Week 1
“Towards a multidisciplinary definition of innovation”
Introduction
The paper focuses on innovation within business organizations and environments.
Organizations need to innovate in response to changing customer demands and lifestyles and
to capitalize on opportunities offered by technology and changing marketplaces, structures
and dynamics.
Schumpeter, 1950 argued that organizations should innovate in order to renew the value of
their asset endowment.
In this article, though, the focus in one defining innovation.
Zahra and Covin argued that innovation “is widely considered as the life blood of corporate
survival and growth”. Bessent et al: “Innovation represents the core renewal process in any
organization. Unless it changes what it offers the world and the way in which it creates and
delivers those offering, it risks its survival and growth prospects.”
Innovation is tightly coupled to change, as organizations use innovation as a tool in order to
influence and environment or due to their changing environments. However, it may involve a
wide range of different types of change depending on the organization’s resources,
capabilities, strategies and requirements.
There is a problem, however, with a clear definition on innovation. The purpose, therefore, of
this article is to develop understanding of the concept of innovation and to arrive at an
integrative definition, based on a content analysis of previous definitions.
Literature review
A few examples of definitions of organizational innovation are given, where some emphasize
different aspects of innovation and others are dedicated to a discipline.
Findings and discussion
Out of the analysis, attributes were found. These are defined as following:
Nature of innovation refers to the form of innovation as in something new or
improved.
Type of innovation refers to the kind of innovation as in the type of output or the result
of innovation (product, service)
Stages of innovation refers to all the steps taken during an innovation process which
usually start from idea generation and end with commercialization.
Social context: refers to any social entity, system or group of people involved in the
innovation process or environmental factors affecting it.
Means on innovation refers to the necessary resources (e.g. technical, creative,
financial) that need to be in place for innovation.
Aim of innovation: the overall result that the organizations want to achieve during
innovation.
On the basis of these, a diagrammatic definition of “innovation” is proposed down below.
The flow is not supposed to be actual or ideal, or linear. The six components of the model
also indicate various starting points within the innovation process.
, Based on this, a definition is
proposed: Innovation is the
multi-stage process whereby
organizations transform ideas
into new/improved products,
service or processes, in order
to advance, compete and
differentiate themselves
successfully in their
marketplace.
Conclusion and recommendations
There needs to be a general definition of innovation, the many different defintions create
confusion. Based on the content analysis, the authors propose a succinct and arguably
intuitive textual definition of innovation.
Week 1
“Strategic entrepreneurship: Creating competitive advantage through streams of
innovation”
Managing tension for competitive advantage
The challenge of continuous and dynamic change is affecting firms across multiple industries.
It is important to create a more attractive value proposition, which makes it hard for
traditional manufacturers.
The challenging nature of competing in a global environment creates several tension-filled
questions: Ex., In what market should we compete? These kind of questions have the
potential to create tensions in today’s firms.
What is important in this article is the need for a firm to learn how to simultaneously exploit
today that which it does well relative to its rivals, while also exploring to determine what it
needs to do to be successful in the future.
Introducing strategic entrepreneurship
Strategic entrepreneurship is a term used to capture firms’ efforts
to simultaneously exploit today’s competitive advantages while
exploring for the innovations that will be the foundation for
tomorrow’s competitive advantages.
Based on literature/experience, the authors believe that effective
SE helps a firm position itself that it is capable of properly
responding to the types of significant environmental changes that
face many of today’s organizations, and it helps the firm develop
relatively sustainable competitive advantages.
Continuous innovation is at the core of what firms can achieve as
a result of balancing exploitation and exploration.
The challenge of strategic entrepreneurship
Firms find balancing it difficult, there are several reasons for this.
But, in short, although SE has great promise as a contributor to
sustainable competitive advantages, the complexity of the
