Inspiration and innovation in companies
Dyson, as an engineer, was a source of inspiration and innovation for the company. The approach applied at DAL was step-by-step method borrowed from Thomas Edison, which involved making a single alteration at a time in a prototype to bring about perfection in inventions. For instance, the Dual Cyclone Vacuum cleaner came about after the five thousand one hundred and twenty seventh prototype. It was referred to as a disruptive piece of innovation by experts (Faheem 2009). With the backing of engineering skills, Dyson accepted ideas from all his staff to make invention as he believed they could sprout from anyone. His definition of innovation was creativity, coupled with constant or iterative development. Managers also tend to look for ideas within the organization’s operational groups as a first step.
Communication between different units of a company has been linked with the creation of new products. Another way of ensuring continued innovation is through contacting the end-users, stakeholders and clients of the company (Ganotakis and Love 2012). Outside sourcing is crucial to ensure that the organization not only keep ups but develops products that the market actually desires. Frustrations also fueled Dyson to invent a modern, more efficient vacuum cleaner when he was doing home renovations at his home. He was able to relate that if he was frustrated with the piece of equipment, more of his clients must have been equally frustrated, therefore tapping into the consumer’s end to make an invention.
The initial step in idea generation consists of sourcing of ideas which are either conducted internally or externally through research and development. Internal scanning is necessary to ensure outside knowledge is taken up efficiently and allow for fair allocations of returns. DAL created vacuum cleaners specialized for various markets; in Japan, the vacuum cleaner had a head designed to cater to Japanese tatami mats.
Lesson Learnt
Innovation is a linked chain that begins with sourcing or assembling information to, generation of the idea and finally, diffusion of the created concepts. All steps of the innovation process are essential, and a weakness in any could mean failure in the whole system. The leadership of any organization should, therefore, consider innovation as an end to end system and not a one series step. The analysis also notes the importance of external sourcing of ideas for change to remain relevant and create products that meet or surpass the market’s expectations. Sony Company reliance only on internal research and development saw them miss great innovation opportunities and consequently develop products that were not in line with the market expectations (Hasen and Birkinshaw 2007). Idea visualization and creation of prototypes is an efficient way of coming up with new products. Creating an external network assists to keep ideas flowing and to tackle new challenges through innovation. Through interactive platforms, developers can be able to come up with new changes by responding to customer queries. Cross Unit networks within an organization are effective platform in idea generation and how well and quick such units can be linked could determine the probability of success as in the case of Bertelsmann.