Managing Innovation

The main purpose of conducting this report is to provide a deep knowledge about the innovation that can bring by TerraCycle for its operational enhancement and future growth within the marketplace (Aalbers and Dolfsma, 2015). This report perform a detailed analysis over innovational theory for determining various factors that may help company in bringing innovation within the business. Further it include the application of theory for evaluating the historical development done by company for identifying the future development pathway of product or services.

Main Body

Part 1

Discussion of innovational model

Innovation is defined as a the process of bringing a new method of doing thing that help in improving the result of particular action. It help a business in enhancing their way of doing thing in order to improve their performance at marketplace (Allen, Adomdza and Meyer, 2015). Innovation plays an essential role within the growth and success of any business as by innovating their product, service or process it will be able to retain its customer for longer period of time.

Now a days technology is become most essential part of every business as it help in simplifying their operations and making them able to fulfil the demand of its target market effectively. This is the reason why business environment is becoming more competitive and dynamic where chances are experienced at a rapid pace, which also contributing toward increasing the expectation of customer regarding services offered by a company (Altuna and et. al., 2015). Hence each business must keep on innovative its product or processes in order to remain competent toward changes in external environment as well as customer expectation. So, in order to bring and implement innovation within the business effectively a company must use innovation theory or models. This will help in providing a framework which guides up a path to take action towards the formation and implementation of innovation (Goffin and Mitchell, 2016). One of the best known model for innovation is Pentathlon framework which work over five essential factors that must be considering while bringing any innovation within business. It includes idea management & creativity management, prioritization, selection and portfolio management, Implementation management, innovation strategy, human resource management.

 

(Source: PENTATHLON-FRAMEWORK, 2019)

From the above given image it  has been clear that Pentathlon framework is a theory which revolve around five key element that are very essential for an innovational success. This model is divided into three factors in which at top most section talks about the innovational strategy which depict what is required to do for achieving goals (Salerno and et. al., 2015). The middle section is consists a process that includes germination of ideas and its prioritisation as per the demand, so that it can be implemented for new product development and its interaction within marketplace. The last section focuses toward featuring the human factor within innovation in order to implement the innovational plan effectively. These three section consists of five core elements of innovation  that are essentials within innovational process. These five elements seek to address the issues on which majority of research related to innovation that focuses product instead of any service (Bucciarelli, 2015). In addition to this, framework also focuses on innovation management  by focusing over these five elements. These element of innovation management are explained below:-

Innovation strategy:-

This step focuses toward analysing the various type of concern area for an organisation which includes role of technology, market trend, role of communication within the innovation and matching resource (Hernandez-Munoz and et. al., 2015). After evaluating all these factor, company will be able to determining the area in which innovation can bring so that company will be able to accomplish their goals and objectives. Once a deep analysis has been performed over these factors information collected will help in formulating innovational strategy which brings improvement in current performance. This strategy will provide a pathway over which company has to work in order to achieve competitive advantage. For instance, Apple Inc. is best known for its innovation as it focuses toward analysing the market demand in order to invent or bring new device to market. This is the main reason behind its success at marketplace.

Ideas generation:-

This  step of innovational framework focuses over generation of a new idea in order to deal with the problem or challenges faced by company. This idea is usually framed after analysing the challenges company is facing in external environment, customer expectation and technological development. Idea generation is the step of bringing innovation within the organisation where it has been decided that what innovation should be bring which support company to deal with challenges it is facing (Tsai and Wu, 2015). These ideas are basically formed on the bases of the innovational strategy after deciding a key path or area that is required to be improved. This can be done by analysing the available information within a meeting or by adopting brain storming technique. For instance, after conducting a detail analysis over market challenges faced by company it can arrange a meeting for its expertise where they can discuss their ideas so that best could be selected to further proceed. This step mainly focuses over the development of culture which brings creativity by harnessing knowledge from both inside as well as outside to the organisation. The good idea is generally bring out from the blend of technology, market requirements and customers.

Prioritization:-

After analysing the internal as well as external environment and then creating a list of ideas over which a company can work in order to bring innovation and enhancing their performance. Next step is to prioritize these idea as per the benefit and results it provide after implementation. This can be done after setting up efficient decision making process that help in ensuring that an appropriate idea must be selected with an aim to get progress over a new product, service or process (Haar, 2018). For instance, selected ideas of its staff members can be analyse as per their capability of delivering benefits to company and customer as well, which then prioritizes to work in achieve organisational goals. These prioritization is usually done to create a portfolio of ideas or action that can be taken in order to improve the operations within an organisation. In addition to this innovational portfolio is also matched with innovation strategy to determine whether the idea prioritisation is as per the target or required some modification toward the achievement of objectives.

