Activity:

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Few Inventions Become Successful  Innovations due to the Following Reasons:

• Marketability
  • Low product demand or not readily saleable
• Financial support
  • There is little monetary backing from the organisation or an outsider.
  • The invention would need more sponsors to financially aid the product.
• Marketing
  • Is the process of getting products from the producer or vendor to the consumer or buyer, which includes advertising, shipping, storing, and selling. Poor marketing strategies or wrong target markets.
  • Invention would need to be advertised as a product the public would want.
  • Trends in innovation.
• The need for the invention
  • Examples include alternative energy resources to combat our insatiable need for oil however if oil prices are low or there is a ready supply of oil then the alternative energy invention will not take hold.
• Price
  • Affordable, cost effectiveness or value for money … therefore it may be too expensive to purchase, or to manufacture and the consumer may not see it worth its cost compared to its use.
  • Keep in mind, the product’s price needs to be equivalent to the income of the specific age group that would buy the majority of the product.
• Resistance to change
  • People and organisations can be resistant and reluctant to change, feeling comfort and security in the familiar thus resist new ideas/products.
• Aversion to risk
  • “Risk aversion is a concept in economics, finance, and psychology related to the behaviour of consumers and investors under uncertainty”. (en.wikipedia.org 2007)

Being successful at innovation …

• Article from Innovation tools

Categories of Innovation

Open University explains sustaining and disruptive as well as process innovation.

Term: Sustaining innovation –  A new or improved product that meets the needs of consumers and sustains manufacturers.

• Examples include the wheel and iPhone where 2nd, 3rd … 6th generations/versions of the product have been developed.

Term: Disruptive innovation –  A product or type of technology that challenges existing companies to ignore or embrace technical change

• • • Examples include the iPod which changed the way we managed and  listened to music. Mobile phones so we were no longer restricted to landlines.

      

Term: Process innovation –  An improvement in the organization and/or method of manufacture that often leads to reduced costs or benefits to consumers.

• Example is in the automobile industry such as Ford  with the introduction of assembly line production and Toyota with lean manufacturing.

More on types of innovation

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Activity: Students will need to be able to draw from examples of each category of innovation.

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Innovation Strategies for Design

Term: Architectural innovation – The technology of the components stays the same, but the configuration of the components is changed to produce a new design.

• • Putting existing components together in novel ways.
  • Examples include: electric cars, Sony Walkman.

1970s Sony Walkman.	Panasonic Slim Portable Cassette player.	The Crosley (retro-styling) tape deck.

Term: Modular innovation –  The basic configuration stays the same, but one or more key components are changed.

• • Making an existing comment better
  • Examples include a new type of petrol filter, Youtube  or Facebook.
  • The Google’s Project Ara – new dream phone

Term: Configurational innovation –  A change is made in both technology and organization.

A  great read!

• Two students project.

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Activity: Examples where innovation strategies have been used for products

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Innovation Strategies for Markets

Term: Diffusion –  is a process where a market will accept a new idea or product. The rate it accepts the new idea or product can be increased by several factors.

• • A good article from USC in the US
  • Examples of widely diffused products include the, light bulb,  refrigerator (100%), ATM cards, Music CD’s (now mp4 format).
  • Once widely accepted they often become dominant designs.

    

Term: Suppression –  is a process where a new idea or adoption of a product by the market is actively slowed. This may be due to difficulties competing with a dominant design, ambiguity over patent ownership, competing companies actively petitioning against a new product it perceives as threatening, or the natural resistance to an unfamiliar concept.

• • Diffusion vs Suppression from Open University
  • Examples include the telephone (land line) when it had to compete with the firmly established (dominate design) of the telegraph(y).

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Activity: Examples where innovation strategies have been used for products

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International Mindedness

 Innovations may have positive consequences in some countries/regions and negative ones in others.