Nissan Leaf

The company Nissan have recently created a commercial in the USA which is talking about innovation within their company. Nissan have recently created an eco friendly car. This eco friendly car has been the process of innovation since 2006. Nissan needed to innovate to be able to keep up with the competition.  

Innovation is key to being able to keep up with your competitors. The world is a developing place, and there are constantly new products and ideas being injected into companies. Businesses must keep up with their competitors.  

Not long ago, Nissan were being branded as not having many eco friendly/hybrid cars. This was partly blamed on the CEO Carlos Ghosn’s decision to not invest in all electric technology. He even faced criticisms from his own employees on this decision. But then came the Nissan Leaf.  



The Nissan lead is the only zero-emission car out on the market right now. This product is in a league of its own, and is was born from pure innovation within Nissan. In order to make this product feasible, Nissan had to encourage their employees to believe in this product. CEO Carlos Ghosn stated that his employees needed to ‘feel the passion, vision, determination and focus.’ 



Nissan is proof that innovation can create fantastic ideas that could possibly change the world. It just so happens that Nissan got their first.  

There is a fantastic interview with the CEO of Nissan which I found very interesting. If you would like to see this interview, please follow the link below.

http://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies/2011/profile/nissan.php

Seven Dimensions of Strategic Innovation

There is a framework for Strategic Innovation. Within this framework, there are seven different branches which help to produce innovation that are growth driven. This innovation helps a company to reach their goals, and helps to bring new ideas and products to a company. The world is forever changing, so companies need to ensure that they are continually innovative.

I am going to explain each of these 7 dimensions.

1.       A Managed Innovation Process.

A managed innovation process is at the creative core of strategic innovation. By managing innovation and looking beyond what is obvious, it is possible to influence and inspire members of the team and explore lots of different pathways and try and find new possibilities.

2.       Strategic Alignment.

Strategic alignment  is the enthusiasm and support between the key stakeholders to stimulate the organisation and ensure that they are focused on the same visions, goals and actions within the company.

3.       Industry Foresight

This industry foresight helps for people within the company to understand what drives change and to identify trends that are new to the business and its business area. It also helps to identify new technologies that could benefit the business, and to think outside the box.

4.       Consumer Insight

Helps to give a perspective and understanding of what the customers needs. Both what the customers have said, and also what they haven’t.

5.       Core Technologies and Competencies

These are internal and organisational capabilities within the business which could be extracted and put to good use. These capabilities could deliver satisfaction to customers, and also help improve brand equity.

6.       Organisational Readiness

Being organisationally ready helps a company to act upon new ideas and implement new strategies quickly and organised. Being organised also helps when managing the operational and financial demands that will follow when using innovation.

7.       Disciplined Implementation.

When implementing these new ideas and strategies, its effectiveness will be dependant on how disciple a company have been when going forward with this innovative idea.

This strategy has helped me understand more about innovation. I hope it does the same for you.

(WWW.INNOVATION-POINT.COM, Palmer & Kaplan, Page 6, 2007.)

James Dyson on Innovation

“If only it was that simple. I never shrieked ‘Eureka!’ No doubt it would have felt good, but for me, no such luck: it took years of hard, dogged work. Endless experimentation and many mistakes had to be endured until I found a solution to the problem of clogging vacuum cleaners.” (James Dyson, 2005).

 James Dyson would have loved to have had his best ideas come straight to his head, but his company Dyson had to go through many changes and innovative stages in order to get to the position they are at. Innovation can be combination of many different techniques. As James has stated, his best idea did not come to him straight away. He had to take many different paths and used a trial and error technique to create his best products to date. What is his key to innovation I hear you say? Having imagination, faith in an idea’s potential and no fear of getting it wrong helped and gave unexpected results. For me, this is engineering, it’s innovation.” James Dyson has created his own ‘formula’ for innovation.

Creativity + Iterative Development = Innovation.

Iterative Development is a development approach that ‘cycles’ through the development phases, from gathering requirements to delivering functionality in a working release. So by working his way through development in stages, Dyson was able to get a broader look on his product, and this will have generated innovative ideas.

As well as focusing on his main product genre (Vacuum Cleaners), James Dyson also used his innovative skills to broaden the products that his company sells. As well as selling a huge range of best-selling vacuum cleaners, he also has used his and his teams innovation to create Dyson fans and heaters, as well as hand dryers, and also offering a huge range of accessories and spare parts for his products.

To conclude this blog post, I ask this question…

Do you believe that James Dyson has used his innovative skills to his highest ability? Because I sure do.

If anybody would like to read the article ‘James Dyson on Innovation’ here is the link:

http://www.ingenia.org.uk/ingenia/issues/issue24/dyson.pdf

Creativity, the birth mother of Innovation.

Where does innovation come from? It comes from within. It is coaxed out by your creativity. Creativity is the seed in which innovation develops from. Creativity encourages divergent and convergent thinking. Divergent thinking is where in order to find a solution you explore many different options, routes and possibilities. The advantages of being able to think like this and exploring many different routes is that you can evaluate which one is the best and weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of each route. This then helps you to make the best decision which will produce the best outcome. Convergent thinking is the opposite of divergent thinking and generally applies to questions where there is only one correct answer, like math equations etc.

My personal opinion is that to be innovative, you have to have creativity within. I believe that the most innovative people were born with creativity; bubbling down inside and that by developing on this creativity they have gained the innovative skill.

In order for creativity and innovation to flow freely, their needs to be quite a relaxed structure within an organisation. Structures that are quite hierarchical and rigid tend to restrict creativity and innovation. Organisations that have this type of structure within their business usually prefer to encourage a rational style of decision making.

Creativity is also included in one of the idea-generation techniques, which has been adapted and summarised from Sowrey, 1987. Trying to bring out the creativity in employees can be difficult, and by using these techniques such as braining storming and encouraging lateral thinking, this can help. Brainstorming is ‘a common technique employed to generate a large quantity of ideas within a group.’ (Managing and Shaping Innovation, Conway, F. Steward, Oxford University Press, 2009, Page291.) By using brainstorming as an idea generator, people can bounce of each other’s ideas, and creativity is stimulated by the chain reaction of ideas through interaction within the group, and wild ideas are thrown into the mix.

Lateral thinking helps ideas to arrive by breaking free from normal/current ways of thinking, and effectively thinking outside the box. Lateral thinking includes ‘restructuring existing patterns of information in the mind, and by exploring alternative and novel ways of viewing a situation.’ (Managing and Shaping Innovation, Conway, F. Steward, Oxford University Press, 2009, Page291.)

So to conclude my second blog post, i invite you to answer a question for me. Has brainstorming ever helped you be innovative within the workplace? Let me know.

What is innovation?

What is innovation? Good question! Before starting university I had absolutely no clue. Walking into my lecture with INNOVATION written on the board was quite daunting. As my lecturer began to speak, I was taken in by this word. Innovative. Why have I never been innovative before within certain workplaces? I have no idea.

Innovation is often described as introducing something new, offering your own ideas or listening to the ideas of others. Innovation includes improving systems and processes, and if a person has a creative idea, they turn this idea into reality. They put their ideas into practise to try and make something better. 

There are many different formats of innovation, which I will go into further details during the course of this blog. Some of these different formats include strategic, process, product, social, philosophical and political innovation.

From the lectures I have had so far I have begun to understand that being innovative is important within a business structure. Innovative people can bring new ideas to companies, and can build and develop and improve existing ones. Companies need to continually change and develop and produce new product cycles (innovate) in order to constantly stay on top of the market and become number one.