In response to two peers on their selections in the course milestones and project, address the following:

• Which of your peer's recommendations did you find most compelling, surprising, or innovative?
• One important theme of this course is the need for most companies to innovate on a regular basis or risk falling behind their competitors. The same can be said for employees.
  • What skills can you add to your toolbox to future-proof your career?
  • What skills can you acquire to support an innovative culture at your organization?

RILEY POST

In Milestone 1 I decided on incremental innovation for financial reasons. Discontinuous innovation was going to cost billions of dollars, where the cost of incremental was worked into the current business plan. I did not think that the company was in a financial position to take a risk, especially one that big. Compared to the other companies, I thought that a less risky option would be more likely to be successful. High risk can mean high reward, but I was afraid of the repercussions if a radical approach failed.

In Milestone 2 I determined that the marketing team would need to be strategic in how they are marketing the new vehicles. Customers may show resistance to cars that are fully autonomous as there is a lack of trust. Personally, I do not think I could fully trust a self driving car. My idea was to partner strategic marketing with incremental innovation to slowly gain customer trust in the new vehicles. Humans are creatures of habit and do not react well to change, so slowly upgrading the vehicles will “soften the blow.” Additionally, I think that having celebrity or “VIP” clients as spokespeople for the brand and new cars could also help in gaining consumer buy-in.

Finally, I recommended that the organization structure should be flatter and decentralized. I think that this has more potential to foster innovation. There is too much structure for employees to be able to make decisions and test out ideas as the “decision makers” are at the top of the structure. Not only does this make it difficult, but also the fact that it can take a while for information to get from the top to the bottom of the hierarchy. I believe that the decentralization will allow for more open communication and to allow ideas to flow freely.

TABBIE POST

I chose to select discontinuous innovation for the Milestone One and the final proposal. Given that the company was behind all the current technologies offered by their competition, they risked being squeezed out of their market share if any of the competing brands or a new market entrant created something truly discontinuous and disrupted the market. I felt the company really needed to shake things up in the industry in order to keep their space and try to overcome the competition. Since the automotive industry is really moving in this direction of 'connected cars', I felt it was absolutely paramount for this company to focus on doing something big that they could later incorporate into their other models to elevate sales. 

In milestone two, I chose to outline a step by step process in moving forward with the innovation. This included research to determine what consumer demands are and to help develop a vision for the new model, drafting a realistic timeline for developing technologies and testing a prototype, outlining budgetary considerations, and working with all internal stakeholders to encourage an openness to a 'trial and error' approach. One thing I really enjoyed from this term was learning about the Skunk Works team and I thought that the leaders' approach to giving them the free reign to experiment and fail was critical to their success. 

For the organizational structure piece, I felt that the high power-distance between the innovators and the leaders could be problematic in achieving best results. I think a flatter organizational structure where some level of decision-making is allowed to be made at lower levels would be more conducive to a truly innovative culture. I also suggested that embracing differences and having cross-functional team members involved would give them a full scope of the project and its implications. At the end of the day, the company was doing incremental innovation well – but it wasn't good enough to maintain the pacing the industry has taken. They need to make major changes to their innovation approach and style to secure their future.