Report
Question Description
You are required to write a 2000 word innovation strategy report to the board of your selected organisation. Your innovation strategy report must:
Succinctly introduce the selected organisation and selected innovation trend.
Succinctly define the following concepts and their relationships: the organisational environment, innovation trend, innovation strategy, innovation capabilities, innovation value creation and capture.
Succinctly describe how the creation of an innovation strategy ensures strategic alignment within organisations and why it is important.
Analyse the impact of the selected innovation trend on the selected organisation. You should apply at least one strategy tool to analyse the impact, opportunities and threats to the organisation.
Recommend how the organisation’s innovation strategy best responds to the innovation trend by answering the following questions.
- How should the organisation organise its innovation activities?
- What additional innovation capabilities should the organisation develop?
- What innovation initiatives should it pursue?
- How should the organisation ensure that it creates and captures value from the innovation?
Assessment 1 - Individual report: Innovation strategy
This assessment must be completed by students individually. The assessment is designed for students to develop understanding of the close links between the business environment, business innovation strategy, business capabilities and business value creation. The assessment involves writing a 2000 word innovation strategy report in response to a real case.
Please note that academic misconduct and late submission penalties will apply to this assessment as per the university policies.
Assessment Guidance
Further assessment guidance will be provided here. As we progress in the unit, the unit coordinator will add advice here in response to student questions and discussions. You are encouraged to ask questions and contribute to discussions in class and to create posts on the website discussion forum.
Feel free to discuss your assessment ideas in the unit discussion forum, before you complete and submit the assessment.
Assessment Context
Generally, innovation initiatives within a parent firm are driven by an innovation strategy. An innovation strategy is a subset of firm’s overall strategy. The innovation strategy describes the future development a firm’s innovation capabilities and the future direction of its innovation activities. A firm’s innovation strategy does not exist in a vacuum, it responds to a specific set of circumstances including innovation trends and provides an important context; direction; guidance; monitoring and facilitation of an organisation’s innovation initiatives. Thus, firms take care to diagnose the firm’s circumstances including innovation trends to inform the design and development of its innovation strategy.
Select one of the following firms (or organisations):
- Apple (electronic device manufacturer)
- CQUniversity (university education provider)
- Facebook (social media provider)
- Strava (social fitness application provider).
Select one of the following innovation trends:
- Artificial intelligence (Davenport &Ronanki, 2018; FiveFifty, 2018; McKinseyGlobalInstitute, 2018)
- Augmented reality (Porter &Heppelmann, 2017)
- Robotic automation (Tilley, 2017)
Ideally, your selected innovation trend is important to the selected firm or organisation as that makes the innovation strategy report important to its senior executives, the report interesting to read and the report writing exciting.
