Managing Innovations as a Fundamental Duty of Any Government - Literature review Example

Management of Innovation Management of Innovation Question 7: Government Initiative to foster Innovation Introduction Innovation refers to the process of applying solutions to either meet unarticulated needs or improve on existing market needs. Innovation is achieved through generation of more effective processes, ideas, products and services that resonate with the needs of the government, markets and the entire society in general. Innovation therefore is associated with new and original ideas that break their way in to the society. Innovation can also be termed as the process of converting new ideas or inventions in to great services or products that create or add value to the society and improve the living standards of the society. Innovation involves the application of imagination, initiative or information in order to convert the ideas into useful and valuable products and servicesIn order to qualify as being innovative, an idea or process must meet certain criteria including being economically viable and meeting specific needs. Innovation can broadly be categorized in to two main groups namely evolutionary and revolutionary innovations. Evolutionary innovation also referred to as dynamic and continuous innovation is initiated by advances in information and technology while revolutionary innovations are often new and disruptive in nature, hence referred to as discontinuous innovations. This essay will examine the concept of innovation in detail based on various theoretical frameworks. The essay will endeavor to analyze the strategies and policies used by the US government to foster innovation. The paper will reflect on the theoretical framework of the government initiative to support innovation as well as evaluating the effectiveness of such government initiatives and strategies in supporting and promoting innovation in the society. Innovation has a lot of implications on the government and the whole society in general. Therefore, it is in the government’s concern to support and promote innovation. Innovation has both social and economic implications in the society. Innovation improves the living standards of the people through job creation, information sharing, improving communication and creating new products and services that are aimed at improving the living standards of the people in terms of business, health and education(Chalkidou, et al, 2009). Supporting innovation is one of the ways the government can use to promote development and improve on the economy of the nation. The Government Initiative With Regard To Innovation In the US, innovation has been a major factor for steering the economy of the country. Innovation has led to emergence of some of the largest companies in the country in terms in technology and other aspects of business. The US government’s strategy to support innovation entails a decentralized approach involving different actors who work in collaboration with the government. The various players involved in innovation include several branches of the federal government, universities, public agencies, nonprofit organizations and the private sector. The government initiative aims at promoting innovation through education, and scientific research that is aimed at revealing new knowledge that will help improve the living standards of the people. The government promotes innovation by funding research and encouraging people, especially the youths to come up with new ideas in information and technology. New ideas are appreciated by the government and various other stakeholders through awards and creation of a good environment for new ideas to blossom (Diane,2004). In furtherance of this strategy, the government has out in place various strategies to encourage new ideas that are commercially oriented. The government policy to promote innovation employs a multifaceted approach using both direct and indirect strategies to foster innovation capabilities among American citizens. Direct policies to promote innovation include strategies such as funding research and other great revolutionary ideas and awarding the best innovative ideas. Indirect methods of promoting innovation includecreating an enabling environment for innovative ideas to blossom through enacting appropriate legislation to encourage sprouting of local businesses. The government therefore has various regional and national initiatives as well as having systems in place to assess and evaluate new ideas. Supporting and promoting innovation has been one of the key foundations of the American economy over the years. The existing government, led by President Barack Obama, has been very vocal in encouraging innovation as a way of ensuring sustainable economic growth. The government has an initiative dubbed the Recovery Act fund that supports innovative ideas while at the same time supporting education and other areas such as improving infrastructure in order to create a good environment to foster growth of innovative ideas. The fund has all over 100 billion to encourage support highly innovative ideas. The Recovery Act Fund, alongside the President’s Budget and other executive order and novel regulatory initiative aim at harnessing inherent ingenuity of the Americans to create a solid ground for economic growth. The government broader strategy for supporting innovation aims at creating better quality jobs and ensuring prosperity of the community. The government strategy can be broken down to three main parts namely promoting ideas that lead to investment in the main building blocks of the American society, promoting competition among various markets to encourage productive entrepreneurship and the government acting as a catalyst for a breakthrough of various national priorities through newer ideas (Lundvall, 2010). The first part involves the processes that the government can promote in order to use innovation as factor to drive the economy forward. This entails creating necessary conditions to promote investment in technology and research aimed at improving the physical and human capital available in the country. The government does this through putting in place the necessary physical infrastructure and make education accessible to everybody in the country. Through education, people can be taught entrepreneurship skills (Salge,& Vera,2012). The second part of the government strategy involved promoting a competitive market that will give everybody with an innovative idea to nurture the ideas until it sprouts. Competition will encourage people to come up with their own products and use the available means to reach out to the consumers. The government ensures a competitive environment through promoting exports, allocating resources to promote new and promising ideas, and improving service delivery in the public sector. The government also encourages innovation through catalyzing breakthrough for various national priorities such as reviving the energy sector, developing vehicle technologies, improving healthcare technology and relying on science and technology to harness the emerging challenges of the 21st century. The government encourages citizens to come up with new ideas and ways of improving in all these areas of priority by offering to fund some of the most promising ideas in these areas of national priorities for the government. Theoretical Underpinnings of the government strategy The main strategy of the government in fostering innovation is to offer support to innovators and create an environment through which they can nurture their ideas for the advantage of society. The government therefore seeks to promote innovation as the best way to create better quality employment opportunities thereby improving the living standards of the society. The core objective of the government is to ensure innovation takes root among the citizens through education and other business development avenues where the youths and other individuals can be taught on entrepreneurship skills (Rogers, 2013). This objective and the whole initiative of the government to promote innovation is based on the diffusion of Innovations theory that was put forward by Everett Rodgers in 1962. The Diffusion of innovation theory explains the rate at which innovation takes place as well as elucidating why and how the process of innovation takes place. According to Rodgers, diffusion as used in his theory means the process by which new ideas are communicated