Literature Review
Innovation management is the combination of innovation management process and change management. It is the business discipline, which is aimed at driving sustainable innovation process within organization (Donate & de Pablo, 2015). This study will discuss the topic leadership and organizational structure for innovation. Leadership and organizational structure define the allowance of the employee generate and put innovative business ideas in organizational decision making process.
The study will discuss the key theories associated with the topic and apply those theories on the innovation of Apple Inc. Apart from that, the study will also identify the issues faced by the organization. On the other hand, the study will propose suitable solution to Apple Inc. and discuss the impact of those solutions on the competitive advantage of the organization.
Literature Review
Leadership and Organization Structure for Innovation
Leadership defines the philosophy and technique, which combines different styles for influencing the employees in inputting creative and innovation ideas for leading organizational innovation. Innovative leaders can make crucial addition to the traditional thinking for bringing new ideas and product and service offerings in their organization. On the other hand, Mihalache et al. (2014) opined that organizational structure formulates the way of interaction between the managers and employees. Moreover, free flowing of opinions from the employees to high level managers can foster creative and innovative ideas for leading organizational uniqueness.
Theories Related Leadership and Organizational Structure
The types of leadership are extremely important for fostering innovative ideas and thoughts targeted at organizational innovation. Anderson et al. (2014) pointed out that transformational leadership adopts the philosophy to move towards the change, rather than resisting or avoiding them. Such leaders thrive on changes and take excitement through the prospects of evolving their organization into better place.
Moreover, the leaders encourage the employees and allow their innovative ideas for fostering creative ideas. On the other hand, Camisón and Villar-López (2014) opined that contingent leaders properly understand the unique needs of a particular situation and make unique decision that can best be applied to that situation. In this way, such leaders are highly inclined towards make changes and innovation in their organization as required by the specific organizational situation.
The structure of an organization defines the way of interaction between the management and employees. Innovation is best explored in the organizations, where the employees can freely communicate with the upper management and suggest their innovative ideas in for fostering organizational innovation. According to Sarooghi et al. (2015), flatter organizational structure allow for more decision making among different levels of organizations. In such structure, the employees can directly interact with the upper level managers and suggest their innovative ideas for fostering organizational innovation.
Theories of Innovation
Disruptive innovation fosters an innovation, which helps in creating new value network and new market and ultimately disrupts the existing value network and market. Disruptive innovation is something that is not the iteration of something and completely new to the market. On the other hand, Foss and Saebi (2017) opined that ambidextrous innovation foster the innovation, which may have unique process, culture and structure. Moreover, such innovation never intervene the core business process of an organization. Furthermore, in open or crowd sourcing innovation, the organizations ser challenges for gathering and generating new business ideas and allows the people either internally or externally for generating new business ideas.
Leadership and Organization Structure for Innovation
Application of Leadership and Organizational innovation on Innovation of Apple Inc
Apple Inc. is considered as the most innovative company in the world. The innovation strategy of Apple Inc. incorporates terrific new products and creative business models. Steve Jobs was an as excellent leader of transforming the business ideas as per the situation, which allowed the organization towards making brilliant business ideas. The app design of iPhone is quite innovative in the market, which is followed by disruptive innovation leading to replacement of many rivals (Herrera, 2016).
Moreover, the lighting technology and superiorly vivid feature of the products has led to high level of competitive advantage in the organization. Even the current CEO of Apple Inc. Tim Cook, always allow the employees in organizational decision making process and encourage them to put innovative business ideas. In this way, the organization has become able to launch innovative products like Air Pods, Home Pods, iPhone X and lot more with the open innovative generated through the innovative thoughts of the employees (De Oliveira et al., 2015).
The organization also follows flatter organizational structure, where the employees of the organization can directly interact with the upper level of management. In this way, the organization maintains the agility and creativity in the decision making process. The ever evolving ambitions and endeavors of the employees have helped the organization in launching the Apple Watch for providing a healthy life to the customers. Flexible organizational structure improves the coordination and speed of communication among the employees leading to faster implementation of innovative organizational decision.
