INNOVATION AND BUSINESS STRATEGIES:-

The ideas does innovation play a role in business strategies nature of business strategies:-
Any organization has three strategies at 3 level;s
i. Corporate strategies
ii. Business strategies
iii. Functional strategies

CORPORATE STRATEGIES
 It is concerned with overall business of a firm and this one are usually integrated and sometimes
called high level organization strategies.
Examples are growth, presence -corporate image, productivity survivability, competitiveness.
 A lot of times technological innovations are tied to the above strategies for examples, a firm that
wishes to grow as a strategy is most likely to engage in technological innovations e.g create
new products get into a new market.
 Essentially what we mean technological innovations are strategies in nature. A strategy is
essentially a broad base longterm plan that is developed to achieve organizational goal.

BUSSINESS STRATEGIES
 It occurs at business level particularly in firms that have strategic business units. In most cases
organizations have businesses that are divided into several several business units (cash cows,
question marks, dogs). A firm develops different strategies for those different units and the
purpose is to achieve its mission within its chosen area of activity. It involves matching
opportunities and threats to a company's weaknesses and strengths. At this level a company
makes what products to peer what services and what systems to use.
 To achieve the above a company has to invest in technological development and its to for
pursue its choices (products, marbots, services).

FUNCTIONAL STRATEGIES:-
 It is concerned with how different functions such as marketing production, human resource,
finance, research and IT are conducted.
 Technological innovations and strategies implemented at functional level and sometimes
originate at functional level. Technology push market pull issues.

REACTIVE AND PROACTIVE STRATEGIES

 Reactive strategies occur when a firm only responds to a customers demand and competitive.
For example a firm introduces a new product in the market just because the customers have
asked for it or a firm changes its business approach due to competitive action.
 Proactive strategies occur when a firm seeks to focus and anticipate environmental change what
are the future goals and services and how can we prepare for them. Generally the proactive
strategies are based on research and development, strategic alliances acquisition mergers, new
product development for future goods i.e a brief tell of what will the consumer consuming
products in 20 years to come.
Another focus of proactive strategy is corporate entrepreneurship where small and large firms become
innovative employees start behaving as individual innovators purposefully innovation.
 Examples of reactive strategies imitations copying other firms products, responsive(a firm
reacts directly to customers requests), defensive( a firm focuses on modifying its existing
products rather than having new ones).
 Second and better strategies have the firm involves developing and improving customers
 innovation.
Assignment:-make a summary of reactive and proactive strategies.

INNOVATION AND NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

 New product development has being and always been considered as a business strategy. New
product development is usually innovative in nature meaning it involves modification of an
existing product making additional or extension of an existing product(new feature in product)
it also involves existing products.

 Innovation by design also means managing uncertainty whereby innovation must be planned for
because they are very complex and innovations must be managed quite well i.e ensuring the
environment is conducive or appropriate towards technological innovation. The environment
include :

i. Rewarding innovation/recognition of innovative behavior

ii. Tolerates failure and mistakes
iii. Resource allocation in a truly flexible manner
iv. Champion of change
v. Risk taking behaviour
vi. Experimentation
vii. Support from top management

Framework for innovation be design (Drucker, 1985)

Application Engineering Action research exploratory

3 1
4 2
Technical And market combination Development and engineering

Innovation is hard-work and thus organizations must really work-hard for innovation

New product development process

 It is eight steps
 Brainstorming
 Checklists
 Attribute listing
 Same firms engage in the business of getting ideas for new ideas.

Ideas screening: it involves adoption of ideas and selecting those that have potential for markets. It
also involves dropping same ideas.

Concept testing: the process involves testing customers response to the product idea ie giving
prototype products to the customers to get their opinions.
Business analysis: it involves development of the preliminary marketing, technical and financial
plans.

Product development: this is where engineering and design takes place and involves the production
of the prototype product. It also involves technical testing of the product.
Test marketing: Involves introducing the product and the market in order to assess the customer
reaction.

Commercialization: Products launched on full scale along with it there also promotional reaction
Monitoring and evaluation: the product performance in the market is monitored to determine methods
of improvements, changes in the market and to see if the product can be modified. At this stage the
product enters into a product life cycle.

What strategies can a firm use during a new product development

New product development models

 There are about 7 models of new product development
1. Departmental stage model: It view new product development is a linear process where each
department accomplishes its own activity and moves to another department e.g

Engineering

Manufacturing

Marketing

2. Activity stage model: It focuses on new product development activity as a whole thing meaning
departments work together

3. Cross-functional team model: The model states that new product development is a function of
cross-teams/project teams

4. Decision stage model: New product development occurs as a result of decisions taken by
different department i.e it is a series of integration decision.

5. Conversion process model: new product development is viewed from the perception of inputs
from different components of the firm i.e customers, technical departments, research and
development, firms capabilities and the inputs are converted into a new product.

6. Response model: It views new product development process as a process of an organization as

it responses to changes in the environment.

7. Network model: New product development is as a result of accumulated knowledge and the
knowledge comes from wider sources.

