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More handpicked essays just for you.
Importance of knowledge management and its importance to organization
The strategic importance of knowledge management within the organisation
Innovation and business performance
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1. Introduction
Knowledge management and innovation are interconnected. Good knowledge must be codified, combined and shared in order to achieve innovation. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower”, a quote made by Steve Job. Indeed, successful and unique innovation allows organization to stay ahead of competition, and allow them to be the market leader to shape the future of the industry. However, organization that fail to innovate will lose ground to competitors and can only be a follower in the industry trend. Innovation allows organization to discover existing and future opportunities that meet current customer’s need and future demand rapidly and effectively as technologies, markets or trends shift. Innovation focus on
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Usually, people within the same department have the same specialist, hence, they tend to have the same way of thinking and solutions. Also, when innovation is kept within an isolated group, they will no longer listen to employees from other departments, neglecting that the knowledge within other departments can be critical in successful innovation as well. It is said that innovative team do not need people who will “fit in”, but individual who will challenge the team in a constructive way. Indeed, everyone having the same thinking, it is difficult for the organization to come up with new innovation as exchanging of knowledge and perspective are being restricted. This narrow down the supply of innovation ideas within the group (Wents, …show more content…
Love and Roper (2009) discussed that cross-functional teams plays an important part in innovation process because it enables knowledge sharing, overcome organization barriers and development of trust. Communication and information flow between functional departments are key factors in determining successful innovation. As the market move towards knowledge-based competition based on innovation and product quality, firm’s strategy space have been redefined to focus on organizational learning, knowledge sharing and process
...resent diversity within the labor force and “each of them will also have networks of professional associates whose knowledge they can tap in order to solve problems and accomplish tasks. Needless-to-say, diverse people will have diverse networks and provide your company with a vast and diverse meta-network at your disposal” (p.1). In short, in supporting of creativity, innovators essentially need the backing from top leaders, and without that support, many initiatives may break down or die on the vine (Harvard). For any idea to be successful, it is vital that it is aligned with company strategy; there is more likely to occur naturally when top executives involve and take the lead with a idea or creativity initiative and this is a main reason why management commitment is a key factor in the accomplishment of any idea or innovation process (Baumgarther, 2010).
Innovation has rapidly assumed a position of prominence in world competition on a global scale. To compete in this environment, organizations need a level of innovation. As competition becomes more global and time-based, organizations must develop and deliver new and superior products or services in less time. The challenge for modern organizations is to revitalize them so they can successfully and continuously develop newer products and enhance business development.
An innovative organizational structure is characterized by being flexible, adaptable, and open to experimenting with new ideas. Every aspect of their company can fit up under this organizational structure. Their lax in use of a formal hierarchy structure and excessive titles contribute to this reasoning. The emphasis they put on developing new ideas and using updated technologies also support this organizational structure.
This type of dysfunctional operation of an organization has many ways and opportunities for failure. The basic fundamentals of this process are the beginnings of failure as groups seek conformity and unity they sacrifice everything in order to maintain peace within the group. Many times this will take the individuals creative thoughts and ability to voice the creative edge thinking away. In many organizations this is a process that is continually used. It is perceived that management wants the organizations operation or process to run without any type of question or waves. Below are listed eight of the main symptoms of group think as detailed by Janis, I. L & Manns book “Decision making”
The skill abilities of team members within IDEO reflect the company’s doctrine of open innovation and the benefit of assembling those diverse teams. From their clients IDEO assimilates best practices and then integrates these practices back into their own business and proces...
Malcolm ford said that “Diversity: is the art of thinking independently together”[1]. Diversity in teams is vital to achieve effective solution where every team member brings in unique expertise that results in all-inclusive approach for possible solutions. In this process different sets of eyes with unique pair of glasses see the problem and solution differently from one another that creates a wider coverage range. In the article “Putting your whole brain to work”[2] Dorothy Leonard and Susaan Straus discuss about how creative abrasion is necessary for productive results. They talk about how a manager under- stands that different people have different thinking styles: analytical or intuitive, experiential or conceptual, independent or social, logical or values driven. These thinking styles ultimately influence the decision-making abilities of a team. Even though these diverse teams are essential and have many benefits they clearly are prone to dysfunction because of the very reason of their origin i.e. considerable diversity among team members. With all these advantages and limitations of a
In addition to urgency, Gustavsson could not create a powerful guiding coalition. He established a cross-functional team to develop a new moisture-resistant product. But the team did not include a sales manager who knows customers' needs and eventually sells the product. Although the team developed a commercially-viable product, their efforts, at least in the short term, were unsatisfactory, because with sales people's own doubts about the new product, they were afraid of jeopardizing the reputation of current product. Moreover, these cross functional teams operated within the established organization maintained the company's dominate culture and past norms. We know that structurally independent teams that are tightly integrated into the existing hierarchy with different cultures and processes are often more successful.