Issues in the Apple Inc
Though Apple is quite successful in making innovation in their business model and offers innovative products and services to the customers. The organization often fails to identify the core needs and demands of the customers and incorporate them into their products. Moreover, the organization has lack of capability to research the market properly and identify the core market needs. In such context, the organization incorporates complex operating system in their products, which becomes too much difficult for the ordinary people. Apart from that, the organization often ignores the affordability of customers and charges too high price for their high products (Herrera, 2016). This is the reason for which iPhone X has not gained high market share in the developing countries.
Possible Solution
Apple Inc. should be more focused on market research for identifying the core needs and demands of the customers. Apart from focusing on disruptive innovation, the organization should consider the concern of general customers for meeting their customized needs and demands. The leaders should be concerned with the customer preferences and changing customer needs. On the other hand, the organization should also focus on affordability of the customers before setting their product prices. Moreover, instead of setting too much high price, the organization should set the price of the products as per the affordability of the customers. The price of the products should be having affordable price increasing the sales volume.
Affect of Solution
The products of Apple Inc. are having complex operating system, which is often not understandable to the customers. Hence, the leader of the organization should encourage the employees to conduct effective market research. In this way, the organization will be able to recognize core needs and demands of the customers and launch the products that are even understandable to the ordinary people. In this way, the organization will gain high level of competitive advantage through offering customized products and services. Furthermore, Apple Inc. should set affordable price for having high market share. Moreover, it will help the organization have competitive gain over the emerging companies.
Conclusion
While concluding the study, it can be said that leadership and organizational structure are extremely important for leading organizational innovation. Innovative leaders encourage the employees towards fostering creative ideas and opinions. Flexible organizational allows in free flowing of innovative ideas from the employees to the upper management for having high level of organizational innovation.
The leaders of Apple Inc. always consider the employees’ innovative ideas for making innovative organizational decision. However, the organization often ignores the customers’ concern leading to failure of their innovation. Hence, the organization should consider the customers’ concerns in the making successful innovative business decisions. The organization should also set affordable prices for their products being market leader and enhancing its market share over its rivals.
References
Anderson, N., Poto?nik, K., & Zhou, J. (2014). Innovation and creativity in organizations: A state-of-the-science review, prospective commentary, and guiding framework. Journal of management, 40(5), 1297-1333.
Camisón, C., & Villar-López, A. (2014). Organizational innovation as an enabler of technological innovation capabilities and firm performance. Journal of business research, 67(1), 2891-2902.
De Oliveira, J. H. C., Giraldi, J. D. M. E., Jabbour, C. J. C., Netto, C. F., & Betti, K. C. M. (2015). Improving business innovation and research through the application of neuromarketing with ethics: a framework. International Journal of Business Innovation and Research, 9(1), 52-64.
Donate, M. J., & de Pablo, J. D. S. (2015). The role of knowledge-oriented leadership in knowledge management practices and innovation. Journal of Business Research, 68(2), 360-370.
Foss, N. J., & Saebi, T. (2017). Fifteen years of research on business model innovation: How far have we come, and where should we go?. Journal of Management, 43(1), 200-227.
Herrera, M. E. B. (2016). Innovation for impact: Business innovation for inclusive growth. Journal of Business Research, 69(5), 1725-1730.
Mihalache, O. R., Jansen, J. J., Van den Bosch, F. A., & Volberda, H. W. (2014). Top maanagement team shared leadership and organizational ambidexterity: A moderated mediation framework. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 8(2), 128-148.
Sarooghi, H., Libaers, D., & Burkemper, A. (2015). Examining the relationship between creativity and innovation: A meta-analysis of organizational, cultural, and environmental factors. Journal of business venturing, 30(5), 714-731.
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