Innovation & Change

Question 1

What is organisational innovation?

Answer 1

The successful implementation of creative ideas in organisations

Question 2

What are technology cycles?

Answer 2

Begins with the birth of a new technology and ends when that technology is replaced

Question 3

What is the S Curve pattern of innovation?

Answer 3

A pattern of technological innovation characterised by slow initial progress, then rapid progress and then slow progress again as a technology matures and reaches its limits

Question 4

What is an innovation stream?

Answer 4

Patterns of innovation over time that can create sustainable competitive advantage

Question 5

What are the stages of an innovation stream?

Answer 5

• Technological discontinuity
• Discontinuous change
• Dominant Design
• Technological Lockout
• Incremental change

Question 6

What is a Technological discontinuity?

Answer 6

• A scientific advance or a unique combination of existing technologies creates a significant breakthrough in performance or function
• MP3 invented

Question 7

What is discontinuous change?

Answer 7

• The phase of the innovation stream characterised by technological substitution and design competition
• Early MP3 players

Question 8

What is Technological substitution?

Answer 8

A part of discontinuous change - Customers purchase of new technologies to replace older ones

Question 9

What is design competition?

Answer 9

A part of discontinuous change including competition between old and new technologies to establish a new technological standard or dominant design

Question 10

What is a dominant design?

Answer 10

• A phase of the innovation stream where a new technological design or process becomes the accepted market standard
• iPod

Question 11

How do dominancy designs emerge?

Answer 11

• Critical mass e.g. Blu-ray
• Practical solution e.g. QWERTY
• Standards bodies

Question 12

What is technological lockout?

Answer 12

A phase of the innovation stream when a new dominant design prevents companies from competitively selling its products or makes it difficult to do so

Question 13

What is incremental change?

Answer 13

A phase of the innovation stream where companies innovate by lowering costs and improving the functioning and performance of the dominant design

Question 14

What are creative workplace environment?

Answer 14

Workplace cultures in which workers perceive that new ideas are welcomed, valued and encouraged

Question 15

What are components of creative workplace environments?

Answer 15

• Challenging work
• Organisational encouragement
• Supervisory encouragement
• Work group encouragement
• Freedom
• Lack of organisational impediments

Question 16

How does challenging work create a creative workplace environment?

Answer 16

Promotes creativity through creating psychological experience known as Flow - a state of effortlessness.

Requires balance between skills and task challenges, i.e. boredom vs inability

Question 17

How is innovation managed during discontinuous change?

Answer 17

The Experiential approach to innovation

Question 18

What is the Experiential approach to innovation?

Answer 18

Assumes a highly uncertain environment and uses intuition, flexible options and hands-on experience to reduce uncertainty and accelerate learning and understanding

Question 19

What are the aspects of the experiential approach to innovation?

Answer 19

• Design Iterations
  
  • A cycle of repetition in which a company tests a prototype of a new product or service, improves on that design and then builds and tests the improved prototype
• Testing
  
  • The systematic comparison of different product designs to design iterations
• Milestones
  
  • Formal project review points used to assess progress and performance

Question 20

What are required (further aspects) for the experiential approach to innovation?

Answer 20

• Multifunctional Teams
  
  • Work teams composed of people from different departments
• Powerful Leaders
  
  • Provide the vision, discipline and motivation to keep the
    innovation process focused, on time and on target

Question 21

How is innovation managed during incremental change?

Answer 21

The Compression approach to innovation

Question 22

What is the compression approach to innovation?

Answer 22

Assumes that incremental innovation can be planned using a series of steps and that compressing those steps can speed innovation

Question 23

What are the aspects of the compression approach to innovation?

Answer 23

• Generational change
• Planning
• Supplier involvement
• Shortening the time of individual steps
• Overlapping steps
• Multifunctional teams

Question 24

What is organisational decline?

Answer 24

A large decrease in organisational performance that occurs when companies don’t anticipate, recognise, neutralise or adapt to the internal or external pressures that threaten their survival

Question 25

What are the stages of organisational decline?

Answer 25

* Blindness * Inaction * Faulty action * Crisis - Dissolution

Question 26

What are change forces?

Answer 26

Forces that produce differences in the form, quality or condition of an organisation over time

Question 27

What are resistance forces?

Answer 27

Forces that support the existing state of conditions in organisations

Question 28

What are the stages of managing resistance to change?

Answer 28

* Unfreezing * Change intervention * Refreezing

Question 29

What is Unfreezing?

Answer 29

The first stage of instigating change, getting the people affected by change to believe that change in needed

Question 30

What is Change intervention?

Answer 30

The second stage of instigating change, the process used to get workers and managers to change their behaviour and workplace practices

Question 31

What is Refreezing?

Answer 31

The third stage of instigating change, supporting and reinforcing new changes so that they stick

Question 32

What are the methods for managing resistance to change?

Answer 32

Education & Communication, participation, negotiation, top management support and coercion

Question 33

What errors can be made during unfreezing?

Answer 33

- Not establishing a great enough sense of urgency | - Not creating a powerful enough guiding coalition

Question 34

What errors can be made during change intervention?

Answer 34

- Lacking a vision - Under communicating the vision - Not removing obstacles to the new vision - Not systematically planning for a creating short term wins

Question 35

What errors can be made during refreezing?

Answer 35

- Declaring victory too soon | - Not anchoring changes in corporations culture

Question 36

What are the 3 change tools/techniques?

Answer 36

* Result driven change * GE workout * Organisational development

Question 37

What is results driven change?

Answer 37

Change created quickly by focusing on the measurement and improvement of results

Question 38

What is the GE workout?

Answer 38

A three day meeting in which managers and employees from different levels and parts of an organisation quickly generate and act on solutions to specific business problems

Question 39

What is organisational development?

Answer 39

A collection of planned change interventions designed to improve an organisations long term health and performance - involving a change agent (outsider)