It seems so crazy to think that just 7 weeks ago we were working on
Milestone One! For Milestone One, I came to the conclusion that I
wanted the company to follow discontinuous innovation. Although,
when first presented with the scenario, I was drawn to incremental
innovation. Having a finance background, my typical decision-making
process always falls heavily on what type of monetary impact
something will have. Therefore, the fact that incremental innovation
had significantly lower upfront costs than discontinuous innovation
seemed more attractive to me. I decided to put my initial thought
process aside, and attempt to look at things from a market
perspective. The incremental innovation process would allow for the
company to integrate existing technologies into its vehicles. Whereas
with discontinuous innovation, the company would prepare an
entirely new product based on new research and technology. If I was
a customer with a competitor, I would not feel inclined to switch
automotive companies if the products were also existing at the
current company I was with. As a result, I believe it would be much
harder for our company to capture additional market share. On the
other hand, if our company created a product that none of our other
competitors had on the market, customers might feel more
persuaded by our company and leave their current automotive.
After assessing all the processes for managing innovation, I decided it
was in the company’s best interest to follow the Agile Approach. The
first reason was because of the fact that a company is able to save
10-40% more time when following this approach. This is achieved by
implementing short problem-solving cycles where the team
addresses individual projects. In order for our company to attempt to
catch up to our competitors, it is imperative that we act as quickly as
possible. Another deciding factor was the testing aspect of the
approach. Throughout each cycle, the products are tested on the
market and redesigned appropriately. This is ideal for successful
innovation because the company will already have a sense of
whether a product will succeed on the market before it gets to the
final stages of production.
Finally, my major recommendation on how to improve the
organization structure to promote a climate for innovation was to
remove the input from the top of the hierarchy and replace it by
hiring a Chief of Innovation Officer. One issue I found with the
matrix structure was how all decisions had to go through executives
and that communication was slow. As a result, it would delay the
innovation process, along with preventing an innovative environment
to cultivate among the team. Appointing a Chief of Innovation
Officer to sign off on all decisions would allow for a quicker
communication channel. Therefore, enabling the team to
continuously work on projects and getting them to the market
quicker.
I am curious to know if others think that a Chief of Innovation Officer
would help or hurt the climate for innovation.
