Advocacy and Screening
Innovation is defined as the way of transforming an idea into a solution. It is also a way to convert invention into a specific goods or services which has the value and for which the customers will ready to pay. To create an innovation, an idea must be satisfied and generate economic cost as well. An idea generated must have some specific information and should be easily converted into valuable products or services. In management or any organization, the idea generated must meet the customer’s expectation and helps in the economic growth of the organization. Mainly, there are two categories of innovation (Lundvall, 2010). They are Evolutionary innovations and revolutionary innovations. Evolutionary innovations are dynamic in nature and are generated by the changes in the technology. Revolutionary innovations are also known as discontinues innovations which are generally new and disruptive in nature (Dance, 2008).
At very first stage, new ideas are created during the time of idea generation. Mobilization takes place whenever idea is moved from one physical or logical location to other location. It can be either be outside the firm or another departments as well. A new idea inspiration can only be generated when an improvement in an existing idea takes place (Mariello, 2007). For an instance, an example can be taken as how did Apple Company waited for three years long after the introduction of MP3 players came into the market. When MP3 players came into the market, after three years, iPod was introduced. It was attractive and it has the capacity to store nearly 1,000 songs in it.
Again, another example can be taken that was the invention of the scotch tape which was a very new idea in the market and it worked successfully as well. Scotch tape was introduced by Richard Drew who was dropped out from the college and completed his idea. Drew worked in 3M Company who further provided 15% of the workday to explore new ideas. Other many organization also started following the same idea and stated that time and resources are the two major factors in any firm.
With the context to innovation, “overemphasising need will force some employees to leave for more stable jobs while not emphasizing need will reduce the urgency and generation of ideas across the board (Neese, 2017).
Every idea cannot be implemented and if they are implemented, it is not sure that it is worth implementing. Advocacy and screening of the ideas helps to measure their potential in terms of benefits, importance, values and problems. And then later, decision can take place about the idea. There are many advantages for the advocacy and screening process. One of major advantage is refinement. Refinement is the way of neglecting unnecessary ideas and enhancing those ideas which have potential in it. This stage helps to prepare an idea that will be applicable for the upper management in an organization. Generally, it happens that the person who generate the ideas does not have enough skills and abilities to represent them, but this can be implemented or supported and encouraged by the managers who are working in the organization. The managers can support the idea generator which will help them to achieve goals and objectives.
Experimentation
There are many companies who are thinking to build robust culture which must follow the given steps. First step is that employees working in an organization must have huge number of avenues in order to receive advocacy and feedback. Second one is a firm must have the ability to understand the problems that are involved in evaluating all the innovative ideas. And the last one is there must be transparency while evaluating and screening all the necessary protocols.
This stage helps to test an idea which has already been generated. It generally tests whether all the protocols are tested properly or not. It was stated that “Experimentation does not test an idea’s objective merits but it tests the suitability for the particular organization at a particular period of time.” Therefore, it can be said that there exist some ideas which can be used later because at present, they might not be that useful and helpful to the organization. Experimentation can either be done on a continuous basis or it can be done in spurts. Experimentation helps to create new ideas because of the information collected on the basis of results. In this stage, time plays a major role because nevertheless every experiment need time. An idea generator has enough time to run those experiments. An idea is experimented after the process of evaluation and refinement.
Today, one can see availability of new products and services in grocery stores. Let us take an example of an innovation which took place in 2007. In 2007, Amazon tested its delivery of products and services in some Seattle Suburbs. It became successful and later Amazon expanded its business to Los Angles, San Diego and New York cities as well. Today Amazon has also successfully targeted New Jersey and United Kingdom (Kline and Rosenberg, 2010).
Commercialization is the next stage of the innovation process. It helps to create and generate market value for an idea which has already been generated. It aims at focusing on the potential impact of the idea. This stage enables to present the idea in such a way that it looks attractive and appealing to the customers and many audiences. It includes packaging one idea with other ideas or determining how and when the generated idea can be used effectively and efficiently, and also using several protocols to generate benefits from the experiments.
One of the major part of this stage is establishing and introducing the specifications of any idea presented. The promises and the potentials which was used in previous stage of innovation must be left behind in order to gain the new benefits of new innovation process. Thus, it can be stated that once an idea is generated and refined, then it can be implemented to meet the needs and expectation of the customers. Under this stage, the focus moves from development stage to persuasion stage. Once the idea is generated and clarifies then it can be ready for implementation (Tohidi, 2011).
