Innovation and Crativity in Organizations

Innovation and Crativity in Organizations

Objective: It is important that you have the opportunity to apply the skills and knowledge you have gained throughout this module to a real-world organizational problem. For this reason, we would like you to choose an organisation or firm to which you have access, or which you know well, and develop a plan for improving creativity and innovation within the organization. It may help to consider yourself a “Creativity and Innovation Consultant.” You have two main tasks, both of which will require a thorough analysis of the organization, the application of information from the module, and additional outside research specific to the problems your organization faces. Tasks: • Analyse their strengths and weaknesses in their creative and innovative processes • Propose an action plan, based on what you have learned in the module, to improve their creativity and innovation Suggested Do’s: • Choose an organisation you know personally. Case study based assignments usually do not work as well. Medium sized organisations are ideal. • If possible use some primary evidence in your assignment – interviews or surveys are ideal. You may also use existing survey data or internal documents as primary evidence. • Use the toolkit you have developed in the module and draw on other academic literature to support your arguments. Preferably Don’t: • Do not choose a very small (micro) organisation – the scope for strategy development here is usually too limited for an in-depth analysis. • Do not focus on a single problem within the organization (that is the focus of the group assessment, not this one) – this should focus on a variety of organizational factors that influence innovation within the organization. • Do not rely on anecdotes and unsupported statements – you should provide evidence for your analysis and suggestions, either from your primary organizational evidence or from the available research. The suggested readings and further readings from the module are a good place to start. • Do not use tables as a way around the word limit – they should be used as a concise way to illustrate the relationship between categories of information Questions that may help you work on the paper: • How would you characterise the current state of innovation and creativity in the organisation? What are the key drivers or inhibitors of creativity and innovation? How is this influencing business performance? • How would you describe the ‘context’ in which the business is operating? How does this influence the innovation strategy/action plan you might develop? • What is the objective of your innovation or creativity strategy proposals? • How are you going to measure and evaluate the success of your proposals? • What do you see as the key implementation issues in delivering on your innovation/creativity strategy? How might you overcome these? Considerations for marking: • Did you identify and clearly articulate the problem(s) you are addressing? • Appropriate application of frameworks/models from the module • Effective use of primary evidence (interview/survey/internal documents) where available. • Argument is well supported by references to wider academic literature from the module or elsewhere • Reflexive attitude to developing the plan and recognition of the plan’s limitations • The essay is presented effectively – it is well organized and well writte