Team of people walking through corridor with blue walls from a well lit yellow area representing bright and innovative ideas

Effective Innovation Management in Strategic Planning

By implementing innovation management in strategy planning information, technology-based companies can fortify the strengths of the different departments and facilitate the overall success of the organization.

According to the renowned scholar, Drucker (1985), all successful innovations are direct results of change.

For any development within an organization to occur, changes must get implemented. This advancement is the premises of innovation and systematic advances.

In his paper regarding the practices of entrepreneurship, Drucker discusses the seven sources that he maintains outline innovative opportunity.

Peter Drucker’s seven theories that lead to innovation

  1. unexpected success,
  2. incongruity of fact versus expectation within a market system,
  3. innovation based on a process need,
  4. changes in industrial structure,
  5. demographic shift,
  6. changes in perception,
  7. and new knowledge.

These seven pillars, Drucker argues, are the facets that shape how an organization can facilitate and allow creative and innovative growth.

Kodama (2003), stated that companies have come to a time in which their current efficiency will not yield the results they expected.

In the past, information technology was a reasonably novel concept, allowing for companies to solely focus on the spread of societal knowledge and curiosity of these unheard-of inventions.

However, the same companies have come to a crossroads considering there are at least two others in the same business as them.

They have come to a time in which companies not only need further innovation but structurally sound management.

They also need to become more sustainable as businesses to adapt to their environment and face any technical hurdles.

Now, their only competition is not only a novelty, but also marketing, management, social responsibility, and capitalizing on the advancements of media.

It is when these companies enter this strategic warfare of balancing innovation and preserving a robust internal foundation that they can emerge triumphant as a business with a global reach.

Several factors are influencing the significance of innovation in the future success of organizations.

There are various issues that every organization faces but risking their success by failing to innovate could cost them their status, strength, and reach.

Mitsuru Kodama’s three critical points for innovation

  1. Innovation allows companies to plan out their course of action as a company as well as future trajectories.
  2. By being able to innovate, these organizations can claim unmarked territories and create opportunities for themselves and society at large.
  3. Also, innovation applies to all fields of growing a business.

Along with new products and projects, innovation needs to improve the efficacy of companies.

It can get used to accelerate production, reduce expenditures, and improve marketing, work ethic and motivation.

Finally, innovation catches the attention of the market and is a unique selling point.

Along with the utility of the product, its innovative nature indicates a level of ingenuity that customers prefer to associate themselves with.

The innovative nature of the product will attract customers and innovation will act as a medium through which customers can see this status within the product.

Therefore, the author asserts the advantages of implementing innovation into an organization’s schemes (Baldwin and Von, 2011).

Many organizations have embarked on innovation to improve their competitive advantage. However, without the correct management of change, they may not be successful.

This acknowledgement is the reason why strategic planning needs to incorporate the management of innovation.

John Carter (2020) notes that innovation begins as a concept in mind, but many companies lack portfolio management of these innovative minds.

One of the ways of managing innovation that Carter proposes is having mental models where product developers can approach their work.

The author, therefore, proposes the use of strategic product planning in managing new ideas.

The steps of strategic planning include vision, strategic planning, portfolio planning, roadmaps, priorities, and budgeting.

Similarly, Gary Pisano agrees with Carter that the investment of money and time needs to be a part of the innovation management.

Activities much of the time fade-out, and fruitful trailblazers make some hard memories continuing their exhibition—as Polaroid, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Yahoo, Hewlett-Packard, and innumerable others have found.

Why is it so difficult to assemble and keep up the ability to innovate?

Photo of a man holding a fire-cracker in the dark, looking like he's stressed whilst trying to think of a bright idea.

The reasons go a lot further than the most commonly referred to rationale as the inability to execute.

The issue with advancement improvement endeavors gets established in the absence of a development procedure.

Pisano explains that without innovation management strategy, innovation may become obsolete.

Pisano explains that as the production of any great technique, the way toward building up an advancement system should begin with helping the organization accomplish a practical upper hand.

This competitiveness requires going past very typical all-inclusive statements, for example, “We should enhance to develop,” “We advance to make worth,” or “We have to enhance to remain in front of contenders”.

Those are not techniques. They give no feeling of the kinds of advancement that may matter (and those that won’t).

Pisano, therefore, proses that innovation management strategies should create value for customers, capture the values innovations create, and provide resources that improve innovations.

