DISCUSSION 1

Overview

You work as a middle manager for one of the top U.S. producers of luxury and mass-market automobiles and trucks. It has been a very busy couple of months for you. You have already submitted your plan for enabling innovation in the organization, including your recommendations for the type of innovation (incremental or discontinuous), a strategic plan, and improvements in organizational structures for an internet of things (IoT) innovation project. Additionally, you are leading a cross-functional team in charge of implementing the IoT innovation project. Now it is time for your final recommendations for making the organizational changes permanent. In this assignment, you will share your plans for futureproofing the company’s processes, structures, and culture of innovation in an executive summary, which will be used by your team to take your recommendations forward.

Prompt

Draft an executive summary listing the recommendations for futureproofing the company’s processes, structures, and culture of innovation.

Address the following criteria in the executive summary:

• Discuss recommendations for organizational changes to support continuous innovation (you can use your suggestions from the project).
  • How would you make innovation a part of the company’s values and culture permanently?
  • What specific organizational structures and processes would you recommend?
• Share your reflections on potential roadblocks to making the company more innovative.
  • Where would you expect to find organizational resistance?
  • How would you overcome this resistance?

DSCUSSION 2

In the previous few modules, you learned about the different aspects of innovation such as its dimensions, the five major trajectories for managing innovation, the spaghetti model of innovation and many more. In this discussion, you may choose to discuss some of these concepts or other innovation concepts covered in this course and reflect on the following aspects of your course project:

In your initial post you should address the following questions:

• What was your strategy for choosing incremental or discontinuous innovation in Milestone One?
• What were your reasons for selecting the processes for managing innovation you used in Milestone Two?
• How do your recommendations for the organization structure promote a climate for innovation in your project?