ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION Session 3

CLASS REFLECTION – INNOVATION’S HOLY GRAIL

1. A highly competitive product in the market is being offered by Byju’s

2. Prepare a 2-3 slide presentation

3. Evaluate if Byju’s is a disruptive innovation in the EdTech space

BYJU’S
Low end market or New market?
o They created a more engaging content for the existing market.
o They eased the travel constraints of potential students, which may have added just a few more to the
customer base.
o Since it was tier 2 & 3 cities which caught their eye, it was certainly a pricey option.
o Not a disrupter now. However Byju’s would soon be a disrupter as it adds segments beyond k-12.
Was it about sustaining innovation?
o They were working on sustaining innovation
Sources of innovation – Bought most of it; customized
Extent of innovation – Focused on content and meaningful descriptions to aid learning
Schema for Today
MUSINGS ON THE DEFINITION
Organizations are
• social entities that are goal-directed
• are designed as deliberately structured and coordinated activity systems and
• are linked to the external environment
An alternate one would be

• a legal-economic-social entity, which in order to achieve

• its chosen objectives, within the framework

• sets in motion manpower, capital and goods, making use of techniques

• of production, marketing and administration

Why do the definitions include ‘social’ as a key term?
 ORGANISATIONS
An organization, like all social groups, can legitimately be compared to a living organism

The first aim of the firm is not the search for profits, but the search for survival, profits being
the basic condition for that. Like a living being, it is endowed with an instinct for self-
preservation which balances the risk inherent in the instinct towards expansion; it possesses
an information system and a flow of materials and energy governed by a veritable metabolic
system.

*A Critical Introduction to Organization Theory

PRACTICALLY
Organizations
• Bring together resources to achieve desired goals and outcomes
• Produce goods and services efficiently
• Facilitate innovation
• Use modern manufacturing and information technologies
• Adapt to and influence a changing environment
• Create value for owners, customers, and employees
• Accommodate ongoing challenges of diversity, ethics, and the motivation and coordination of
employees
 WHY DO ORGANIZATIONS EXIST?

*Jones, Gareth R. - Organizational theory, design, and change

WHAT MAKES ORGANIZATIONS COMPLEX?
The diversity of humans who inhabit it
 Innumerous
skills

The Box within

which our minds
Contradicting Complex Diverse socio
cultural
are housed…
value systems
Organization milieus

Varied
education
 Core rigidities

Core Capabilities

Values

Challenge for managers:

Utilize Core capabilities by being
aware of the rigidities?

Dorothy Leonard Barton – Core Capabilities and Core Rigidities: A paradox in managing new product development
 Values and
Skills and Knowledge Norms
base

Technical Systems Managerial

Systems

Core Capabilities
 Skills and knowledge base

✓ Embodied in people
✓ Is the one most often associated with core capabilities
✓ Most obviously relevant to new product development
✓ Encompasses both firm-specific techniques and scientific understanding

Technical Systems

✓ Results from years of accumulating, codifying and structuring the tacit knowledge in people
✓ Compilations of knowledge, usually derived from multiple individual sources
✓ The whole technical system is greater than the sum of its parts
✓ This knowledge constitutes both information (e.g. a data base of product tests conducted over decades)
and procedures (e.g. proprietary design rules.)
 Managerial Systems

✓ Represents formal and informal ways

✓ of creating knowledge (e.g. through sabbaticals, apprenticeship programs or networks with
partners)
✓ of controlling knowledge (e.g. incentive systems and reporting structures)

Values and Norms

✓ The value assigned within the company to

✓ the content and structure of knowledge (e.g. chemical engineering vs. marketing expertise; ‘open-
systems‘ software vs. proprietary systems),
✓ means of collecting knowledge (e.g. formal degrees v. experience) and
✓ controlling knowledge (e.g. individual empowerment vs. management hierarchies).
✓ Even physical systems embody values.
The case of Norland College
✓ Founded in 1892, Norland is world-famous for providing
the very best early years training and education.
✓ Educational pioneer Emily Ward established Norland as the
first educational establishment to offer any kind of
childcare training.
✓ Emily Ward recognized the need for early years childcare
to be more structured, centred around the child, loving and
nurturing.
✓ Prior to the introduction of formal training at Norland,
children would be cared for by ‘untutored’ housemaids
before going to school.
✓ Training at Norland was based on the founding principles of
Fröbel, the German educationalist best known as the
originator of the ‘kindergarten system’, and adapted to be
more relevant to the needs of young children and their
families.
 With children being at the center of
all decisions, the Norland mottoes are
❑ ‘Love Never Faileth’
❑ ‘Fortis In Arduis’ (Strength in
Adversity)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agLUDl4YpQg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIqKXRkgsVc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXhSnpSCnEc
Norland’s mission is to uphold and enhance our prestigious reputation and provide a bespoke early years higher
education, training and consultancy informed by cutting edge research, and cultivate outstanding graduates with
lifelong career opportunities, professional support and continuous learning.
 VISION
✓ Norland will continue to build a sustainable and prestigious national and international reputation as a unique and

specialist higher education provider of lifelong education, training and employment for outstanding nannies and early

years practitioners

✓ Students will continue to experience the highest standard of provision and become knowledgeable and skilled graduates

with excellent career prospects working in partnership with children, families and communities

✓ Norland will contribute to the early years sector by generating cutting edge research, training and consultancy to support

the very best in early years provision and in related services both nationally and internationally

