The Importance of Innovation Architecture

The Importance of Innovation Architecture

As the global economy continues to change, organizations need to be innovative to be able to stay in business. They need to create novel processes, structures and products accordingly. The capability to innovate is a key factor in an organization’s competitiveness.  Innovation is the recognition of opportunities to develop new processes, services or products. It is important for an organization to stimulate a culture that fosters innovation and be competitive while staying in the business. The purpose of the paper is to examine the elements of Google, Facebook and Apple companies’ culture, processes, and management systems and styles work to support innovation and things that have enabled these organizations to capitalize on innovation and intrapreneurship. The Importance of Innovation Architecture

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Elements of each organization’s processes, culture, and management styles and styles work to support innovation

Google

Organizational culture, structures, and systems, as well as management styles, are essential ingredients for innovation. The corporate culture of Google motivates the sharing of information among employees for the goal of promoting innovation. The cultural features of Google are focused upon improving performance of employees.  According to Erbe (2014), working at Google is unique because of the organization’s culture that supports innovation along with a healthy disdain for the impossible.

The environment of open communication largely contributes to the drive toward innovation. Dismantlement of steadfast hierarchical divisions along with reconceptualization of communication for the top to down crafts this environment. Erbe (2014) claims that the company endeavors to sustain an open culture usually connected with startups, whereby all people are allowed to make contributions and feel at ease sharing opinions and ideas. It emphasizes on the generation of creativity through intergroup, interorganizational, intergroup and interpersonal communication. Additionally, the organization emphasizes the significance of openness among workers, as a scheme of facilitating an inventive mindset and encourage the propagation of useful knowledge that may encourage additional innovation.

Facebook

The organizational culture of Facebook Inc. emphasizes inventiveness and improvement. Facebook’s corporate culture pushes workers to endeavor for improvement. Additionally, the organizational culture of Facebook influences the organization’s workforce development.  According to Biswajeet (2018), the success of Facebook is attributable to the effectiveness of its managers at innovation. The management encourages employees not to be afraid of breaking things so as to improve the. The organization’s management team inspires a culture of innovation and fearlessness, investment in novel ideas and pushing employees to be risk-takers.

Development and maintenance of human resources in Facebook Inc occur via training that makes sure that skills and talent for the organization drive innovation and creativity for its business. the culture aims at maximization of the flexibility of the company in dealing with business issues. As Biswajeet (2018) alleges, the leadership of Facebook believes that the mission of the company is to make the globe more connected and open, a factor that attracts and retains top performers and innovators at the company.  Facebook’s culture encourages bold risk-taking and decision -making. The company’s slogan is that the riskiest thing a person can do is failure to take risks and encourages everybody to take risk and make brave decisions, even if it means making the wrong decisions at times. In the rapidly changing world, a person is guaranteed to be a failure if they do not take risks.The Importance of Innovation Architecture

Apple

Apple Inc.’s organizational culture supports creative innovation. The cultural traits of the organization emphasize the maintenance of innovation that entails creativity along with an attitude that contests standards and conventions.  Disha Experts (2019) claims that Apple has a culture of innovation that gives employees the chance to be creative. Apple’s organizational culture is focused on diversity since diversity is core to innovation. It supports novel policies, novel strategies, and innovations. The company develops, molds, and incorporates the staff into the culture of the organization that pushes innovation for the organization.

The organizational structure of Apple is lean with no committees and general management.  Employees are expected to be creative and offer solutions, regardless of their responsibilities. The management of Apple encourages creativity among the abilities, skills, and knowledge of employees. This corporate culture’s feature allows the organization to guarantee adequate creativity, particularly among staff who work in designing products and developing processes (Disha Experts, 2019).

Why the organizations have been able to capitalize on innovation and intrapreneurship

Facebook, Apple, and Google have been able to capitalize on innovation and intrapreneurship while others have not because they have recognized that there is the business world is swiftly changing and that failure to embrace intrapreneurship and innovation will diminish their competitiveness.  Thus, they have allowed their employees to spread their wings by allowing them to be creative and explore their ideas. According to Deeb (2018), if a big company wants to remain competitive in today’s business world, it should look for innovation and develop an intrapreneurial culture inside the organization.  the company should let employees spend time exploring novel ideas and make them understand that it is alright to make errors and that failure is not punishable if things deviate from plans. The Importance of Innovation Architecture

The organizations have also recognized that inspiring intrapreneurship is an effectual strategy of attracting and retaining the best talent and the importance of hiring entrepreneurs who are bold enough to take risks, make decisions and solve problems on their own. Deeb (2018) claim that when workers act creatively, they are able to explore their opinions and ideas and have the opportunity to flourish with these ideas, they become satisfied with their jobs.  Eventually, an organization boosts rates of employee retention, increases productivity and nurtures a unique culture.

