For Milestone One, I concluded 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.