Carter, on the other hand, explains that long term strategies and budgeting are the keys to innovation management.

It is best practice to interface the yearly essential item arranging framework to a related, shorter-term front-end framework that handles the everyday choices around your arrangement of item ideas.

Winning organizations assume responsibility for their future by making a tight connection between their critical bearing, their item ideas, and spending plans.

What is in question is the eventual fate of your organization’s development from new item presentations.

To conclude, organizations have increased their focus on innovation.

The reason for this is because innovation has proven to provide a competitive advantage through new product designs, improved customer services, and minimizing the costs of production to increase profits.

However, ineffectively managed innovations may not offer the results that a company may be looking for.

For innovations to be productive, strategic planning should offer innovation management ideas.

Some of the management proposals are creating a budget for innovations, availing resources that promote resources, having both long term and short time innovative strategic plans, and having a mental model where innovators can have a reference.

Effective strategic planning for innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)

Lightbulb in the seaside, without electric power, showing the sunset in the middle of the bulb as the light.

Strategic management has got attacked because apparently, it depends on hypothetical goals and not on the real factors of management.

A few writers have made an argument forcefully that formal strategic management systems are especially inappropriate for small firms.

The arguments state that small companies have neither the management nor financial resources to indulge expanding strategic management procedures.

It could be dangerous for small organizations working inside the environment of high innovation enterprises where conditions change so quick that environmental estimating gets good for nothing and long-range planning can get questioned.

This argument brings up the critical question about the job of the innovators in creating strategic planning inside small high-tech firms, where management is frequently biased towards specialized controls, for example; science and engineering instead of marketing and general business management expertise.

Proponents of strategic management in small firms have proposed that the kind of planning utilized will be dependent upon their phase of development, that this action will advance and become progressively formal and advanced over the lifecycle of a business.

As the activities and supporting functional areas of a company become complex, planning will require different stages from its initial beginnings as straightforward financial related plans and spending plans, through to estimate based planning, or remotely arranged planning.

Planning an organizations future instead of reacting to changes makes a significant difference

It is frequently argued that a business must make meaningful progress towards a strategic direction and use increasingly modern planning procedures as the company seeks to guarantee the future endurance and long-term accomplishment of the organization. However, it has been noticed that the motivation to think and act strategically could just be brought about by an emergency inside the organization.

The strategic planning is significant and most likely will turn into a standard part of the collection of public planners.

Strategic and innovative planning approaches developed in private must be applied with care and caution to the open public.

Useful advancements, particularly those that increase the effectiveness in the delivery of management services and improve responsiveness to public requirements, evoke a positive reaction.

Innovations involve precise changes as others adopt them.

There are six types of key policy dimensions that are considered necessary for developing innovative entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship.

The six key necessary steps for innovative development in SMEs

1) Access to Finance

It states that the given policy dimensions are mainly concerned with proper access to the capital needed to establish and initiate the business. The different sources of finance that can be useful for the entrepreneur get identified in terms of debt financing, business angels, venture capital and certain other kinds of funding. This further includes the options for entering and exiting the market. The finance plays a vital role in the creation, growth and survival of the new innovative ventures. This is because proper access to funding helps a business to invest in a creative project with high productivity to meet the demand of the market.

2) Access to knowledge

The dimension related to experience includes the knowledge related to private, academic and public awareness that supports the innovative entrepreneurial activity. The technological cooperation between organizations, university-industry interface along with investment in innovation and R&D investment are all included under adequate access to knowledge. The Internet and Communication Technologies (ICT) and intellectual property systems are also covered under access to knowledge. Proper access to knowledge is crucial for innovative entrepreneurship as it is the primary source for innovation-driven entrepreneurial opportunities.

3) Market environment

Innovative entrepreneurship deals with multiple market aspects of development, for example, it includes access to a domestic market, access to the global market, along with the level of competition, market regulations related to the product, and public procurement. The access to the market and its development is considered essential for innovative entrepreneurship, as it enables the business to identify the opportunities that can result in the future success and failure of the company.

4) Access to skilled labor

The policy dimension related to labor deals with the conditions that are required for obtaining highly skilled human capital by the business entrepreneurs. This involves the policies that significantly affect the cost of recruitment and termination along with the cost associated with immigration and procurement of skilled labor.

