Innovation is the key to a firm’s long-term survival and growth. Organizations today need to foster a culture of innovation to remain competitive.
To be a leader in terms of productivity, sales, profit, etc., has not been a problem in the past, nor is it one in the present. However, one specific area of organization which is very tough to achieve but very important in the survival of any business is innovation. Although it is very important to be innovative, most of the organizations do not have either the desire or the resources for it. All organizations and people working for them are creative, but they make an organization innovative only if they come out with innovative results.
Most of the organizations have realized the need to be innovative, and the remaining ones, who consider it a burden to be innovative, have either ignored or forgotten its importance as a `competitive advantage'. This notion among the leaders who are in charge for managing organizational innovation has made them look upon the `innovation process' as a tiresome and challenging task. Innovation is the product of a new idea, an entirely new way of thinking and doing things. Innovation takes two forms, radical or revolutionary innovation and incremental or evolutionary innovation.
To be innovative is a challenging task. Added to it are other complexities of registering inventions to patents and trademark offices to protect intellectual property rights. Organizations that want to lead the market by being a forerunner of innovations must be fast and flexible to convert a new idea into a product or service, which will benefit the organization in terms of being different compared to other products in the market. The reason for the need in swiftness and flexibility is that certain ideas, in spite of having a high potential for succeeding in future, are ignored or rejected due to lack of initiative and interest among the executives, who screen and review the invention. |
