The Age of Fast Advancing Technology - Coursework Example

The Age of Fast Advancing Technology In the age of fast advancing technology and rapid globalization, the business has become extremely competitive. The organizations need to be highly innovative in their products and approach to maintain a competitive edge over their rivals. The organizations therefore, are adopting various methodologies to manage innovation and new product development. Professor Mitchell says that roadmapping for innovation strategy is ‘prompted by new business, major strategic change or new competitive threat.....develop and maintain roadmaps as part of periodic team meeting’ (Mitchell, Session 5). Recently in MINPD1 course module, a lego car prototype, called CityCar, was developed, which could be programmed to some extent. The students were divided into four groups as per cross functional background of specialized area of study. Each group had developed the prototype of CityCar, which they had demonstrated at an in-house event called Geneva Show. Teamwork has become of the most crucial factors for the successful development and launch of an innovative product. The evaluation of analysis of the teamwork of our group would be carried. Our team comprised of students coming from diverse areas like Physics, Mechanical and Chemical engineering and product design. Each of the members of the team was an expert in his or her field and therefore, everyone expected a highly creative new product which was a prototype of lego car called CityCar. CEO of AXA Ireland believed that ‘all employees could contribute good ideas that would make AXA Ireland more innovative’ (Smart et al. Session 11). Hence, each of the members of the group was capable of creativity. But the team’s performance in the CityCar simulation was not a huge success as despite having a surfeit of new ideas, the team dismally failed to implement those ideas into the simulation exercise. There were many reasons for the lukewarm simulation of the new product. The members were highly motivated and focused and were enthusiastic to work towards our targets with utmost sincerity and enthusiasm. The team had organized the innovation strategy as per the broad criteria: critical performance dimensions; the technology areas that would be crucial for development in future; look at linkages between technology, features and drivers; and resource implications like competence, skills, alliances etc. The main reasons for our team’s mediocre performance was that we lacked leadership who could make concerted efforts for collective decision making that made each of us accountable for the efficient delivery of our aims and objectives. There were not well defined roles and responsibilities which made it difficult to be focused. So there were only ideas and no focused strategy to follow. A team is characterized by the concept of shared leadership which helps to promote smooth functioning of the various processes that help to define team work. A well defined structure of leaders and followers are intrinsic for effective resolution of issues that may arise due different value system, interests or misunderstood information so that team members are sufficiently motivated towards collective goals. Our team was not organized as such and seemed to behave more as a group rather than as a team. The various characteristics are detailed in the following chart (Cousens, Session 12). Team leaders encourage sharing of experiences and promote learning of new technologies and methodologies to improve individual and team performance. Each of the members had a lot of creative ideas but lack of coordination made it difficult to implement them. Team members must realize the importance of coordinated team work and know that together they can achieve goals with more efficiency, timeliness and high performance ratio. Effective team work constitutes one of the most important factors that make valuable contribution of promoting a sense of togetherness and collective responsibility that reflects in the increased output and improved performance of the team. It is for these reasons that good leadership always strives to resolve workplace conflicts and other such barriers that have negative impact on the team performance. The most significant barriers to teamwork are the self interest of the individuals of the team, misunderstood values and conflicting ideologies and value system. Self interest of individuals in the team is highly damaging to the team spirit and it is the first focus point of the leadership that strives to inculcate team spirit among the team members that helps to put team interests over individual interest so that collectively they can contribute towards achieving team targets. Each member was an expert in his field and wanted to take the ultimate credit for the new product and lack of leadership within the team prevented them from giving their best. The team performance on the demonstration of creative ideas was excellent primarily because the members had the experience and competence in the concerned areas. Given the wide scope of innovation in technology and design, the team was able to come up with hugely successful ideas and features that are guaranteed to overwhelm auto lovers. Each member had drawn innovative ideas from his specialized area that would meet the criteria of larger interests of the auto lovers. The contribution of the team, in terms of innovative new product was concerned, was tremendous and together, implementation of those ideas would have generated and produced a prototype which would have met the expectations of the people and auto lovers. But, unfortunately, those ideas could not be implemented because of the misunderstood values and effective communication amongst them. The following chart gives clear indication of the imperatives of an effective team. (Cousens, Session 4) McReynolds said that “conflicts can be an opportunity, to learn about yourself and about others” and workplace conflicts are part and parcel of one’s life. Conflicts provide an opportunity for a better understanding of human nature. It is often observed that poor communication among the workers and administrators lead to conflicting situations. In the present case, the conflicts