Implementation:-

Once all the research has been conducted or strategy has been formed the next is to bring this plan into action by implementing all the activities that has been decide in order to achieve the desired objectives. Under implementation phase all the knowledge, skill as well resources are gathered and implemented to bring innovation as per the plan. In order to achieve success in this phase a project manger is required to develop an effective and high skilled cross functional team (Kerl and Moehrle,  2017). It refers to a group of people who are expertise and have a experience of different fields. This will help in providing an opportunity where innovation can be quickly and efficiently implemented which bring progress at marketplace. But before commercialising innovation, project manager first create a prototype of the innovation which they had decided. This prototype will be move through several test as well as analysis in order to determine defects involve in this model. After determine the issues involve in prototype model it has been rectified by the technical team and then final model will be produced for commercialising in market. These all support company in implementing innovation effectively and achieve success at marketplace. For instance, a company should firstly produce a model to which they are planning to bring in market to determine the way in which it work and what errors could be found throughout its operations so that these can be rectified before it went to customer.

People and organisation:-

This section focuses over determining the need of human resources for the implementation of innovation. After identifying the human resource required for innovational implementation, company started hiring the skilled employees. After recruiting the employees next step is to providing training to the new as well as existing employees regarding the work they have to perform for bringing innovation (Nadda,  Dadwal and Rahimi,  2017). After preparing the employees for their work to be done, job is assigned to them as per their skills and capabilities so that task can be accomplished effectively. For instance, if a company is planning to launch a technical devices then it is required to hire technical expertise and provide them training regarding the way in which devices should be manage, operated and errors could be tackle. Apart from human resource management, organisational improvement is also very essential which includes developing a creative culture within the organisation which easily accept the innovation. In addition to that, this step is also focuses toward improving the organisational structure which put emphases toward inviting innovational practices within the company that leads to its success.  

These all are the factors that help a company to consider all the essential factor related with innovation that help in bringing organisational success by improving the way of doing work or providing services to target market (Meng and Brown, 2018). The Pentathlon framework of innovation help in filtering the ideas and then extracting the best one to fit within organisation which help in providing success at marketplace. But apart from all these benefits it has some disadvantage also like this framework is very time consuming as after forming up strategies there would be deep evaluation of ideas for accomplishing strategical objective. These ideas will further validate as per situation and then prioritise which take up a lot of time. As a result of which sometimes companies will not be able to launch its innovation on time.   

PART 2

Application to Terracycle

Introduction to TerraCycle:-

Terracycle is a private company of US which work as recycling business and headquartered in Trenton, New Jersey. It runs a program of volunteer-based curbside collection where non-recyclable pre-consumer and post-consumer waste (Lepoutre, Read and Margery, 2017). This collected waste is then used to turn it into a raw material that can be further used to create a new product (TerraCycle, 2019). Terracycle licenses its name as a manufacturer of around 200 products hat are made up of using raw material which they create using waste collected from various corporate donors. This company work toward Eliminating the waste by recycling the product whether it is a coffee capsules, pen or plastic gloves  (Wallace, 2015). It collect and recycle every type of waste by partnering with individual collector such as major consumer product companies, manufacturers, retailers, municipalities as well as small businesses worldwide. TerraCycle perform its operations in more then 20 different countries with an aim to divert the million pound of waste from landfills and incinerators every month.

Historical discussion of innovation:-

TerraCycle started performing its operation in 2001 and started partnering well known brands like Procter & Gamble, L'Oreal, national geographical channel and many more in order develop a concept of recycling and eliminating wastage (Shaw and Allen, 2018). Company started with an innovative idea related to making of quality fertilizer from the waste food material. Later it started bringing innovation in their operations for growing within the market these includes:

Future innovation pathway:-

TerraCycle has a great history of success and innovational operation which it had performed in order to expand its business with totally a new concept and improving the living standard of society (Hira and Reilly, 2017). Now, company is planning it innovate a new system or product which help in enhancing its recycling activities and level of business performance that give maximum result.  So, in order to implement this innovation effectively Terracycle may use innovational model named as  Pentathlon framework which work over five core element of innovation. The implementation of model is explained below:

Innovation strategy:-

After performing a deep analysis over its historical performance as well as external environment, Terracycle is required to bring more innovation in order to reduce the wastage and increasing the  speed of recycling (Sung, 2015). So, it formulated a strategy to bring such a system that will be able to remove the wastage from several localities and recycle them in more useful form.

