Strategic Innovation In Marketing - Essay Example

Following the theory of Pasa and Shugan (1996. pp379), every large and established organization should hire specialist marketing expertise to reduce the risk of mistakes in marketing process thus leading to large damages due to sheer size. The author wishes to discuss some examples of such mistakes that a large & stable organization can commit in absence of specialist marketing expertise. What should be the knowledge & skills, style of working, mentoring and risk-taking attitude of the marketing specialist in order to avoid the risks of mistakes discussed herewith?

This is the first set of discussion points proposed by the author. Woodman and Sawyer et al. (1993. pp309-310) presented "enablers" of innovation and creativity in an organization that finally leads to organization-wide creativity. These enablers have been mentioned. The author hereby proposes to discuss how these enablers can be planned and implemented in an organization. Does this require specialist & dedicated skills in an organization – like knowledge managers? This is the second set of discussion points proposed by the author.

Connor (1999. pp1157-1158) justified that short-term strategies essentially are customer oriented and long-term strategies are essentially market-oriented. The author proposes a discussion to justify this. Is this classification applicable on retail markets only or else they are applicable in markets requiring long-term project or service engagements? This is the third set of discussion points proposed by the author.. They proved their hypotheses stating that organization can benefit out of individual creative performance if the group norms support open sharing of information, high risk taking behaviours, reward systems, and employment of organic organizational designs like matrix, collateral group structures, etc.

The researchers argued that organizations can benefit out of the innovations and creative thinking by establishing "Enhancers" that promote them in the individuals & groups - like culture, strategy, structure, resources, rewards, funds, technology, etc. Professor Stephen Brown advocates for use of creativity techniques within an organization like brainstorming (group level), brain mapping (individual level), visualization, attribute listing, etc. Professor Stephen Brown argues that the innovators should imagine needs of customers that are not yet tapped and imagine new innovative offerings that can fulfill them.

Connor (1999. pp1157-1158) argues that the innovations should be a mix of short term strategies as well as long term strategies whereby short term strategies are customer oriented and long term strategies are market oriented. They argued that companies should establish both customer oriented and market oriented strategies. This makes the innovation paradigm more complex as the output need to be an "innovation mix" for the business that can vary with the type of orientation being addressed. Companies with long term planning may be developing more innovative ideas but they cannot survive just by thinking long term as the show will carry on with the help of short term strategies.

Professor Stephen Brown was largely criticizing the customer orientation whereby