Introduction With today’s rate of development in technology, there has also been an immense increase in global information sharing. Innovations in technology and design seem to be emerging in the market almost every month. One of the key aspects of any business is to gather, organize and efficiently apply this information. According to Antonic (2005), economic assets are fast becoming of secondary importance in the market as companies ascribe more importance to intellectual capital. With the right application of knowledge management methods, companies can achieve a competitive advantage by managing the immense amount of information available (Balanced Scorecard Institute, 2002).
Creativity and innovation can help organisations get the advantage in the competitive market and adapt to the uncertain external environment. In the early research by Gassman (1467), he illustrated that although diversity in the team result language barriers and cultural differences occur frequently, some benefits can still be found, for example, opening up opportunities. Another experiment in problem solving creativity found that, the team which composed of people with different attitudes and perspectives were much better than the team which composed of people with similar attitudes (Triandis). Although diversity in team members has shown some advantages for creativity and innovation, there is still some research and experiment that demonstrated that there are no relationships between team member diversity and team performance or the diversity in team members have negative impact on creativity and innovation. Ochse (1990) illustrated that creativity may be impeded if the team member is quite knowledgeable in their own area.
As some would define creativity, creativity needs an independent mind and the mindset of diverging from a majority norms because a new idea may not be tolerated or accepted by the group (Goncalo 5). So, in this example, creativity relies on a person not tied down to the idea of rejection from a group. Why think bold, new ideas if no one is going to listen? So why do companies form groups dedicated to coming up with new ideas or schools put students into groups for big projects? As Goncalo says in his article, Follow the Crowd in a New Direction: When Conformity Pressure Facilitates Group Creativity (And When It Does Not), “. . .
When an organization is looking for new creative ideas, they should ask their employees. The employees of the organization have an in depth look and are more understanding to the needs of the organization because it is where they work and are involved. Managers can call on a group of employees and together, they can come up with solutions for the organization. “Group decision making is a type of participatory process in which multiple individuals acting collectively, analyze problems or situations, consider and evaluate alternative courses of action, and select from among the alternatives a solution or solutions” (Group Decision Making, n.d.,para.1).
1).Innovation Management:Innovation Management is the form of looking into future, of being creative, imaginative .It is used in the growth of product and also organizational innovation. It also includes tools which allows higher management & engineers to communicate with basic understanding of goals and its processes .Its main focus is to allow the organization to react quickly occurring within an organization, using its efforts to implement new ideas or its products. It also involves persons in contributing to the development of the companies manufacturing and also its marketing. Through development also innovation process can be done. There are two types of process involved in innovation management one is pulled and the other is pushed. Pushed process is the one in which the organization uses its technology to discover profitable applications. Pulled process is the one in which the focus is mainly in developing the efforts to find the solutions. There are two phases in innovation management .First phase includes design of the innovation and second phase includes the implementation. Internal bench marking can be established to measure the innovation. Managers should focus on ones attention on innovation cause to be necessary to infer something from information received on the complexity.
In most organizations, effective utilization of knowledge increases productivity, creates competitive advantage and, ultimately, improves profits.
Open innovation opens the doors for a vast array of ideas and suggestions that can help an organization succeed in being innovative. This will allow the organization to hold a competitive advantage when compared to their competition. Organizations who understand the importance of managing technological innovation will have an easier time succeeding than those organizations who feel they are safe and put innovation on the back burner. Managing technological innovation is essential in this day and age, where technology is advancing at a faster than
Innovations are basically when an specific idea is transformed into a better idea(Quinn p.287). According to Quinn, the best innovations come from teamwork. This means that when a managers is able to develop creative thinking among his employees, the value of the organization increases. Nonetheless, there are several barriers to creative thinking. Some of the barriers could be either cultural or personal. Cultural barriers are those barriers that keep society in their usual lifestyle. For instance, same sex marriage could be a cultural barrier since it is not accepted in most religions. “If we are able to diminish our cultural barriers to creative thinking, we enhance our abilities to think differently and develop skills for creativity (Quinn p.290).” Many ideas may not be accepted by society at the beginning, but at the end, that 's what makes someone unique and trendy. Similar to cultural barriers, personal barriers are those that make people fear failure and those barriers that are against an individual beliefs. Examples of personal barrier are Resistance to change, fear of making a mistake, fear or failure or looking foolish, inability to tolerate ambiguity or to relax, tendency to judge rather than to generate ideas, self- criticism, conformity, stereotyping, lack of information (Quinn