5) Regulatory framework related to innovative entrepreneurship

This dimension is concerned with the public policies and regulations of the government that can influence the innovation and early-stage development of new organizations, for example, the administrative objectives of innovation management

6) Entrepreneurial capabilities and culture

This dimension mainly accounts for cultural and societal infrastructure, for instance, attitude towards entrepreneurship, business support infrastructure and the experience and relevant entrepreneurship skills. This dimension is also useful in determining the capacity for identification of opportunities, the successful running of new businesses, and even driving innovation for learning and adapting to the changing circumstances. Moreover, culture also affects innovative entrepreneurship by influencing the number of individuals who become entrepreneurs.

From my observation, business organizations and entrepreneurs face multiple challenges while introducing effective innovation management.

The entire process of innovation management is affected. It can cause problems if significant mistakes get made in the initial period, or crucial decisions do not get made at the right time.

Thus, the following success factors are required to be considered an effective and innovative business entrepreneur or intrapreneur.

The three common traits of highly innovative leaders

1) Strategic orientation

In the absence of strategic direction regarding the innovation activities, there is a lack of direct vision regarding the path to success. This blindness makes it difficult for people who are in charge of the innovation to assess the outcomes of the innovation management for making the correct decisions. Thus, the strategy regarding innovation management is required to get defined based on future opportunities, challenges, trends and risks associated.

2) Clear allocation of responsibilities

As the innovation process gets regarded as a highly interdisciplinary process, the innovation management requires the adequate involvement of the various functional areas and employees so that it can successfully implement the new idea or innovation related to its product and services. Innovation management clearly defines the roles and responsibilities of different individuals in the process of innovation.

3) Management’ commitment to innovation

It is one of the essential success factors for innovation management as the duty of managers from different levels forms the core basis for the innovation management process. The adequate support, budgets and time management are the essential requirements needed for the success of innovation management.

To reap the economic benefits of new technological inventions by commercializing them on time; to interstate technology into the overall strategic objective of the organization; to get into and out of the technologies faster and more efficiently.

Also, to accomplish technology transfer; to reduce new product development time; to manage large, complex and interdisciplinary projects and systems.

The bullet points mentioned above are three of the most prominent programmatic approaches to innovation currently in use.

It is different from building layers to competitive advantages and does not mean segmenting the market and accommodating customer needs.

Its primary focus is on offering those products and services which create a superior buyer value in existing markets and enables a quantum leap for the firm to develop new markets.

Value innovation also differs from technology innovation; a new technology developed does not become a value of change unless it is cheap enough for mass buyers.

Virtual reality example of disruptive technology

Conclusion

Managing innovation is all about creating firm-specific routines which define its particular approach to the problem and understanding common problems associated with partial views of innovation.

Many companies depend on innovation management in strategic planning. Many authors have pointed out that to achieve effective innovation management, the organization needs to invest in employees, foster creativity, collaborate with stakeholders, and maintain diverse initiatives.

Based on the findings on the research, progress gets made when improving the management of innovation, but several questions remain unanswered.

Innovation management suggests that top managers must be collaborative, plus involve employees in innovation management and strategic planning.

Alongside the information age, the predominance of data innovation and fast mechanical change in pretty much every sector has made new organizations and decimated the individuals who can’t adjust to this change, hence creating a steady requirement for development.

At the time of writing, partner desires are changing quickly, and the regions of duty of the organization are extending step by step.

The organizations confronted with a perplexing and questionable future need to locate another course to keep up their reality and continue their accomplishments.

Organizations should be adaptable enough to react to any change that may emerge and build up a crucial perspective on advancement to support their reality.

The quickly changing serious condition has become a power that propels new thoughts, while in part, decreasing the estimation of conventional technique ideas.

An organization should attempt to systematize advancement by making the proper culture, structure, frameworks and procedures that empower the rise of development.

It is vital to examine innovations unreservedly, including the risks they may pose if pursued.

Organizations should concentrate more on advancements that coordinate all components of development to guarantee supportability, long haul benefit, serious bit of leeway, and broadening.

A key point of view on development will direct an organization to take a glance at the entire framework to create advancements that will energize the system and lead the way to a sustainable yet economical upper hand.

About the Author

Rahul Reddy Nadikattu

Rahul Reddy Nadikattu has a vast experience in the field of information technology and in research with strong knowledge and communication skills developed from academic and professional experience. He is currently serving as an Editorial Board member of several International Journals. He is the Inventor of Novel Economic Social Distancing Smart Device for COVID19 and this device will help in all pandemic situations which has a future scope.

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