basically arose during the implementation phase where each of the members wanted his particular idea to be used. Brainstorming sessions were used to generate as many different ideas and opinions as possible. The proactive session was successful in generating creative ideas but failed to resolve the issue of implementing the best of those ideas into concrete shape because of the self interest. Answer 2 Our team had all the necessary criteria of success except an effective leader or team leadership that could streamline the various inputs from the diverse areas so as to develop an innovative new product. Leadership basically refers to people who have the capacity to bring about changes in other people. Leadership is an integral part of human social behavior which is intricately linked with the followers and can be defined as a persuasive communication skill which inspires others to achieve a common goal. Leaders are not pre defined and molded into certain stature. They are people who may be in the position to influence and motivate others to give their best. Team leadership assumes special meaning because it motivates and encourages others to strive towards common goals with renewed enthusiasm. It is equally important that certain basic assumptions about the Team leadership qualities especially which relate to the individual approach of tackling issues and objectives, may create a vast difference to the results achieved. Leadership qualities and traits are not always inherent but they can be cultivated and polished to achieve exemplary leadership. Few of the important traits that a leader must have are: vision; good communication; adaptability towards change; creativity and initiative; positive attitude and commitment; confidence and belief; integrity and ethics; compassion and caring nature. Team leader recognizes the importance of people’s participation in the overall strategy of having collective goals through shared learning. Thus making it an intrinsic part of the work methodology which is characterized by integrated approach of the workers. Effective communication helps to foster good relationship and even make friends of the enemies. Artful communication helps to build bridges and improvise situations which could move towards dangerous outcomes. The need to effectively communicate a message at crucial time facilitates linkages that have vast scope of building relationships in areas that may otherwise seem futile. Effective communication must make people understand and inspire them to act on the basis of understanding of the issues. The members within the team could not resolve the issue of selecting the best few ideas and therefore lagged behind others. In an article from Leader to Leader Journal, Frances Hesselbein has said that ‘Leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do’ (No. 41, 2006). Hence effective leaders are versatile and are adept at exploiting the potential of their followers or workers as per the demands of the situation. A well developed leadership within the team structure would facilitate integration of diverse ideologies and personal conflicts and help inspire and motivate each of them to work together to produce a cohesive output representing the team’s unique objectives and goals. Though the goals and objectives were well defined, they could not be achieved because members could not agree and had conflicting ideas about the implementation. As the Sjostrand and Tyrstrup reaffirm ‘leadership is all about managing creativity’. The new leadership encourages creativity and innovative practices that give a unique perspective to participatory approach of management and employees. The motivating factor of managerial leadership that facilitates adaptability to changing equations, which occur due to rapidly changing environment of emerging business processes, have another very important attribute of recognizing the wide scope of emerging opportunities. The empirical relationship of leaders and the emerging changes are critical for a given situation and therefore, good managerial leadership demands a better informed leader who is capable of taking initiative and at the same time, he is also able to inculcate confidence in his people to move forward. If the team had good leader, they would have been able to select the most novel ideas and implemented them into the prototype CityCar. Christensen and Raynor assert that new leadership recognizes the dissimilarities of approaches and initiatives that different organizations adopt. While studies have shown the disastrous ramifications of blindly following strategies and planning processes of successful companies by new ventures, the need to recognize the inherent differences in policy framework, has become vitally important. They say that companies fail because they tend to follow the theoretical models and assumptions, without making any efforts to alter those models to suit their parameters and value system. Effective leadership recognizes their presence and makes concerted efforts to include or exclude those factors that are detrimental for the growth of the organization. Within the prescribed time limit and amongst the surfeit of creative ideas for unique CityCar, effective team leader would have been able to promote consensus and come up with the winning combination of features for the prototype. Reference Christensen, Clayton M and Ranor, Michael E. (2003). Why hard-nosed executives should care about management theory. Harvard Business Review. September. pp. 67-74. Hesselbein. Frances. (2006). Moving Peter Drucker’s Works and Wisdom Around the World. Leader to Leader Journal, No. 41, summar 2006. Available [18 December 2008]. McReynolds, Marcia. Making Molehills out of Mountains. Listening House Available: [18 December 2008]. Mitchell, Rick. Session 5. Innovation and Creativity in Industries. Cranfield University. Sjostrand, S and Tyrstrup, M. 2001. Recognized and unrecognized managerial leadership in invisible management – The social construction of leadership. S Sjostrand, J Sandberg and M Tyrstrup (eds.). Thomson. pp 1-27. Smart, Palie et al. Session 11. Managing Strategic Innovation. Cranfield University. Cousens, Alan. Session 14. New Product Development. Cranfield University. Read More