Ideas generation:-

Team members of TerraCycle held a meeting and from historical analysis there are number of ideas has been given by them (Lin, Wei and Zhu, 2015). It includes:

• A recycling software in which people can upload the picture of waste and then explore different things that they can made from waste material. This help in reducing the quantity of wastage.
• A small sized Energy storage devices that can be purchased by people ad use it for their household purpose. This device will be filled up by people with waste which then process that garbage and convert it into electricity. This can be further used by people which not only saves electricity but also reduce the risk of shock or any sort of accident.
• Terracycle can also bring drones which move to locality each week in order to collect the waste material and recycle them into more useful thing. The storage part of drone is divided into three section which includes plastic bottles and metallic waste. These waste would be placed by people within drone and it will reform it into more creative and useful thing.

Prioritization:-

After performing a detail discussion from the meeting held among TerraCycle team number of ideas has been evaluated and prioritize as per the level of objective completion it will provide to company (Halbfas,  2017). So, it has been decided that out of all the given ideas 'recycling drone' is consider to be most important and reliable option to opt for improving the recycling procedure. Hence, recycling drone will be at priority for the company which help them in achieving success in organisational objectives. Once it get acceptance then TerraCycle will move toward bringing the recycling software and then they work toward creating small device named as “Energy storage devices ” for saving electricity.

Implementation:-

Once the innovation has been decided, next step is to work over executing it. Under this TerraCycle is required to take permission from its board member after performing a feasibility analysis so that they can get adequate support as well as finance to work over this plan (Danaher, Biggs and Mark, 2016). After getting approval from its board members company is also required to take licence from the government for using drone in performing business operations. Once government permit the licence to TerraCycle it can start working over this plan by arranging drone, creating software for functioning of drone and hiring employees to track the place it move as well as work performed by them.

After arranging all the resources, TerraCycle first launch a prototype of its model in order to test the defects it have or improvement that must be performed for the model success. In addition to this it also help in identifying the reliability and durability of “recycling drone”.  

People and organisation:-

For the implementation of this plan i.e. “recycling drone” effectively, TerraCycle is required to hire new technical staff with adequate skills and competency that have a capability to handle the drone and its operations. This is to done over the software that has been formed to track the actions performed by drone in order to ensure that each work must be perform effectively without any type of inconvenience to people.

Business model:-

TerraCycle follow a business model which help it in performing its operations in effective manner and achieve success at marketplace (Bocken and et. al., 2016). Following factors describe about the business model used for implementation of recycling drone:

• Ideation:-It totally depends upon identification and conversion of waste into resourceful material that further adds value in the business transactions of an organisation.
• Concept design:- After forming the idea, concept of recycling drone will be formed to implement the plan into action that includes forming up a plan for the design of drone as well as ways in which it operates.
• Prototyping:-Once a concept has been design then technical team will work over it and form up a prototype model for identifying how it will look and function after its manufacturing (Massa, Tucci and Afuah, 2017).
• Experimenting:- The prototype of Flying drone will then move through a detail analysis for identifying changes required within the model so that proper rectification can be done to produce a drone that work effectively towards the goal of company.
• Detail design:-After identifying all the errors and mistake prototype have, TerraCycle will work over improving it form up a detail design for the final model. From this design, drone will be formed by considering all the mistake done previous in design.
• Piloting:- Once the recycling Drone has been formed it will be sent to some location like, beach for pilot testing to determine its how it will function after getting launched in marketplace.
• Launch:-After pilot testing has been done, it will be then launched within the marketplace and send to the places that TerraCycle choose for its operations (Carayannis, Sindakis and Walter,  2015).

Conclusion

From the above given information it can summarised that innovation plays an essential role within the success and growth of a company as it help them in dealing with competition as well as customer expectation within this dynamic environment. For implementing innovation effectively a company must use Pentathlon framework of innovation which provide a pathway to implement innovation effectively within a organisation. This model also link human resource with innovation plan that support in successful implementation and execution of innovation at marketplace.

TerraCycle has great history of innovation in bringing several new methods to recycling the product into more resourceful manner. Now, it is expected that company will further bring new innovation to simplify its business operations. So, it has been found that Terracycle will now bring recycling drone in ordered to identify the waste and converting them into useful stuff by collecting waste from different locality. The reason behind this innovation is that it is not possible for company to send people everywhere to gather waste and recycle it, so for this drone has been formed which collect and recycle waste. This innovation has been drawn from historic innovational analysis with an aim to have better result by implementing this plan through business model follow by company that provide a surety of its success.

References

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