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Innovation
He
that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest
innovator. Francis
Bacon
Although innovation is needed in products
and services, this element is primarily concerned with the way the organization
itself is capable of change, since without this ability, the introduction of new
products and services will be more difficult. Failure in this area is a frequent
cause of the organization meeting with disaster. Changes can be thought
of as occurring at five levels:
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Localized
changes
Integration
Process
redesign
Infrastructure
Purpose
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Improving
individual processes (activities) to bring
greater efficiency, productivity or
reduced cost.
Making
processes or different parts of the organization
work together more effectively and efficiently.
Changing a process to give dramatic improvements in
quality,
cost, performance or ease of use.
Changing
the composition of and improving the way
the external infrastructure
works.
Changing
the nature of the organization by changing
its
raison d'etre, vision, mission or target market.
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The process of change:
Innovation can occur
in three ways:
Planned
incremental change -
new products being added to a portfolio or the number of staff being gradually increased.
Planned
discontinuous change - a college suddenly dropping its classroom courses and
going over entirely to remote teaching via the Internet or two
organizations merging and suddenly combining their operations.
Unexpected
change -
the sale of a product suddenly being banned or a service made
obsolete by a new invention. This type of change is often the subject of
‘scenario planning’, which tries to
anticipate the unexpected. >>>
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