✓ Norland Agency will actively promote, access and support to Norlanders to facilitate employment opportunities and

continuing professional development

✓ Norland will proactively engage with stakeholders, the local and wider community, prospective clients and enhance its

charitable activities

✓ A cohesive, continuous and collaborative learning community will be developed that challenges and enhances the

professionalism and expertise of its staff, students and graduates, draws on and promotes their strengths to drive

progressive change, and generates leadership capability from within

VALUES
VALUES
Curriculum
✓ The curriculum at Norland has changed
and progressed with the times to offer the
most up-to-date academic childcare
training courses and the highest practice
standards in line with the latest research.
✓ It now offers an intensive academic degree
and skills-based diploma programme,
combining cutting edge research and
knowledge with practical training.
✓ The two fully integrated qualifications uniquely blend theory
and practice.
✓ The TEF Gold-rated BA (Hons) in Early Years Development
and Learning is a three-year full-time undergraduate degree
course. (soon to be renamed ‘Early Childhood Education and
Care’ from 2023)
✓ Running alongside the degree and for a fourth year following
completion of the degree is the Norland Diploma.
✓ This qualification will prepare for all the practical aspects of
the care and development of children in the early years as
well as critical professional and life skills.
✓ The final module of the Diploma is the Newly Qualified
Nanny (NQN) year, a 12-month probationary nanny post in
paid full-time employment.
Reflect upon some of the core capabilities of
Norland College

Analyze
✓ Skills and Knowledge base
✓ Technical System
✓ Managerial System
✓ Value and Norms
 Up-side
How capabilities enhance
development?
✓ Skills-knowledge dimension - Excellence in
the dominant discipline/ Pervasive
technical literacy
✓ Technical dimension - Systems, procedures
and tools that are artifacts left behind by
talented individuals, embodying many of
their skills in a readily accessible form
✓ Management systems dimension - They
incorporate unusual blends of skills,
and/or foster beneficial behaviors;
mechanisms to enhance innovation through
incentives and other educational systems
are examples
✓ Values dimension - Empowerment of
project members, High status for the
dominant discipline
Down-side
How core rigidities inhibit
development?
✓ Skills-knowledge dimension - Less strength
in nondominant disciplines
✓ Technical dimension - Physical systems can
embody rigidities. The skills and processes
captured can be easily outdated.
✓ Management systems dimension - People
are understandably reluctant to apply
their abilities to project tasks that are
undervalued. Lest that negative
assessment of the importance of the task
contaminate perceptions of their personal
abilities.
✓ Values dimension - Empowerment as
entitlement, Lower status for non-dominant
disciplines
What could be the challenges of introducing a new aligned programme which concentrates exclusively on
‘Food and Nutrition for Early learners’
What could be the challenges of introducing a new non-aligned programme which concentrates exclusively on
‘Film Studies’?
HOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE CAPABILITIES
THAT ARE EMBEDDED?

Lets attempt capabilities auditing..

At any given point in a corporation’s history, core
capabilities are evolving, and corporate survival
depends upon successfully managing that evolution…

Reflection
CLASS REFLECTION
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding about ourselves.
- Carl Gustav Jung
As humans, how flexible are we to changes?

❑ Identify your rigidities and capabilities under the 4 pillars mentioned before.

❑ What are your effective capabilities and detrimental rigidities?

Analyze the problem given: You join an organization which is going through a tumultuous financial crisis.
You have joined the organization without fully knowing the magnitude of the problem that the
organization is facing. You had to let go of another job offer to take this one. Now, what about you will
help you overcome the crisis and what about you will stop you from continuing with the organization.

Identify your soft skills, characteristics and personality by drawing inferences

What is your rigidity that you wish to work upon?
 Identify the outcome that you want to get

 Identify the process that you would do for it

 Identify the belief system that you will embrace in your identity

Inspired by ‘Atomic Habits’

SIMULATION - 1
The case of a PSU - The employees so far recruited had to have a minimum
qualification of Standard 12 pass along with a Type writing diploma certificate.
Times have changed and they need to now have a basic Graduation to continue
working in the organization. The employees are in the age group 50-60 years. Pre-
empt the rigidities and flexibilities the category may have.

❖Evaluate the value system that needs a change.

❖What type of core capabilities will help them navigate the challenges?
SIMULATION - 2
The case of a Private sector organization. The organization believed in a set of values - Respect
to self and others, Doing better today than yesterday and Kindness. The organization wanted to
attain more business-specific deliverables and hence considered re-structuring the organization.
Massive changes in the management ensued and a set of new values were put in place –
Ambition, Pride, Discipline and Integrity. The plan was to lay off and cut the slack from
businesses which were not doing well. The plan was to undertake ventures in areas that give
them ‘right to win’.

❖Pre-empt the challenges the organization had to overcome while migrating into the new plan.

❖What type of core capabilities will help them navigate the challenges?
STABILITY AND CHANGE

Discuss:
Individuals seek both stability and fluidity in navigating the currents of
organizational life
Thank you!
 Fragmentation

Companies begin
to break down into
collaboration networks
of smaller organisations;
specialisation dominates
the world economy

Collectivism Individualism

Social responsibility dominates the Big company capitalism

corporate agenda with concerns about rules as organisations
changes in climate and continue to grow
demographics, and embedding bigger and individual
sustainability becoming the key preferences trump beliefs
drivers of business about social responsibility

Integration
TWO CONFLICTS ON INNOVATION
Industry-specific capabilities increased the
likelihood a firm could exploit a new technology
within that industry. Therefore effective
competition is based less on strategic leaps than
on incremental innovation that exploits carefully
developed capabilities.
Institutionalized capabilities may lead to
‘incumbent inertia’ in the face of environmental
changes. Technological discontinuities can enhance
or destroy existing competencies within an
industry. Such shifts in the external environment
resonate within the organization, so that even
‘seemingly minor’ innovations can undermine the
usefulness of deeply embedded knowledge. In
fact, all innovation necessarily requires some
degree of ‘creative destruction’.

There is hence a need for interaction between

development and capabilities of organization