Innovation
Innovation is an important concept to understand as a manager and for an organisation as a whole. Used in the correct manner, innovation can give an organisation the competitive advantage they need to be a success in their market. Firstly, it is useful to look at innovation in general. Naylor (1999) says ‘innovations are ideas that are developed into new products or processes. They result in changes that customers recognise as new.’ Dess et al (2007) describes innovation as ‘using new knowledge to transform organisational processes or create commercially viable products and services.’ Put in even simpler terms, innovation is ‘the process of making improvements by introducing something new’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation). Therefore I believe the two words that sum innovation up are ‘process’ and ‘new’. Innovation is a process and there theories and models that I will evaluate in this essay. Innovation also has to be something new that an organisation can use as an advantage.
In general terms there are two types of innovation. Radical innovation evokes major departures from existing practices. They can give a firm a strong competitive advantage and have the ability to revolutionise a whole industry. Radical innovation often has the ability to change the way we live and make other products obsolete. For example, the telephone and fibre optics improved communications. Businesses no longer had to use letters as often and the speed of communication changed rapidly. If an organisation discovered how to use this technology, or were the first to invent this technology, then it would give them an advantage in terms of communication with suppliers, customers and internally. Incremental innovations enhance existing practices or make small improv ...