MBA 580_ Discussion_ Week 10_ Post 8

It seems so crazy to think that just 7 weeks ago we were working on Milestone One! 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

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 a company can save

10-40% more time when following this approach. This is achieved by implementing short

problem-solving cycles where the team addresses individual projects. 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 chose discontinuous innovation for Milestone One. My strategy was to introduce a radical

limited costs, and had a definable timeline. I quickly decided that it would be wise to switch to

the lean method as necessary as it would allow innovation to occur at a more rapid pace. The

desired timeframe for discontinuous product launch was shortened due to our competitor

releasing a prototype earlier than expected.

e e e e I chose to implement an organizational structure similar to Lockheed’s Skunk Works.

Our current organizational structure stifled creativity and innovation and therefore would not

be ideal to reach our goal of discontinuous innovation. A permanent cross functional team

with a degree of autonomy would allow creative ideas to flow more freely and would ideally

lead to more and better innovation.

My recommendation favored a Discontinuous for various reasons. The Company had a 10-

year projected market share of 1.98%, the lowest market share projection in the industry; the

CAGR is also the lowest (Comparative Growth Data, n.d.). The current path would not benefit

from incremental innovation at a paced required to create a significant traction to fight for

competiveness since our competitors are already ahead in the industry.

The Discontinuous approach will muster resources and create a viable business plan for new

ideas into a final product to be launched and pull, grab, and add incremental ideas that can be

approach. My recommendation is intended to foster communication and ideas that encourage

the teams to push their ideas through the stage gate process rather than discouragement

because of latent processes.

had to consider. One of the things I had to take into a LV count was what incremental and

discontinuous innovation meant. I had to consider what it would mean for the business and

what it would mean for what we were trying to accomplish. Also, I considered what would

cost more money. I think we should always someway somehow think about the money that the

business will be spending and how much the business will be making when it comes to the

type of innovation. Since the big goal is to make innovations that will satisfy the people and

grow our products the best way, I thought this would happen was to use agile product

approach. This will allow the company to use the team they already have in place. It will also

allow the company to get out ideas in a shorter time span as well. Finally, my

recommendations I believe support a healthier and a climate for innovation. I believe that

because my recommendations will give the people not only the higher ups a say in what is

going on in the innovative process. Also, there will be better communication between the

higher ups and the employees which will help spark more creativity in the innovations. Mixing

the two will help the organization get a good grip on what the people want because you are

innovation and were going to fall behind due to competitors coming up with radical new

products and new substitutes in a market. If they used discontinuous innovation, they can still

use incremental innovation as well so it seemed like the best choice.

What were your reasons for selecting the processes for managing innovation you used in

Milestone Two?

I selected a hybrid approach for managing innovation. I chose this approach because I didn't

think one approach on its own was the best choice for the company. The hybrid approach I

went with was an approach that would incorporate the Stage-Gate and Agile methods. The

stage-and-gate method would provide the structure while the agile method provides speed and

agility which I believe is useful for innovate environments. My work uses the agile method

and it has been very beneficial to the new projects we have been working on.

How do your recommendations for the organization structure promote a climate for innovation

in your project? One of my recommendations for the organization structure was to provide

slack resources and resource support which would promote innovation. I also recommended

having open communication forums which would encourage greater collaboration and

innovation. They can also give all employees time to innovate like 3M does. Their innovation

teams can also be changed to be more autonomous (like the skunk works team) and free from

the control of senior managements which would allow them to be more creative and speed up

response time and production. (Bennet, nod) I also recommended that leadership as a whole

need to be onboard and encouraging, they need to provide the space and resources to innovate

could result in lack of trust and confidence from employees. I choose Incremental strategy

because I believe it’s a strategy that we already have experience on and that can serve us as an

advantage. If we focus on the risk of selecting this strategy which include, keeping track of

market changes and demands, understanding current and new competitors’ strengths and

weaknesses we could successfully improve our innovation with IoT technology.

As mentioned in the CTO brief, our company is already falling behind in different areas and a

strategy is needed sooner than later. Selecting the Agile Process gives employees the

opportunity to have more freedom to build a product that can quickly be brought into the

market. As we receive feedback from our customers we can adjust as necessary to ensure it

meets customer needs. The goal is for functional teams that can develop these products rapidly

to give us a clear understanding on our customer demands and how we can become more

efficient.

The company clearly lacks a creative mindset currently. Through the Agile Process and cross

functional teams that are fully committed to each project will allow team members to use the

company’s resources where they can be open minded and apply their own ideas in developing

a new product. Following a guideline like Skunk Works, our processes can inspire our team

environment where they can freely express how they feel with the current challenges in their

will help the company be able to capitalize in this fast-growing segment. I viewed

discontinuous innovation as the most feasible way for the company to produce a vehicle that

was on par with the offerings of the competition.

agile method would allow the project to move at the quickest pace possible whilst accounting

for quality. The process allowed for evaluation of progress on a regular basis. In my opinion

the structure of the agile processes smaller scale “sprints” would allow for the project to be

nimble and better react to any changes that could arrive in the middle of the project such as

competitors introducing a new feature in their vehicles that we could reasonably incorporate

and implement in our own. My rationale was that this process would get the best vehicle

manufactured as quickly as possible whilst also retaining a degree of reactive ability to adjust

the project if needed.

The recommendations that I made for the changes to the organization structure were to create

a small permanent standing team outside of the current matrixed structure. I proposed the team

have a clean non matrixed report structure (each employee has one manager report) that rolls

autonomy and enabling decisions to be made quickly which reduces project stoppages at such

stressful and chaotic. I share this as a point of validation of the video a few weeks ago that

stated the importance of perseverance, Never Give Up! Keep moving forward and do the best

you can. That was the best message for me at that time to keep moving forward and now here

we are at week 10.

What was your strategy for choosing incremental or discontinuous innovation in Milestone

One?

I looked at both options and determined that it would be best to learn from what the company

does well and capitalize on building products that the customer want. Using an agile approach

to the innovation process will allow for the product to get into the hands of

customers/stakeholders faster and ensure it is what they want.

Incremental innovations allow the company to develop what is currently in place and enhance

measures to ensure the technology meets or exceeds customer desire. e Rather than leaping into

the technology blindly, we can look at current abilities and use expertise in technology to

continue to grow in the sensor development and research. The benefits outweigh the risk for

best options to connect to other technology and provide the customer exactly what they are