Innovation at International Foods

Innovation at International Foods

International Food Company LLC is a widely recognized and leading company in the manufacture of ice-cream.  The company has been operations since 1980 when it was established in the region of Sharjah (International foods site, 2016). The company underwent dynamic changes over the years, specifically in 2013, when Mr.Mustafa, the company’s MD, saw the company adopt an American design. The firm also moved its operations to the state of the art manufacturing plant bust still opted to retain its local requirements. The most popular brands from the company and which represent its quality products are “Dallas Cream” and “Classic” (International foods site, 2016).

An assessment of the company’s core values shows that it strives to establish a company that is entrepreneurial, agile, and self-sustaining. They also aim to work to ensure that their customers are satisfied, their products are of high quality, and they maintain compliance with the community, respect, accountability, and integrity. International Foods also seeks to ensure that the approach that they take with their partners ensures all the parties involved get to win.

Therefore, the company works with the mission to be the world’s leading ice-cream manufacturer through best practices that yield value for its stakeholders and customers. The company also makes use of high-quality ingredients obtained from the best manufacturers in the world. However, even as the company seeks to achieve its goals and objectives, it is essential that it adopts innovative practices and strategies. This paper aims to assess innovation at International Foods..

International Foods’ Innovation

Innovation is a concept that refers to coming up with creative and imaginative ways of doing things. In this process, the company seeks to employ better solutions to its challenges, attaining better ways of operations. The organization will, therefore, be able to offer its customers more quality products effectively and have better processes (Franklin, 2009).

Currently, International Foods’ operates in a highly dynamic environment that experiences globalization and continuous advancement in technology.  As such, the company is faced with higher levels of competition as distances become shorter, and demand and expectations of customers become more intense.  Therefore for the firm to improve its performance and enhance its competitiveness, the adoption of innovative strategies is paramount.  These innovations will help the company meets the demands of the changing trends as well as those of the new generations.

Innovation Strategies

There are numerous innovations strategies that the firm can adopt. Dodgson, Gann, and Salter (2008) categorize these strategies into proactive, where the company takes higher risks. Through this approach, the International Foods will have to engage in research and access information from various sources to base its decisions. This information will be critical in informing the steps that the company can take to achieve its vision, mission, goals, and objectives. Further, it will ensure that the company has a higher chance of succeeding in its initiatives since they are backed by research.

The other category is active innovation, where the company seeks to defend their markets. While the company will have to use extensive sources of information to inform its moves, it will only be exposed to minimal risks (Dodgson, Gann and Salter, 2008). International foods can, therefore, opt for an active approach in their innovative practices.

The third categorization of innovative strategies is reactive where the firm mainly focuses on their operations, follow others in the industry and take time before they adopt an innovative approach (Dodgson, Gann and Salter, 2008). This is, however, not very suitable for the International Foods group, which aims to be a leader in the market place.  The approach requires the firm to watch out for what other players in the industries are doing and imitate what works.

Passive innovation is the other categorization and refers to an approach that waits until their customers demand change.  Through this strategy, the company does not seek to meet the needs of the customers in advance but merely change their products and services based on their customers’ requests (Dodgson, Gann and Salter, 2008). This strategy is not suitable for the International Foods company.

The international foods company can, therefore, adopt a proactive and active innovation strategy to improve its operations.  The firm can further use this innovation strategy together with IT, which McKeen and Smith (2015) assert that will help the company to improve its processes.

The successful execution of these strategies will require the leadership of the firm to be collaborative and open-minded. Although feelings of discomfort and uncertainty are common in the process, the leaders should be optimistic, daring, and curious to see the organization mage novel strides.

Benefits of the innovation

The adoption of these innovative strategies for the company will be instrumental in helping it realize its core values as well as the mission and vision. Further, through IT, the company will be able to accomplish its goal of agility and self-sustaining. The improvement of processes within the company’s operations will see them achieve their goals for high-quality products that are highly satisfactory to the customers. The technologies will also streamline the activities of the company yielding integrity and accountability.

The adoption and implementation of innovative practices will also open more significant opportunities for the firm and also empower them to survive in this competitive age. These strategies will be instrumental in the company’s success and economic growth. Further, innovation will help the company come up with novel concepts that will optimize the operations and performance of the firm.

International Foods faces several challenges currently, such as intense competition in the market place. Through these innovation strategies, the company will be able to shift into a different paradigm and deal with these challenges.

References

Dodgson, M., Gann, D.and Salter,.. (2008). The Management of Technological Innovation: Strategy and Practice. Completely rev. And updated. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Franklin, P. (2009). “Questioning two myths in the innovation literature.” The Journal of High Technology Management Research. 20: 40–51. doi:10.1016/j.hitech.2009.02.002. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1047831009000054?via%3Dihub

International foods site (2016) Introduction. Retrieved from https://internationalfoodssite.wordpress.com/2016/10/27/first-blog-post/

McKeen, J. D., & Smith, H. A. (2015). IT strategy: Issues and practices (3rd ed.). Pearson.