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Processes and systems that might stifle innovation and intrapreneurship

A bureaucratic and hierarchical organizational structure and rigid management systems can stifle innovation and intrapreneurship by making employees not to be bold to come up with new ideas and share them amongst themselves. As indicated by Plunkett et al (2013), as a company grows, it usually establishes procedures, policies, and rules and becomes mechanistic in nature. Formal control systems and bureaucratic procedures that are established make the organization to lose energy to innovate.  A mechanistic structure can throttle the inventive spirit of employees who are entrepreneurs. In order to fulfill the need for creativity, the workers usually leave the organization and join other organizations that support environments that foster intrapreneurship.

The organizational structure plays a crucial function in shaping the culture of the organization because it has the capability of emphasizing particular values that can hinder or promote organizational innovation. To facilitate creativity and innovation autonomy and flat structure are recommended and standardization, formalization, and hierarchy discouraged as they obstruct innovation. Additionally, innovations do not occur in bureaucratic environments As Kelchtermans and Beule (2013) allege that innovation thrives in organizations that implement flat hierarchical structures, where there is smooth communication among organizational members, with every member being empowered to make decisions. While centralization of decision making even in organizations with simple structures slows down innovation, decentralized decision-making positively influences the generation of ideas along with innovation practices.

Structures that I would put in place to foster a culture of innovation within my organization

If I were an innovation architect, I would use a corporate culture and strategy that support innovation in my own organization. the organization culture will be tolerant of transformations, not adverse to risk and will value inventiveness as opposed to conformity. Innovation will be part of the organizational culture and employees will be allowed to work on ideas that are not part of their job descriptions. To foster innovation and intrapreneurship, I would implement a flat organizational structure having fewer hierarchical levels.  The atmosphere and culture will be of trust and collaboration. The Importance of Innovation Architecture

To boost innovation in my organization and encourage employees to become innovative to improve the organization, processes, and products. I would organize events such as workshops to capture and brainstorm ideas and also develop a supportive environment where employees will feel comfortable to express their opinions and ideas with being ridiculed or criticized. I would also encourage experimentation and risk-taking without penalizing individuals whose news ideas fail. According to Hisrich and   Kearney (2015), failure is an essential portion of the process of innovation because failure leads the utmost learning and subsequent development of novel models. Innovative organizations create and develop the appropriate systems and culture that inspire innovative behaviors and are also willing to appreciate failures and derive lessons from them.

Conclusion

Innovation has enabled Google, Facebook and Apple companies to Innovation is crucial for any organization’s competitiveness. The companies have organizational cultures and structures that support creativity and innovation.  In innovative organizations, top management inspires and motivates employees to recognize and develop opportunities and ideas in pursuit of competitive advantage. While systems and structures are essential for the control and management of a company, they are supposed to be flexible for innovation to occur. Strategic flexibility entails the willingness to consistently rethink and make suitable adjustments to the culture, systems, structures, and strategies of the organization. An organization that is innovative is more flexible and adaptable to change adopts decentralized of decision making which involves open communication channels and fewer organizational layers.

References

Biswajeet, P. (2018).  Human Resource Management.  New Delhi: PHI Learning PVT. Ltd.

Deeb, G. (2018). Startup Lessons #203-#303: An Entrepreneur’s Handbook. Highland Park, IL: BLOGIntoBook.

Disha Experts. (2019). Epitome of Ethics, Integrity & Aptitude for UPSC Civil Services General Studies Mains Paper IV.  New Delhi: Disha Publications.

Erbe, N. (2014).  Approaches to Managing Organizational Diversity and Innovation. Pennsylvania:  IGI Global.

Hisrich, R., & Kearney, C. (2015).  Managing Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Kelchtermans, S., & Beule, F. (2013). Proceedings for the 8th European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. England: Academic Conferences Limited

Plunkett, W., Allen, G., & Attner, R. (2013).  Management. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. The Importance of Innovation Architecture