and spread throughout the society through various channels to reach out to members of the social system. According to the theory, there are four main elements that influence innovation and these are the communication channels, the social system, time and the innovation itself(Rogers, 2013). Human capital is therefore very fundamental in the spread of innovation in the community. Rodgers states that innovation has widely adopted for it to be self-sustaining in order for it to be effective. There are various categories of people based on how they adopt innovative ideas. These include the innovators, early adopters, the early majority, late majority and the laggards (Rodgers, 2013). The process of diffusion of innovation manifests itself differently in different cultures and disciplines and largely depends on the type of adopters the innovation is reaching out to as well as the decision making process of the innovation. The theory states that innovation is a process that occurs over a specified duration of time. The process involves the innovative ideas spreading from the originator or the innovator to other people in the society who are likely to benefit from the new idea (Huebner, 2005). Some innovative ideas may be easily acceptable to the market while others may take time or they may be rejected completely. The diffusion of innovations theory states that people go through five main steps before finally accepting a new innovative idea. These stages include knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation and finally confirmation (Rodgers 2013). Accepted innovations are then spread to others through the existing communication channels in the society such as the internet, mobile phones among others. The spread of the idea through the society, or the diffusion process is influenced by various factors including social norms like norms, roles of change agents, as well as the types of decisions that the innovators make in the process (Wejnert,2002). According to Rodgers (2013), diffusion of innovations takes five steps namely awareness, interest, evaluation, trial and adoption. The innovation idea may be rejected at any stage in the diffusion process. During the knowledge stage, an individual is first introduced to the innovation but they still lack more information regarding the innovation. In the persuasion stage, the innovative idea becomes more interesting to most people who become actively engaged in seeking more information about the idea. The next stage is the decision process where individuals reexamine the new idea, weighing its pros and cons and finally making a decision as to whether to accept or reject the innovation. In the implementation stage, people apply the innovative idea, process or product to different situations for which it is intended in order to assess the usefulness of the new innovation. This then takes the process to the next stage which is confirmation. In this stage, the people make a confirmation that they made the right decision or choice to embrace the new idea. The theory of diffusion of innovations helps the US government to understand the key players in the process of creating and supporting innovations. The government is also able to understand the key processes involved in innovation, why and how it occurs in order to determine the various areas or stages in the process to help. One of the key areas that the government has sought to ensure based on theory is to make it easy for communication to take place. The government has striven to make sure that communication between innovators and the targeted people in the society are able to communicate effectively through various media such as the internet. This makes it easier for the innovators to convince the public that their innovations will work in their interests. Purpose of the government strategy The main purpose of the diversified strategy of the government to manage innovation is to promote innovation by empowering people to develop new ideas and nurturing those ideas to blossom and reach maturity. The government therefore seeks through this strategy to empower the youths and other people with great ideas to have relevant entrepreneurship skills that will enable them make the right decisions to move their innovative ideas from one level to the next. The government also seeks to encourage people to brainstorm and find solutions for their own social or economic problems through developing innovative ideas through research (Salge, & Vera, 2009). The government does this by supporting and funding research projects as well as reaching out to individuals with great and promising revolutionary ideas and giving them guidance, recognition through awards and giving the individuals a platform to advance their skills and nurture their own ideas. The government also aims to facilitate the process of diffusion of innovative ideas by creating a necessary environment through which innovators can communicate their ideas and pass the to the right people in the market (Diane, 2000). This entails putting in place appropriate structures in terms of communication and other infrastructure to facilitate new businesses. Another great objective of this government strategy is to bring together various players in the both the government and the private sector to work in harmony in order to create an environment necessary for identifying, nurturing and promoting new innovations in the society. Managing innovation is a very huge task that requires the various players to collaborate in order to ensure that the many ideas people have are easily identify and brought to light in order for such innovative ideas to have a significant role on job creation and shaping the socioeconomic lifestyles of the entire society (Maria, 2007). Effectiveness of the Government Initiative The government strategy to understand the basic elements of innovation through the diffusion theory and seek to facilitate the diffusion process by putting in place structures to ensure the communication process is friendly has been a very effective strategy. The strategy entails recognizing the role of various players in the innovation process such as the innovators, communication agents, and funders of the whole process (Strumsky, Lobo, &Tainter, 2010). In order to ensure innovation takes root in the society, it is paramount for the government to bring on board the several stakeholders in the whole process and work on a strategy that is inclusive and recognizes the role played by each stakeholder. New ideas have to be well trimmed in order for them to reach maturity and become the key tenets for future economic development in the country (Mümtaz, 2003). The government ensures there are support for innovation at all levels of the society, in both federal and regional markets and environments. The government recognizes the importance of innovation by partnering with other key player in various disciplines in order to award promising innovators and helping to push their innovations to other people in the society, thereby helping the innovators to break through in to some of themost difficult methods and be able to compete with other products and companies. Conclusion Managing innovations is a fundamental duty of any government as this resonates with the main objectives of the government to improve the living standards of the people. Innovations can lead to a transformation of the people’s lives through job creation, improving service delivery and bringing new products and services to the market (OSullivan, 2002). Among the most innovative ideas come from people with no relevant skills in decision making or business and without proper guidance; such ideas are likely to be unidentified (Frankelius,2009). Government involvement in the management of innovation is necessary because it will put in place appropriate structures to identify new ideas and create a platform for such ideas to blossom. The American government has over the years managed innovations through supporting people with bright and innovative ideas through various government strategies and initiatives including the Recovery Act Funds and the President’s Budget that aim at making funds available to train young people through education and other avenues on the importance of innovation, thus encouraging them to be highly innovative. Reference Chalkidou K., Tunis S., Lopert R., Rochaix L., Sawicki P. T., Nasser, M & Xerri, B. 2009. 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