Product Innovation Management - Essay Example

Managed innovation The products' life cycle is drastically becoming smaller with time in comparison to the past. It is quite notable that in the technological devaluation of the products is moving at a high speed especially in the information technology industry. In a short span, a lot of changes are evident, and this brings about the need to be creative. Majority of the companies try to keep up with the competition by, bringing up new product into the market before their competitors. This increases their sale thus maximizing their profit. Competition brings in the need for companies to be innovative so as maintain and improve their market position. For a company to achieve all this, it must know how to identify the correct innovation management tools, which are of exceptional significant in realizing its goals. The key to a better innovation process is management of the innovation process. What is innovation? Does managed innovation promote innovation process? What are the gains and losses of managed innovation? The term innovation refers to a process of transforming plans into products to increase customer’s value. Innovation process is the key to success of a company. The need to rise to the top is the main reason why many American companies have ended up falling in love with the innovation idea. It is notable that there are vast dangers that arise with the innovation process. Majority of the companies view innovation as an idea that only benefits the company and thus causing them to keep innovating in all fields of the company. However, innovation is a costly process, disruptive and difficult. It is essential to consider both the cost of innovation and the benefits that it will bring so as to place innovation and innovators at the right places. For a company like Google, it took years to gain its current status in the world. Good management strategies have enabled Google to be on the forefront in innovation. An example of strategy that the management has embarked on is strategic patience and endurance. Strategic patience is strategies of letting time take care of at least part of the process. Throughout the years, Google has remarkably shown strategic patience in all its sectors (Lyer and Davenport 126). Through this strategy, Google has managed to achieve a lot by embarking on ventures involving television and radio advertising, social networking, online productivity, online payments, mobile phone operating systems, blogging, and many more information domains. There are numerous management tools that Google has not yet developed, but through this strategy it has managed to acquire such tools from other companies. These tools include YouTube for online video, Picasa for photo management, DoubleClick for web ads, urchin for web analytics; now Google Analytics, Keyhole for satellite photos; now Google earth. If it were not for its strategic patience, Google would still be dragging behind. The short term goal of the company is not as necessary as the long term goal. It will take approximately three hundred years to reach its goal of organizing the world’s information. Rewarding of employees is another managerial concept that has enabled many companies to scale higher than expected. Financial reward and honorary are some of the ways that different companies uses to motivate upcoming entrepreneurs and innovators (Ireland and Hoskisson 78). What most of the innovative employee want is to see their idea nurtured to become a reality and their effort rewarded. The top most companies have been on the forefront in rewarding outstanding entrepreneurial achievements hence motivating them to work extra hard to achieve more. All these achievements made are for the better of the company. On the other hand, it is of concern to note that not all innovations that succeeds. Some fail and how the company handles those cases are as relevant as dealing with success. Innovative companies and any other upcoming company should emulate such managerial strategies to improve the status of the company and grow economically and knowledge wise. Before releasing of any product, the managers take time to research and know what their customers want. The technical team takes time to figure out the solutions that the users and advertisers are willing to pay for and not just coming up with new products that would not sell (Rognerud 83). This process does not create a perfect product; it creates a lot of potential products that Google releases to the market and allows its customers to decide which product is the best. For example, the Google team is well aware of the exceptional competition there is between them and their competitors. When they cannot come up with a product that their customers want they buy it from other companies to keep their customers thus maximizing profit. Therefore, they have managed to identify their playing field and worked hard to maintain their status. This was achievable through the use of a search engine that dominates the internet and creation of an advertising system that monetizes web pages better than any other system. On the other hand, with all the benefits that come with managed innovation it has its own disadvantages. Top on the list is the cost incurred by companies so as to manage the innovation processes. The innovation managers bring in a new idea, which may end up as a failure. This numerous failure ends up coasting the company millions of dollars annually (Trott 79). Managers involved in this process may be forced to cut down the number of employees so as to maximize profit. In some cases, the employees still retain their jobs but they have a hard time adapting to the strict rules and regulations. This lowers employees self esteem and thus lowering their morale to work. Innovation managers may end up causing disruptions to the outside world without knowing it. This happens when these innovation managers try to change how business runs. These changes end up breaking down the relationship between the company, its partners and customers. Majority of the innovators are not comfortable with the rules and regulations set by the innovation management. The work of an innovation manager is to make sure that innovators are focused on the right area and not to dictate duties to the innovators. Sometimes the innovation managers want innovation to take place in all sectors of the company, but they do not realize that not every worker is ready to respond innovative demands (Little 45). They fail to see the problems that may arise when they push everyone to innovate thus leading to devaluation of competent employees. This may end up causing a number of competent employees to quit their job thus reducing the man power of the company. The production output goes down with a decrease in number of employees and thus the expected sales and profit is not realized. It is essential to note that all companies face the challenge of innovation, and trying something new and not succeeding is part and parcel of the innovation process. Achievements made by leading or upcoming companies do not happen overnight. It takes time, hard work, endurance, patient, commitment and team work for any company realization of its goals. This and many other factors enable innovative companies to stay at the top of the market and remain competitive over the years. All employees work together despite their education qualification. The important thing is the innovative idea one has and not the level of education that they managed to achieve. With proper management, innovative process can be of great benefit to a company. However, poor innovative management can lead to the downfall of a company. Works Cited Ireland, R D., Robert E. Hoskisson, and Michael A. Hitt. Understanding business strategy: concepts and cases. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning, 2008. Print. Little, Blair. "From The Editors." Journal of Product Innovation Management 1.3 (1984): 137-139. Print. Lyer Bala and Thomas H. Davenport. "Reverse Engineering Google’s Innovation Machine - Harvard Business Review." Harvard Business Review Magazine, Case Studies, Articles, Books, Pamphlets - Harvard Business Review. (2008). Web. 20 May. 2013. Rognerud, Jon. Ultimate guide to search engine optimization: drive traffic, boost conversion rates, and make lots of money. Irvine, Calif: Entrepreneur Press, 2011. Print Trott, Paul. Innovation management and new product development. 4th ed. Harlow, England: Financial Times/Prentice Hall, 2008. Print. Read More