Diffusion and Implementation
Diffusion and implementation are the two major points of the innovation process. Diffusion is the way when a company accepts the innovative idea ad thus implements it. Every organization takes the help of this stage. Generally, this stage of innovation is aided by knowledge brokers. Knowledge brokers are those persons who can present the innovation by using their own awareness. They aim at producing their own application in which those ideas can be inserted and also helps at assisting rapid implementation (Bushnell, 2014).
The innovation process cannot be demonstrated by this stage. In order to successfully implement the new ideas in the company, several resources will be required along with a marketing plan and a strong and enthusiastic culture. This stage creates an opportunity to determine the other sets of needs of the customers and generate more future ideas. Here, feedback is also received from the customers which will stimulate the innovation process and work as an indicator for successful business plan (Chesbrough, 2010).
Rogers’s theory of Innovation is also known as Diffusion of Innovation theory. This theory was proposed by E.M. Rogersin in the year 1962. It is one of the oldest theory of social science which was introduced by communication and explains how an idea generated can be spread in a whole population or a system (Wayne, 2016).
Let us take an example of the Facebook. When it was introduced, it focused on the youngsters’ range of people like college students and graduates. And later they became the unofficial and informal brand ambassadors if the products as well (Standing and Kiniti, 2011).
This theory explains that people are the major part of the social system because they are the one who adopts the new ideas or any products or services. Here, adoption simply means when an individual does something new which does not match with the previous action i.e. when an individual purchase a new product which they have never used. The idea behind adoption is that an individual must be able to adopt the new idea. Adoption is a slow and gradual process which takes time (Rogers, 2010). Each individual is different today. Some people easily adopt new ideas while some needs time to adopt the same. It is examined that the people who easily adopt innovation have different traits and characteristics than the people who are late in adopting new ideas. So, before promoting the innovation among the population, it is very crucial to know the traits of an individual (Hanlon, 2013).
Innovators are those who always want to be ranked first to try any new ideas. They are always interested and keen to know the new innovations. They can easily take risks and develop and implement new ideas. But, these kinds of people are very rarely found. 2.5% among 100% are the one who comes under this category.
Early adopters are those who works as an opinion leader. They are often involved in leadership roles and hold the opportunities very easily. They find it very easy to adopt new ideas and it does not require much efforts to convince such people. They are found in 13.5% among the whole population.
Early majority are those who are not leaders but they adopt new ideas very frequently. The strategies behind this is effectiveness and success stories of the innovation. Here in this category, people adopt changes without any evidences. Majority of average person comes under this category i.e. 34% (Kaminski, 2011).
Late majority are those who adopt the innovation only when majority of the population have already tried it. They will only adopt new innovation once they get to know that how many people have earlier tried it and how much of them were satisfied. It also includes 34% of the population.
Laggards are those who are very conservative in nature and does not accept changes. They are the hardest among all the categories. They can only adopt changes when they have a fear appeals or some pressure otherwise, they will not adopt changes at any cost.
Moreover, there are five major factors that influence to adopt the innovation. These are mentioned below.
Relative Advantage: It signifies the degree to which an innovation is examined as better than the idea it gas replaced or transformed.
Compatibility: It denotes the consistency of the innovation. It identifies the consistency of innovation in terms of values, potential, needs and experiences.
Complexity: It denotes the problems faced by an individual to understand or use the products or services.
Triability: It is the method of experimenting an idea before implementing it.
Observability: It denotes the results and outcomes of the innovation that are tangible in nature.
This theory of innovation was proposed by Peter F. Drucker who also contributed to the management theory. He stated that the process of innovation must be considered as work which must be managed like the other corporate functions are managed in an organization (Drucker, 2014). He defined innovation as “an effort to create purposeful, focused change in an enterprise’s economic or social potential”. He also said that the best innovations do not take place from an individual but it can take place when an individual search for an opportunity for innovation. He identified seven major areas of opportunity (Luebke, 2010). Four of them are internal opportunities that lies within the organization and three of them are external opportunities.
A product or services may sometimes fail to fulfil its purpose but it might be immensely successful on the other side. If a product or services fails at very first stage, then it gives an encourage and motivation to revise and redesign it and then again introduce it in the market. But it is very important to address the reasons behind its failures. Thus, unexpected occurrences take place outside the organization which create new opportunities for work.
