At a time when globalization, need for transparency and new technologies have assumed the center stage in dictating the business environment, performance and consumer satisfaction patterns, innovation has become the best platform for adapting the unpredictable market environment.
Numerous changes have been experienced in the global business arena and also in the recent years due to the aforementioned factors to a point where it becomes almost impossible to identify the position of a business in a market, its competitors and even profitability.
This poses tremendous risk among managers in devising business strategies due to the levels of change and unpredictability of the market environment, as explored in the article We live in an era of risk and instability.
Earlier on, the world market was relatively stable and as such, developing business strategies using traditional approaches enabled a business to perform extremely well.
Adopting traditional approaches was effective in linking producers, traders, and consumers with greater efficiency, thereby making a business to exploit resources and capabilities a market has, occupy attractive niche, achieve a dominant scale and competitive edge.
However, it is clear that the need for greater transparency, the coming of new technologies and globalization have made sustaining resources, positioning and competitive advantage unmanageable.
Innovation for competitiveness is fast replacing the traditional methods with new methods that are much convenient and easy to execute. Due to advancement of technology, business energy has been propelled by easier capacity to simulate new products designs and easier interlink between the local and international markets.
Market competitiveness as dictated by the current trends entails the ability to remain highly peculiar in design and approach to reduce imitation and therefore reduce overall competition. This consideration has over the years seen major companies fast raise their image at the market while others still relying on traditional approaches take a nose dive into heavy losses.
Innovation becomes the key in achieving this competitiveness. This calls for a management that is capable of reading signals of change in strategies, processes and business models and acting on them via proper technology and IT systems.
The article The innovators solutions, creating and sustaining successful growth by Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor sheds immense light on how to develop effective business strategies that will beat competitors and ensure growth in innovation. One interesting piece of information raised in the article is the introduction of disruptive strategy innovation to counter leading, established and incremental firms’ competition.
I noted that the authors raise two types of technologies that exist among competitors depending on the circumstance of a business. They include sustaining and disruptive technologies.
The latter is essential for outwitting incumbents in a market arena by producing and selling convenient and simpler products at a lower price to unattractive and new customers while the former is the opposite in that better products are made and sold at a high to attracted customers, a practice by well-established companies.
The article presents an insight into an organization’s demand for articulation of innovation models in its operations to generate the correct status for higher productivity.
In my view, the disruptive model as the authors point aligns a business activities with technology that is highly multi-interactive, where the business strategies are drawn with reference to enhanced technology strategies engrossed in business operations and activities that serve customer needs.
The model is set to meet the trajectories that many markets require in terms of new and improved products. As such, it offers a clear system for meeting current customer needs, unlike the sustainable model designed to achieve the highest possible future targets in terms of productivity and profitability.
I have also noted that business and innovation have become inextricably linked in generating value to organizations, thus needs to collaborate closely and share approaches that reinforce each other.
The use of disruptive innovation as a way of bridging the gap between businesses and competing favorably with giants in the market is not enough in ensuring optimization of business and profitability. A business needs to completely integrate innovation in its operations since by effectively leveraging and using them in producing products that reach diverse customers, a business ensures value maximization.
I have come to realize that the alignment of business and innovation is important and therefore needs to be carried out throughout the entire process of developing products, marketing and selling in order to enhance competitiveness. Innovation provides crucial input to business and strategic plans as assessment of risks and dependencies are all associated with competitiveness.
Innovation involves people, communication and quality of products. All these are focused towards achieving desirable outcomes in terms of market position and profitability. This appears to correlate well with the article entitled When should a process be art and not science? The article stands out as an important guideline towards optimizing business performance.
The authors seek to indicate that a business process should be more artistic bearing in mind that it offers employees an opportunity to gain and use their skills and appreciate culture. They note that standardization is scientific in nature and thus reduces accountability and creativity.
I have learned that positive work as a form of art cannot be realized by an organization without assimilation of the necessary change demands. Globalization has made the current work system to be a highly dynamic environment which appears to have been set loose from the captivity of scientific management.
Organizations are faced by constant changes that emanate from the external or internal factors which seek to liberate workers while attending to their workplace needs such as training in order to gain skills and competence. Making work a science is indeed a major obstacle in effecting workers’ learning needs, development of skills and business competitiveness.