Strategic Innovation A Growth-retainer tool for ARM Holdings

Question: Discuss about the Strategic Innovation for A Growth-retainer tool for ARM Holdings? Answer: Introduction Strategic Innovation is regarded as the pivotal element that drives the business growth. During the process of strategic innovation, an organization re-imagines to bring new reformations in the business. The process of this innovation cannot be created and implemented by a handful of geniuses, but rather, it requires a collaborative effort of all the participants of an organization. This term is more about focus strategy, in which the innovations are devised to meet the specific targets and that too in a lesser time span. While strategically designing an innovation, an organization has to evaluate both WHAT and HOW of the innovation and apply it step by step in compliance with the traditional working strategies of the organization. The What of the process includes the idea of new products and services to be launched and the potential target market segments. (Shahar, 2016) The How of the process decides the way in which the services will be delivered and how will the new potential tar get market segments could be evaluated and reached? The process of Strategic innovation basically revolves around the three major elements: To begin with the process of adopting strategic innovation techniques, an organization needs to develop a new mindset which looks over the available opportunities with a new dimension. The different focus will help the organization to evaluate the hidden potentials and will also help to direct the workflow in different directions. The new tools involved will aid the organization to think beyond the imagination and to keep pace with the ever-changing needs and requirements of the market. Strategic innovation is nothing but an approach adopted by the organization, in times of crisis or during an urgent need of innovation, to optimize the current innovation portfolio of the company or to achieve a sustained competitive advantage. Constructive Critical Analysis The organization that has been chosen here to critically analyze the seven dimensions within a strategic innovation framework is the ARM Holdings, which is regarded as the worlds leading semiconductor intellectual property (IP) supplier. (ARM Ltd. , 2015) This organization is considered to be at the heart of the worlds most advanced digital products. While the implementation of strategic innovation practices, the organization has developed a potential to explore new markets and transform the society with its innovative ideas. The strategic innovation framework, in general, weaves together seven dimensions to produce a portfolio of outcomes that drive growth. These dimensions are: A managed innovation process Strategic Alignment Industry Foresight Consumer / Customer Insight Core Technologies and Competencies Organizational Readiness Disciplined Implementation The above diagram represents the seven dimensions in a pictorial manner. A managed innovation process: This process is an integral part of the creative core of the approach. There are a number of different opportunities and possibilities available in the business world. In order to explore such possibilities, a managed innovation process could be used to amalgamate the internal capabilities of the organization and the external perspectives of the consumers and the merging competitors. An ultimate aim of the innovation process is not just to conduct a brainstorming session, but rather is to carry out a sequential process starting from the idea generation to the implementation of the innovation in the organization. (Burkus, 2013) For a long -term existence, this process combines both the conventional and the non-conventional business strategies. This is done with an idea to remain attached with the traditional working strategies of the organization and at the same time adopting innovations to face the new emerging challenges. From the conventional perspecti ve, this process involves analysis of the usual consumers, the current market trends and the emerging competitors. The non-conventional elements of the process encourage an organization to focus on prevailing challenges and devise new solutions to face them. Strategic Alignment: This dimension is crucially required to gather and build a substantial support for the innovation process. This support is majorly gathered from the senior leadership team, the important external stakeholders and a broad cross-section of the organization. The innovations, as an outcome of this strategic alignment process, often succeeds because they are not simply adapted from outside but are created by the ignited minds of the members of the organization. (Johnson Dr. Luo Kanglong, 2014) Hence this sort of alignment allows an organization to create enthusiasm and commitment within its team members, so that the pending funding decisions could be accelerated easily and quickly. This alignment dimension also builds a strong foundation for the effective implementation of the innovation process. Apart from the provision of a substantial base for implementation, this dimension also ensures that there has been a development of an effective communication with the exter nal stakeholders and they consider themselves as an integral part of the innovation process. Another effective role of this dimension is observed in the operational success of the organization where it is pivotally required in the process of resource allocation and distribution of role and responsibilities. Industry Foresight: This dimension encourages an organization to determine where actually its actions are leading it. This dimension could be used to place a halt to the internal fires and look beyond the boundaries. Researchers have suggested that this dimension is a top to down approach that is intentionally created to explore the drivers, trends, enablers and dislocations within one or more industries. (Freedman Benjamin B. Tregoe, 2003) This dimension allows an organization to explore and implement the ongoing trends that could foster growth in their own business in some way or the other. The major areas to be explored here include the social and political spheres of a county, its potential markets and market segmentation, its demography, its technological trends and its environmental issues. This dimension could also be used as a tool by an organization to go beyond the traditional market research techniques and explore the other potentialities in the target market segments. Th e main purpose of monitoring the trends, by using this dimension, is to avert threats to the existing business and simultaneously identify the potential opportunities on adopting the innovative ideas in their traditional working strategies. This could be regarded as the major stepping stone while adopting the strategic innovation process. This is due to a fact that when an organization tries to leave behind its orthodox approaches and historical beliefs behind to explore new technological capabilities, then it definitely provides new platforms to the organization