Organizing for Innovation in a Product Development Project Combining Innovative and Result Oriented Ways of Working – a Case Study

What are creativity, innovation, and design, and how are these concepts important to meeting the objectives of an organization? To understand these concepts they must first be defined. Webster’s dictionary (http://www.merriam-webster.com) defines creativity as the “Ability to produce something new through imaginative skill, whether a new solution to a problem, a new method or device, or a new artistic objects or form. The term generally refers to a richness of ideas and originality of thinking. Psychological studies of highly creative people have shown that many have a strong interest in apparent disorder, contradiction, and imbalance, which seem to be perceived as challenges. Such individuals may possess an

Valve software has crafted a remarkable organization that has a unique organizational structure; in fact the company has literally no management. A flat organizational structure has been shown to improve communication among team members, enhance job satisfaction, and reduce the cost of management that middle-management layers can add to the organization (La Rooy, 2012). Organizational members have complete freedom to design their own projects, teams, work environment, and virtually every aspect of their daily job function. The Valve organization represents an extreme example of a move towards "self-management" and employee "empowerment" that originated several decades ago (Shipper & Manz, 1992). Such structures have shown to assist research and development teams to solve problems and accomplish creative tasks (Misra, 2011). Much research is dedicated to understanding and studying the factors that are associated with the complex notion of the "innovation culture" that can be found within progressive organizations such as Valve (Jucevicius, 2010). Even though the success of the Valve structure is undeniable when its accomplishments are considered through its history one problem that existing in researching such an organization is whether the model (or lack thereof) is sustainable and reproducible. This research will consider if innovation can cascade or build in organizations in different industries and different organizational structures by

Innovations form the main sources of competitive advantages and are always of significance for the growth of a company. Companies or organizations put their greater efforts in improving their performance by finding new ideas and knowledge on the best way of beating their competitors and therefore give satisfaction to their customers. There are various factors involved in the innovation design system which can be either internal or external.

From your reading “Managing for Creativity”, what are key components to enhance creativity? How do the teams compare?

Google: Organizational Methods to Enhance Creativity Name Institution Date Course ABSTRACT The study focuses on the methods that organizations use to enhance creativity. These methods varied considerably from one organization to the other leading to difference in performance. The research also investigates how creativity process determines the eventual organizational performance. In an attempt to improve the level of creativity, organisations use various models and theories. There are three common theories of creativity which include; componential theory of creativity, the instructionist theory and the theory of individual creative action. This research focuses on the componential theory as it is the often used theory by most companies due to its preciseness and clarity. On the other hand, there are two models of creativity which are important in understanding the creative content. These are; Amabile’s Componential Model of the Social Psychology of Creativity and Interactionist Perspective Model of Organizational Creativity. Google is one of the companies that portrays an outstanding creativity. Google’s method of creativity, including their models, focuses on the employees. The creative process begins at the initial stage of hiring their employees. However, they also carry out constant training and coaching. Furthermore, Google support and motivate its employees. INTRODUCTION Rapid change, global competition together the increasingly demanding business

This is the first case study report for the course ED5317: Strategies for Managing Innovation that is based on the Harvard Business School case titled ‘Design Thinking and Innovation at Apple’. The report consists of the following question:

Creativity and innovation are necessary in life, whether it is for evolving and adapting to new surroundings or for pulling a company out of a financial crisis, we use our creative abilities and innovate every day. In order to develop and grow the ability to think creatively, one must first understand where these ideas come from and in what environment innovation flourishes. Steven Johnson, Edward Burger, and Michael Starbird suggest change comes from productive thinking and working collaboratively in a group. Effective thinking can be broken down into five essential elements, while working collaboratively in a group setting allows for different views on the topic at hand creating a stronger more defined product or process.

The Breakthrough Innovation Framework, or BrinnovationTM, incorporates Kotter’s Leading Change model, while emphasizing a framework of innovation (Gupta, 2011). The Brinnovation framework accentuates the abilities and talents of those in the system, with its success depending on a change in the organization’s culture to embrace innovation (Gupta, 2011). The leadership can achieve a transformation in organizational thinking by applying Kotter’s eight-step plan, focusing on creativity (Gupta, 2011).

In the Ted Talk by Linda Hill How to manage for collective creativity, she uses big companies to show how the amount of innovation in a company is determined by the leaders. In her example of google she talks about when g-mail was getting ready to drop and they realized that their website would more than likely crash if they didn’t update it, so they decided to let teams emerge with different ideas themselves. One team believed that they should build on the website they already have and another believed they should start from scratch. They were told to build prototypes to see what worked better, during this process some members of the team went to Dan and said that they didn’t have enough time for two teams to compete, but there was no way

Through the use of search engines provided from journal databases, a variety of sources are used to further describe and explain the concepts involved in this report. A. Chakrabarti’s ‘The Role of Champion in Product Innovation’ provides a solid understanding on the responsibilities of a project champion during each stage of IS implementation, with cases to exemplify real world situations in organisations. It also provides a very detailed description of the qualities that every project champion ought to have. These qualities are also reinforced in ‘Finding a Change Champion’ by A. Kirsch, and also how to remedy some common situations that might occur during projects such as inadequate preparation or over-reliance on vendors. Next, Howell and Shea provides an extremely comprehensive resource that shows the correlation between team performance and champion behaviour in their article ‘Effects of Champion Behaviour, Team Potency, and External Communication Activities on Predicting Team Performance’. This supplements the previous articles mentioned on the qualities needed

In respect to the above transformation many things including the traditional approaches to management had to be altered in the business environment in order to cultivate effective creativity that promotes the survival of the business in a changing globe. Despite the need for creativity there are still many facts hindering creativity. In this essay the author aims to, (1) explain the shifts that have occurred, (2) the different factors that need to be managed in order to enhance the generation of new ideas, products, services and processes, (3) explain the change management process and recognize its impact on the success of the organization.

Amabile, T. M. & Khaire, M. 2008, “Creativity and the role of the leader”, Harvard business review, vol. 86, no. 10, pp. 100.

It is very important that staffs from different backgrounds are engaged in formulating innovative products. In general, the innovation project team should involve the below personnel: •

Effective leaders need to be creative and innovative. Effective leaders need to understand that the blood of the organization which they are leading lays innovation and creativity (Swid, 2015). Creation of new ideas can result in programs which are superior to the already planned or established plans. The responsibility of the leadership is to engage appropriate people in the right times, to the appropriate degree but in creative manner. Employee creativity is also enhanced by leaders who are inspirational. Any business

In today’s knowledge-based economy, innovation has become the principal source of competitive advantages in global business; the success of firms now depends more on their intelligence capability – such as employee creativity – than traditional material assets (Amabile et al., as cited in Zhou, Zhang & Montoro-Sa ́nchez, 2011). The creative capability of individual and collective knowledge workers is the fuel that powers innovation in firms. While creativity leads to the production of new and useful ideas in any domain, innovation is the successful implementation of those creative ideas within an organisation (McLean, as cited in Zhou, Zhang & Montoro-Sa ́nchez 2011). In highly dynamic business environments innovation and creativity have become crucial for creating competitive advantages for the