Innovation is increasingly being considered as a core competency that organizations must develop. Companies that consistently innovate don’t rely on chance; they address innovation in a systematic way.
Drawing on a wide range of literature on innovation develop a framework that you could use to assess an organization in terms of innovation. Describe your framework and justify the critical elements (with reference to the literature).
The next step is to apply this framework to a particular organization of your own choice. Where are the gaps? What is being done well, what areas need to be improved? Note: This organization may be your own workplace or an organization you would like to work for.
Note: If your chosen organization has a focus on services make sure that you choose literature that is appropriate for service innovation.
If you choose to focus on a service, you will need to look at the literature on service innovation but you may still also find useful and relevant material on innovation as it relates to physical goods.
From your reading on innovation, start selecting key elements for your framework, choosing those most relevant for the chosen organization.
Start thinking about how you will assess your chosen organization in relation to the various elements of the framework you create.
This assessment task is designed so that you can utilize your work experience in conjunction with your critical literature work on innovation to design a theoretical framework to conduct an audit of your workplace and make recommendations for change.
to be able to critically reflect on the role of innovation in organizations and the challenges companies face in new product development.
to be able to synthesize innovation literature to develop a theoretical framework for use in an audit of innovation practices of a specific organization and make recommendations for improvement.
Integration and originality in the selection and handling of relevant theory to build and justify framework. The wide range of sources integrated in a systematic way. Insightful and appropriate selection of theory from a good range of sources to systematically build and justify framework. Good selection of theory from a range of sources to build an adequately justifies useful framework. The framework developed but limited research or framework incomplete in areas. Lacks justification of choice of elements.
Identifies and discusses areas of strength and weakness in innovation capabilities. Discussion of some relevant issues in theory and organisational content in the evaluation. Simple discussion of areas of strength and weakness in innovation capabilities. Works reflects limited engagement with organisational context or relevant theory. Not all aspects of the task completed in sufficient detail. Poor evaluation.
Significant gaps in knowledge of innovation and lack of understanding of the company’s capabilities.