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Interview and Reflection Assignment

Student’s name

Institutional Affiliation

Date
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Interview and Reflection Assignment

From the interview, I have learned that to achieve innovation-led growth, a functioning

innovation architecture must be established. That is, a clear and bottom-up leadership must

come up with a framework for innovation management. To establish an effective innovation

architectures, the first thing that must be done is to establish the rule that govern innovations

(Tepic et al., 2013). From the interview, I have realized that innovation rests on the rules and

processes of accountability, decisions-making and responsibility. Without the rules, an

organizations cannot achieve effective innovation. At the same time, there are other factors that

must be considered as part of innovation governance. These factors includes the management of

complex initiatives, roles, responsibilities, participation and contributions of different individuals

within an organization.

The second important factor of innovation effectiveness is the definitions of lean

innovations process. Based on the interview, I have learned that leveraging best practices such as

lean principle are important in establishing and sustaining and effective innovation process.

While most organizations have created innovation processes, sometimes it is important to

benchmark and compare the performance of their organizations with other organizations. Such

benchmarks may be important in developing innovation focus for an organizations. From these

benchmarks, tasked can be defined and individuals can be assigned responsibilities of how to

process innovation in an organization.

Another important factor of innovations is how improvements brought about by

innovation can be measured. From the interview, I realize that if innovation cannot be measure

or quantified, then innovations may not be helpful. There are various ways that have been

suggested from the interview of how innovation can be measured. One way, which has been
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highly stressed in the interview, is the use of key performance indicators (KPIs). By setting KPIs,

it becomes easy for an organizations to evaluate the performance of innovative programs (Löhr,

K., & Löhr, 2016). Another ways of evaluating innovation is through the use of industry models

such as Balanced Scoreboards and Potter’s Value Chain to develop and structure and

organizations behavior towards achieving innovation goals.

From the interview, several challenges of organizational innovation are identified. The

first challenges is the missed innovation strategy. Innovations strategy in an organization is

important assisting an organization to remain proactive and constantly innovating. Thus, for

innovation to be effective, it must be alight with the prevailing changes in the business

environment (Tepic et al., 2013). However, it emerges from the interview that sometimes the

innovative strategy may be missed. Innovation may sometimes focus on an areas that is no

longer viable or useful in the market. For example, the interviewee indicates that Kodak, which

most people believes was not innovative enough, was a victim of failed innovation strategy

Instead pf the company focusing on digital photography which was an emerging market, the

company believe it its strategy for analog photography, which caused the company to loosen its

grip on the market.

Another challengers that emerges from the interview is the difficulty in motivating

employees to become innovative. Most managers tend to believe that innovation can proves to

be counterproductive since it can distract the employees from their daily activities(). Based on

this line of though, managers tend to ignore hen need of empowering employees to innovate. The

problems is that innovation is not like regular organizations chores. Innovations must be

incubated, natured and promoted. Or employees to be innovative, the working environment does

not only need to encourage innovations, but must also enable the employees to be innovative.
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This means it is paramount to motivate employees to be innovative. Thus, from the interview,

innovation motivations emerges as one areas where managers fail. Without motivations,

employees cannot effectively innovate and hence the reduced ability of organizations to use

innovations as a competitive advantage.

Perhaps the most important challenges of innovations highlighted in the interview is the

missed consumer connection. In all innovative projects, connection with the customers is highly

important. As a matter of fact, most innovations are informed by customers. The comments and

feedback from customers tend to influence how organizations innovate and the outcomes of

organizational innovations. However, sometimes innovations happens without taking

considerations of customer connections, needs and aspirations. When innovations takes place

without consumer input, the chances of customers not connecting with the innovations are very

high. A good example of lack of consumer connections is the fame Google Glass. Although

Google invested heavily in the Google class projects, the finally product was not appreciated by

the customers and remains an example of innovation failure.

From this interview, I have learned several lessons that I will implement in my

organizations. First, organizational architecture must be able to support the overall objective of

an organizations. That is all organizational innovation must be aimed at supporting the overall

organizational objective. To do this, an enabling environment must be created that not only

encourages innovations but also facilitate the employees to be motivated to innovate. To achieve

this, the employees must be sensitized on the opportunities of innovation (Ma Cresilda &

Edralin,, 2016). This is best achieved by inspiring and motivating employees to engage

innovation besides their day-to-day chores. Again the employees must be provided by the
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necessary tool and skills to accomplish innovative tasks. This means training might be necessary

for some employees.

I have also learned the need to clear structures and rules about innovation. Innovations

does not occur in vacuum. This means clear guidelines and rules must be established to guide

innovation. For most organizations, a bottom-up structure is adopted to facilitate the

communication between the different stakeholders. From the established regulations, individuals

can know what is expected of them in as far as innovation is concerned. Similarly, the

effectiveness of innovation must be gauged. Establishment of evaluations tools such as key

performance indicators may be necessary to gauge whether innovation is benefiting or not

benefiting an organizations. Most importantly, I have learned the importance of organizational

strategy and the role of customers in innovations development. Innovations strategy must

considered the prevailing changes in the business environment to as to remains consistent with

the new developments in the market. As the same time, innovations must be able to connect with

the customers.
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References

Löhr, K., & Löhr, K. (2016). The science of innovation : A comprehensive approach for
innovation management : a comprehensive approach for innovation management. De
Gruyter Textbook Ser.

Ma Cresilda, M. C., & Edralin, D. M. (2016). Innovation management strategies of four

pioneering entrepinays from camarines sur, philippines: *Keyword branch*. ABAC ODI
Journal Vision.Action.Outcome, 3(2)

Tepic, M., Kemp, R., Omta, O., & Fortuin, F. (2013). Complexities in innovation management in
companies from the european industry: A path model of innovation project performance
determinants. European Journal of Innovation Management, 16(4), 517-550.