Incongruities is the conflicts that takes place between the opposing functions at the very first stage of innovation. The conflict may take place because the differences between the outcomes and expectations or the gaps between needs and realities. Besides of these conflicts, it also provides an opportunity for the innovation to reconfigure the entire products and services (Soni, 2014).
There is an old proverb “Necessity is the mother of invention” which is proven indeed. The desire to make the product more efficient is always possible when an idea generator is highly involved in creative thinking. When he starts thinking more creative, then it will be easy to fill the gaps in processes.
The changes in the market and industry plays a major role to bring a change in the innovation process. The introduction of new product can change the whole process. Earlier, there was the role of traditional market where they used to focus on maintaining their dominance rather than adopting new ideas. But new market has given an opportunity to enter new market and new players (Drucker and Maciariello, 2015).
Demographics is one the important source of innovation because it helps to create opportunities for the new product. The needs of the people vary from place to place, gender to gender and ages to ages. To it is very difficult to identify the needs of the product of all the segments of people.
Perception of an individual vary from person to person. Let us take an example, it was said that fat people are healthier but this perception has been changed recently. It is now said that overweight is a risk factor and for this low calories and sugar free products are introduced in the market (Greenhalgh and Rogers, 2010).
New knowledge has created new opportunities for the new products. Noe technologies, use of internet, use of programming tools has become of the major motor of innovation and will help the new product to capture the market in the future trends.
Whenever an organization is involved in the implementation of the innovation, managers force employees to adopt changes and also influence innovation. He encourages his subordinates to adapt changes and work for it in order to generate new customers with new products as well. Though manager is not only responsible to innovate changes but the personal traits of the individual employees also plays an important role in an organization.
The characteristics of an employee and the managers are interlinked with each other to innovate changes. When an organization is involved in the innovation process then it must be adapted by managers as well as employees. The person who has low personal innovativeness or those who are low performers will deny the changes. But they are motivated and influenced by the management to adopt changes. Similarly, the employees who are high performers or those who have high personal innovativeness are generally not influenced by the management for any adoption decisions. There are majorly two steps involved in the management process. Employees whose personal traits will incline them to adopt changes will automatically adopt it without any support of management and employees who are low performers will wait for the managers to influence them before adopting. Likewise whenever an organization develops technology, it serves those technology to those who are more knowledgeable it its applications. The developers and users both should run on a parallel line. So, every process of innovation is highly involved with the decisions of managers as well as employees (Barton and Kraus, 2010).
A conceptual framework is a tool which is used to analyse huge number of variations and contexts. It also aims at developing ideas which will be helpful for the organization. It designs conceptual distinctions and also enables at capturing anything that is real and makes the things easy to be done. It provides the easiest solution to any problems by providing innovative ideas. It basically build up concepts which are designed in a logical and sequential way. It also helps to reduce number of theories which are generally applied (Patrick, 2015).
Purpose of Conceptual Framework
- It helps to clarify and build concepts in a study.
- It aims at providing the context to interpret the findings of the study.
- To also helps to explain observations.
- It helps to develop and motivate theory development which is very important in daily practises (Pellissier, 2008).
The above diagram shows the example of conceptual framework which represents the health wellness program. It basically consists of two major categories i.e. demographics profile and parenting styles. Demographic profile includes age, status, educational qualifications, and number of members in the family and the economic status of the family. These all factors have a self-esteem which is either high, low or medium. Similarly, there are three major types of parenting style i.e. Authoritative, democratic or permissive. Authoritative parenting style is that style which is characterized by high responses and high demands. This parenting style generally has this basic characteristics like observing, flexible, good listener and forgiving instead of giving punishment (Cherry, 2017). Likewise, democratic parenting style is also known as positive parenting style because parents under this style assume that the children will obviously follow their guidelines (Saha, 2017). Similarly, permissive style is that style which is characterized by low demands and high responses. This type of people are very loving in nature and do not provide any strict guidelines to be followed by their children (Cherry, 2018).
Conclusion
Thus, it can be concluded that innovation plays a very major role in the development and growth of the organization. There are several stages of innovation which are to be followed sequentially in order to generate an idea, screen it, experiment it, commercialize and then implement it. Moreover, it can also be concluded that there are two basic theories of innovation proposed by Drucker and Roger. These two theories of innovation helps an organization to maintain a strong relationship with its customers by providing them innovative products and services. Innovative products enables the employees to attract more number of customers towards it. Nevertheless, it also aims at adopting the conceptual framework of innovation which is generally followed by the company to set easy protocols for a complex problems.
References
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