for its breakthrough growth. Customer / Consumer Insight: The researchers, after a deep research, have unveiled that most of the companies at present are not able to evaluate the actual behavior and needs of their customers and hence fails to make them a part of their organization. The Customer / Consumer Insight is a qualitative bottom up approach that could be used by an organization to evaluate the consumers current needs and potentials and make them a true partner of the organizations innovation process. The organizations, at present, consider themselves as consumer-driven, but they eventually fail in gathering ideas from the consumers, either by validating their ideas involvement or by restricting the interactions with them to feedbacks. (EHRENHARD DR. K. ZALEWSKA-KUREK, 2013) The organization could use this dimension of strategic innovation process to use the available conventional forums in a far more imaginative way. When an organization tries to evaluate and experiment with the non-conventional techniq ues, then it has a greater chance of gaining deeper insights into the future possibilities of growth. If this exploration process is performed in a right manner and by involving the best possible resources, then it has a capability to spark fresh thinking among traditional approaches of an organization and then eventually transform it into a leading growth strategy. Core technologies and competencies: In order to transform the emerging ideas into practical investment-worthy opportunities, an organization needs to have an effective evaluation of its core technologies and competencies. (Geller, 2011) As the market needs and requirements are changing dynamically, hence, in order to keep pace with it, the organizations awareness about the consumer insights and the future trends is not enough. The core competencies may include the patents, the prevailing unique business practices, the relationship with the suppliers and the partners and the type of brand equity. The suggested innovative company has a multiple business units and the operational processes and valuable competencies developed in one group could be shared with the other groups of the organization. Organizational Readiness: This dimension could be defined as the capability of an organization to readily accept the innovation process and implement it in an effective manner and in compliance with the current working strategies of the organization. If the organization is not ready to accept the innovation process, then it will never succeed in implementing the inspired vision and the innovative products. The organizational readiness comprises of 3 basic sub-dimensions: Cultural Readiness, Process Readiness and Structural Readiness. The cultural readiness includes the imaginative power and perceptions that allows individuals to explore and create new innovative solutions. (Gibson, 2011) The process readiness involves the general business practices that basically aim to allow the functional groups to operate in an effective manner and work in a collaborative manner to achieve a common goal. The last sub-dimension includes the organizational structures that support innovation process by assigning the available human resources to high-priority projects. A deep knowledge of this dimension, aids an organization to effectively set a time horizon for completion of tasks, to take initial decisions about project scoping and to set expectations about how effectively the core team members and external stakeholders could be used to attain the prime goal of the innovation process. Disciplined Implementation: To have a meaningful business output and lucrative outcomes of the innovation process, an organization needs to strategically implement the process in-line with the current working strategies of the company. In the terms of strategic innovation, implementation has never been a work of a handful of geniuses, but it requires a constant collaborative support of all the team members of the innovation team. (Management Paradise Team, 2013) The implementation is itself a huge process involving a set of precise steps that are needed to be followed in an order to complete the innovation process in time and in the proposed budget. This process may include the technical development and designing of the product, the transition of the drafts to practical projects and programs, developing effective marketing strategies for better promotion of the innovative ideas, recruiting and training the skilled personnel and collecting feedbacks and customer reviews to employ impr ovements in the current innovation process. (Owens, 2016) Conclusion The process of Strategic Innovation can never be considered as an end-state, but rather, it is a constantly evolving process that demands exploration and experimentation with the traditional approaches of an organization. There is no perfect measure through which the positive impact of this process, over the organization, could be measured. But, the progress and annual increasing annual returns of a company shows the immediate impact of implementation of this process. There are a number of times when a business faces an economic or some other types of turmoil. In such cases, if the organization succeeds in implementing this framework as the guiding principles, then there are chances that the business can cope with such adverse situations. Only identification of the framework will not bring any substantial growth to an organization. To retain its position in a long run, an organization needs to implement this process in-line with all its conventional business strategies. Bibliography ARM Ltd. , 2015. Company Profile. [Online] Available at: https://www.arm.com/about/company-profile/index.php Burkus, D., 2013. 10 Practices from the Most Innovative Organizations. 10 Practices from the Most Innovative Organizations, 23 April. EHRENHARD, D. M. DR. K. ZALEWSKA-KUREK, 2013. STRATEGIC INNOVATION:, s.l.: s.n. Freedman, M. Benjamin B. Tregoe, 2003. THE ART AND DISCIPLINE OF STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP. s.l.:Soundview Executive Book Summaries. Geller, L. W., 2011. The Innovation Advantage. Strategy+Business, 04 April. Gibson, R., 2011. MICHAEL PORTER on Strategic Innovation Creating Tomorrows Advantages - See more at: https://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2011/12/29/michael-porter-on-strategic-innovation-creating-tomorrows-advantages/#sthash.goOmfE1Q.dpuf. MICHAEL PORTER on Strategic Innovation, 29 December. Johnson, D. W. Dr. Luo Kanglong, 2014. Strategic Innovation and Sustainability. Journal of Strategic Innovation and Sustainability, 10(01), pp. 1-97. Management Paradise Team, 2013. Strategic Innovation Framework. [Online] Available at: https://www.managementparadise.com/balajiv.ganesh/documents/6085/strategic-innovation-framework/ Owens, D. A., 2016. Leading Strategic Innovation in Organizations. Leading Strategic Innovation in Organizations. Shahar, A., 2016. What is Strategic Innovation?. Imagine your best people ideating, prototyping, and creating togetherso that their innovative ideas lead to dramatic growth..