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Innovation Management and Business Agility

Autor:   •  April 10, 2018  •  4,376 Words (18 Pages)  •  582 Views

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Insufficient levels of agility have numerous negative impacts on the business performance because of delays in the new product introductions. For instance, in the cosmetics and pharmaceuticals industries, Foster and Kaplan worked out a delay of six-month in the product introductions as representing over 30% reduction of the lifetime product revenue. Including IT capabilities that allow business agility could provide firms with the competitive advantage through shortening time to marketing the new products. For instance, Zara moves fresh clothing designs from the concept to the store racks in a time window of two-weeks, while the other traditional retailers are challenged with the inflexible IT and the restrictive nine-month delivery window. Zara’s IT systems support quick adjustments in the product designs, the supplier choice, acquisition of raw material and the production and provision schedules. The electronic Point-of-Sale data and the other data from every store and site of the firm throughout the globe give direct market information. The advanced IT pairs Zara’s vastly automated factories with networks of over 300 small subcontractors, everyone specializing in a single production part.

Strategic agility necessitates that the organization could consider prompt, decisive, and efficient actions and it can activate, anticipate, and exploit change. It is defined as the flexibility and speed, giving organizations the capacity to change the business so as to respond to the variations in their markets and experience substantial risks. Implementation of the strategic agility entails new concepts regarding strategies, organization, technologies and people. It signifies the paradigm shift where the old ideas require being re-evaluated, revised and in some instances abandoned, so as to find newer avenues to establish stakeholder value. Strategic agility research tends to be an emerging focus area in the research on strategic management and there is restricted research in that area past the supply chain, the manufacturing and the software development firms. Additionally, the drivers and effect of the strategic agility are emerging research areas and hold great importance in the implementation of the capability.

Many intricate interactive systems like seismic activity, weather patterns, and the traffic follow what the mathematicians refer to as the inverse power law. This is the frequency of the event that is inversely associated with its magnitude. With the turbulent markets, the inverse power law signifies that the firms face the steady flow of the small opportunities, the episodic midsize ones, and infrequent chances of creating significant values. Instances of the golden opportunities comprise of the key acquisitions, the transformational mergers, introducing booming markets like India or China, launching the breakthrough products such as the iPhone, or protecting hard assets on favorable terms in the economic crisis. Provided the irregular nature and the uneven distribution of the golden opportunities, the combination of boldness and patience is vital. For example, Carnival, entered the cruising business in the early 70s but did not make any new ships until the late 70s, a time when Ted Arison, the CEO, recognized that the airline deregulation could minimize the flying price to Miami just like the program, The Love Boat, was serendipitously teaching consumers on cruise merits. As the firm ordered the industry’s initial new ship in over ten years, Royal Caribbean, the industry’s leader, enlarged two present ships by having to carve them in half with the welding torches and putting a new midsection. When it was ordering new ships, Carnival already seized a huge portion of the development market. An efficient combination of boldness and patience is easy to identify in hindsight.

Business agility is used to describe the ability of sensing highly uncertain internal and external changes, and react to them proactively or reactively, based on the internal operational processes’ innovation, including the customer in the exploitation activities, while still leveraging the capacities of the partners within the business networks. As the corporate environments transform and the business complexities deepen, the agility becomes highly significant. Companies should navigate the path through an increasingly complex global integration environment (Rigby & Bilodeau, 2015). Therefore, agility is regarded as a “must do” for the CEOs and their firms. The firms with the agile framework establish the closely-knit enterprise and the IT partnerships that are critical for all aspects of the project delivery from the strategic imperative to the solution formulation and implementation. Agile firms have attained extremely high returns from enterprise solutions that have enhanced the business processes that tend to span the enterprise’s boundaries, serving to integrate business networks of the customers, partners and suppliers.

Business Agility and Sustainability

Firms face the challenges of intensifying input material costs and minimizing the availability of the raw materials for the production that have prompted them to minimize their environmental effects (Hugos, 2009). The high trend of outsourcing activities particularly to the low-wage nations has raised issues such as child labor, sweatshops, the damages to the natural resources, and immoral practices. Subsequently, the supply chains’ performance in the manufacturing firms needs integrating sustainability and agility. Agility as the capacity in the supply chain signifies the capacity to adjust often and this signifies the capability’s dynamic nature. Past studies have asserted that to successfully compete in the current markets, the supply chains requires being dynamic. The markets where sustainability determines the competitive nature requires dynamic capabilities (Hugos, 2009). Firms should be able to identify requirements of sustainability and adjust their processes and structures to implement the sustainability practices. With these situations, the capacity to adjust the sustainable practices to be able to align with the stakeholder requirements is essential. Heisterberg, and Verma (2014) established that firms with the sustainable supply chains tend to have implemented the industry best activities and instilled new behaviors to advance such practices. Rigby, and Bilodeau (2015) established that the capabilities advanced in the past might be inappropriate to meet the environmental and social needs. Additionally, Sushil, and Chroust (2015) establishes that the dynamic capabilities allow supply chains to be maintainable. Empowered with the structured approaches to managing innovations, it could offer the business greater returns by emphasizing the investments on the projects considered

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