with the system —
perhaps for many hours each day. It is essential to construct models and prototypes for user
approval. An interface designer should obtain as much feedback as possible, as early as possible.
You can present initial screen designs to users in the form of a storyboard, which is a sketch that
shows the general screen layout and design. The storyboard can be created with software, or
drawn freehand. Users must test all aspects of the interface design and provide feedback to the
designers. User input can be obtained in interviews, via questionnaires, and by observation.
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Interface designers also can obtain data, called usability metrics, by using software that can
record and measure user interaction with the system
An interface designer should obtain as much feedback as possible, as early as possible.
The first step of the prototyping evaluates the cost of intricate in a construction of module
system. It is essential to construct models and prototypes for user approval, to facilitate the
integration the information system within a of huge system. Guidelines propose the roots that are
necessary unified with the prototype. The first requirement is to determine the work of
manageable modules, mean users can interact with the key features to build another system
module. The less important module features left out deliberately for the original prototype. The
speed is more important for the success of the information system. Quick decision will affect the
prototyping when using traditional information gathering techniques. The third guideline is to
support modification by developing a system prototyping. Those modules are highly
interdependent to create less resistance when encounter modifications prototype. Gathering
information techniques are difficult to manage prototyping system.
3D printing can be described as printing that follows various processes in which some
materials are solidified and joined with the help of computer in order to create a threedimensional object. It typically add material layer by layer. 3D printers can be utilized to make
complex shapes, for the most part out of plastic pitches. Some assembling firms have stretched
out utilization to a couple sorts of metal amalgam. It's identical to the jump from the printing
press to desktop printing. A 3D printer implies we no more need tooling or concentrated
machines to make things.
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Discussion 5: Innovative Journey Presentation
In my journey of innovative, there were few important points that been evaluated in the
entire journey. In this presentation, the audience were the individuals and the companies who
certainly applied different kinds of innovative strategies of new technologies.
Technological innovation is perceived and responded to by our senior management. Our senior
management is always drives to embrace technology, so that the organization become competent
for longer time and will survive in future. The technology innovation is always embraced by our
senior management. Though rejection is a conservative and low risk path, but still our senior
management invests in technology for future readiness.
Management included technology innovation as a strategic objectives and it is a part of the key
objectives of the organization, which are reviewed by the senior management periodically. It has
defined metric for evaluation of technology innovation.
Technologically innovative opportunities been monitored by the process of capturing technology
innovation ideas from all employees at a common database and formed a core team which will
review the ideas periodically and select the prioritized technology innovation ideas for the
organization. Yes, management does encourage potential technologically innovative
improvements in the organization. Management appreciates the top innovators and awarded
during organization gatherings/functions.
Technologically innovative opportunities organized within our company by organizing the
workshop for technology innovations. Many key people are identified and involved in the
workshop so that we explore large number of technology ideas and then reviewed and prioritized
based on the organization criteria.
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The size of our R&D department is around 25 people. Our company had employed the specialist
persons in the R&D , a team of three specialist is made responsible for technology innovation
process, so that new innovation ideas are managed properly in the organization.
Technological innovation is often weighed in terms of investment against the perceived benefits.
If the management believes that the investment is worth taking the risk and will be worthwhile in
the long run, it is accepted.
The innovative methods that help in achieving the strategic objectives of the organization are
implemented in form of an integrated enterprise resource planning system, use of employee up
Skilling and assessment software's, continuous improvement initiatives with monitoring,
evaluation and correction of business processes and analyzing the responses for Assessing
suitability, effectiveness and ROI.
Management encourages individual participation and welcomes innovative suggestions with
considerable freedom to ideate and implement. However the objectives should be justified and
the outcomes should be measurable. The outcomes are evaluated and ideas are appreciated even
when they failed. The R&D dept. has six members who are technically competent and have
innovative thinking.
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References
Muller, H. (2013). Leading the Epic Revolution: How CIOs Drive Innovation and Create
Value Across the Enterprise. John Wiley & Sons.; Chapter 8.