MANAGING INNOVATIONS
The role of research and development
 Most innovations came as a result of research and development (although there are other
sources of innovation- new knowledge innovation)
Therefore research and development becomes one of the strategic optical of firms that easily want to
innovate . Organizations have to be research based i.e create their own strategic knowledge that has
commercial objectives.

Most of scientific advances and innovation hardly have any commercial application, (never have the
laboratories)
Applied research of organizations should involve the design and development of prototype product
firms that engage in research and development must see the strategic aspect of research and
development that is:-
i. Research and development should focus on developing new business
ii. Research and development should focus developing new products
iii. Research and development should focus on improving existing products
iv. Help in understanding of technology. When organizations purchase new technology it is
research and development that will help in understanding the new technology.
v. Help understand emerging technologies.
In managing innovation organizations have to focus on the following activities:-

a) Must ensure that resources are allocated for research and development
b) Must ensure that management facilitates research and development
c) Must device ways of tapping knowledge from public domain and putting it to greater use
d) Organizations should strive to create their own knowledge that is compliment knowledge form
public domain
e) Firms must consider carefully their strategic options as to joint ventures i.e are going to improve
our research and development capabilities
f) Consider carefully technological operations
g) When firms engage in purchase of technology they must understand the role of research and
development(see section of technology transfer).

MANAGING INNOVATIONS THROUGH PROJECTS

Projects are often used in the management of innovations and they become critical during
implementation of innovation. A lot of projects are designed to meet the needs of innovation in an
organization. Example of technological projects are:-

i. New product development

ii. Restructuring organization
iii. Information systems
iv. Installation of information system
v. Quality assurance programs
vi. Construction renovation etc.

Most firms use a project teams to manage innovations

a) because they are goal oriented
b) they are change oriented
c) they have measurable output i.e by end of period you will produce a certain production
 multidisciplinary or cross functional
d) They have a definite life span. They have a starting and ending point installing a new
technology or developing a new product.
e) They are effective to resource utilization
f) Most important projects involve planning organizing directing coordinating and controlling of
scarce resources etc within a specified time.
g) They have project deliverables which could be a finished project output for example, a refined
product, finished out or an installed system.
h) They ensure that there is always is always quality dimension and they are also time bound.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT:
Product life cycle in the power point notes

ROLES OF LEADERSHIP IN INNOVATION

Leadership has a major role when it comes to managing innovations and the ideas become more
important throughout the processes i.e at the stage of setting the vision (strategic start option) through
implementation (managing of change) to looking for newer strategies and changes.

LEADERSHIP:-
The art of influencing and directing others or the art of inspiring follower to perform their duties
willingly competently and enthusiastically (even when they are on their own).
Leadership is non-cohesive but it directs and mission. It understandings human behaviour it rewards, it
has that ability to make people creative and innovative utilizes teams and has a greater role in
motivating and aligning people. There are different types of leadership:

participative, democratic leadership: involving employees in decision making process,uses team work,
consultative and participative.
Autocratic, authoritative leadership: dictatorship, strict supervision, negative rewards
Transformational leadership and transactional leadership:

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP:
Is characterized by those leaders who provide extra ordinary motivation to employees by appealing to
the higher idea to motivation. It also inspires employees to think about problems in different ways.
Transformational leadership is all about taking risks creativity and high need to achieve innovation.
This type of leadership challenges employees to continually better 5themselves to think independently,
to act independently (people to realize their full potential).

Transformation involves changing beliefs and values of employees elevating what is good in an
individual and the results is that they provide selfless services, introduce new changes, they'll challenge
the processes of things.
 It results in inspiring a shared vision.
 It enables others to work and activities
 It also models the way out

Transformational leadership creates a vision in an organization, it becomes a changing agent. It is

flexible , open and trusting. This type of leadership articulates the core values of an organization as it
guides.
TRANSACTIONAL LEADERSHIP
It is about transacting businesses and its more of management aspects. It ensures that jobs are done and
resources are allocated. It is similar to management and its reactive in nature (dealing with problems as
they come). It is policy driven and it is not strategic in nature, it has a piecemeal. This type of
leadership is not critical in managing innovation and its a better reserve for middle management who
are on the ground implementing projects.

ROLE OF INNOVATORS AS A CHANGE AGENT:

GROUP WORK :
1. Discus the role of innovation in change processes
2. Discuss the reason why change is resisted providing examples (in aspect of technology or
innovation.
3. Strategies of dealing with change.

Value adding also involves improving products performance, making a product more convenient,
quality, durability, style and aesthetic or increasing the product life cycle. Innovation in new products is
considered to be of strategic nature because they ultimately aim at enhancing corporate strategies of
growth, productivity, profitability, expansion, survival, competitiveness, market leadership etc.
In this case innovation must be by design. Innovation by design means organization must purposefully
look for opportunities to innovate meaning organizations must work quite hard in its research and
development department, manufacturing and engineering departments in order to come up with new
products (pro-active approach).