UNDERSTANDING THE THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ASPECTS OF CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Answer

I am Alex, the Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) of a leading mobile development company in the United States of America. I have 22 months of work experience with the company in the above-mentioned capacity. I made a significant achievement in the company where I built a system to uplift creative and innovative management processes that inspired many employees of the company in the various departments. This system contributed a great deal to creativity and saw a remarkable milestone in the innovations that were made by the staff of the company. This improved inter-departmental competition of innovations and thus saw a mammoth of profit realized by the organization.

Our company has over 20 branches in the United States, and over 10,000 employees cumulatively. There are a number of departments in the company that are interrelated and coordinated to ensure that the company realizes its goals. Some of the key departments are Product Development (Creativity and Innovation), Sales and Marketing, Human Resources, Quality Assurance, Production and Operations.

Over the years, the company has been stagnant in innovations and development and this could be attributed to a less aggressive Product Development department. Generally there was a high sense of laxity in all the departments, since innovation is a combined effort approach. This paper aims to provide answers to the following questions.

Evaluation of Current Creative and Innovative Management Processes

Good organizations are the best at adopting innovations. Innovations are far more better than inventions since they instill a culture and attitudes that encourage new concepts and risk attached with those concepts. If a company puts a lot of emphasis on innovations, it will save them the costs of investments (Trott, 2008).

Managerial innovations are essential in propelling employees to innovate. The common innovation approaches focus on product and process. Product innovations can be in the creation of new products with different features or increasing the physical features and the performance of old products and services (Trott, 2008). On the other hand, process innovations are changes in the way products or services are made or distributed. Process innovations usually have an impact on manufacturing and implementation of robotics.

Leading others to positively embrace innovation and change in your organization

My presentation on cultural differences and necessary collaboration that can influence processes to support innovations made the staff to approach me with stories about innovations in the organization, but could not be given an opportunity to further their innovations.

Innovation techniques and approaches are different in many companies because of the nature of the products and services produced. One important thing to be noted is that managers of an organization should give innovative staff the necessary support to explore their innovations, rather than hindering them from furthering them (Trott, 2008). As the Chief Innovation Manager, I ensured that the staffs are trained on the innovation process, and as well giving them time to explore their ideas.

Mission and Vision Statements and Their Influence in Innovation Management

In today’s dynamic economic situation, most successful businesses meet their mission and vision. The mission and vision statements of our company capture creativity, innovation and continuous improvement. By aligning our company with the mission and vision statements, we have realized enormous profit, growth and the company has been able to outpace competitors. All this has been successful through embracing a culture of innovation. A good idea developed in an organization, when seized can to a greater extent be beneficial to the organization. Innovation is a very important practice for the success of the organization in the future (Chan & Khai, 2008).

Improvement Idea, Risks and Benefits

After thorough and careful research, the management of our company, I included, took a significant step to correct its pricing position with The Big Price Drop and, later on, acted decisively to address the performance in the market. The benefits of this approach were: increase in sales by 50%, increase in market share of the products of our company and also the number of staff recruited rose significantly thus improving the leaving standards. There was an overall increase in the company’s performance.

The risks that were associated with this decision were allocation and channeling of money towards investments, ever-changing political and socio-economic climates and also the company had to acquire more infrastructures so as to put up more facilities (Chan & Khai, 2008).

Change process you experienced in near past

Stakeholders and how were they affected by this implementation

The stakeholders were the business owners, top management and staff of the company. My implementation of the innovation process challenged them to support and encourage a culture of creativity and innovation in the organization.

Motivation of stakeholders to support my idea

I presented to them the benefits that come with accepting innovations from the employees of the organization; one of them being increased profits.

Rationale to persuade stakeholders

I gave them an example of Terry, a risk taker who frequently took risks in his business; and after numerous attempts in innovations, his business grew ten-fold. He realized huge profits and stood out amongst his competitors.

Communication of idea to stakeholders

I communicated my idea to them through presentations and emphasizing on realistic and tangible examples.

Feedback from stakeholders

After careful considerations of the benefits of the idea, they embraced it and agreed to support the innovation.

Barriers to the implementation of a creative and innovative management idea in your organization

Some common barriers I encountered were:

The creative individual myth: I emphasized on not over-relying on creative individuals only, but focusing on mobilizing all employees to innovate.

The new-product myth: I ensured that executives view product innovations as important but not critical to business success (Chan & Khai, 2008).

The break through idea myth: I made them understand that having the idea itself was not sufficient. So much is needed to be done to realize success in the innovation (Nauwelaerts, Antwerp & Hollander, 2012).