BSS057-6 Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Module code and Title: BSS057-6 Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship Assignment Sample
Introduction to company and scenarios
TUI AG and TUI travel are the leading organizations of “tourism, hotel, and cruise” with a rich heritage in the industry of over 40 years. This study defines the theories and models which help the organisation to increase the creative and innovative thinking of the employees and make them develop and encourage entrepreneurship mindsets. Effective leadership styles have been mentioned to promote innovation and creative thinking in the organisation. Moreover, it provides recommendations for creative and innovative thinking of the entire team of the organisation, which enhance the growth of the TUI organisation.
The study is mainly focuses on the individual entrepreneurial mind set and gives motivations to the team members to do their jobs in their own way. However, it has been seen that individual people or employees have the tendency to put their own thoughts and perceptions while it cannot bring that much profit to the company.
Moreover, if the individual employees share their views and ideas to the leaders then they can help them to put effective strategies in the project works and gain more profit from the market. However, as TUI is a well-known company in hotel and tourism industry so the customer satisfaction is an important factor for it. The company should be able to take all the effective thoughts of individual employees and use them to meet all the requirements of the customers to provide them satisfaction.
Vignette A:
Critical Analysis
The pandemic situation majorly affected the tourism and hotel industry and the TUI organisation belongs to this industry. Therefore, the pandemic situation harshly affects the organisation and this was proactive for increasing its creativity and innovation to thrive as well as survive in the market. The post-pandemic situation insists the organisation is paying attention to “corporate innovation and entrepreneurship” (Thukral, 2021).
According to the given case study, the TUI organisation is a renowned organisation in the tourism and hotel industry in the UK and this has strong tour operators and 1600 travel agencies which have leading online portals. The organisation runs its business and travel value chain under one roof and this insists the organisation gives 27 million consumers “an unmatched holiday experience” in 180 regions. Therefore, if the organisation wants to maintain the standard in the market, it should be careful with its services and make the customers satisfied (Fuchs et al. 2021).
As per the given details in the case study, the main feature of the company’s corporate culture is its global responsibility for “economic, environmental, and social sustainability.” This key feature helps the company to serve the customers for over 20 years and it makes the commitment between the organisation and the customers in this sustainable tourism. After the pandemic situation the hotel and tourism industry faced severe problems and experienced complex issues.
The issues came because customer demand increased and there was a shortage of employees in the organisation (Thukral, 2021). The issues also include flight cancellation and delays of flights in the airports and these make chaos. However, to mitigate these problems, the TUI organization should take different types of modern technologies to update the customers about the flight cancellation and delays of the flights.
According to the case study, the TUI organisation has strong values and visions for changing its existing environment into “a fast-changing environment”. It will help the company to be more flexible and digital as well as global in this industry and attract more people to its services (Yang et al. 2021). The important initiative of the TUI organisation is its central value and the value is “Trusted, unique, inspiring” with adding some elements such as “leadership, workplace, technology, and organization”.
This is not for the rules for the employees and management but this helps the organization to keep the same vision and mission which helps the TUI organisation to bring growth in life and this helps to reflect the “characteristics of the countries, companies, and functions” where the organization works.
The TUI organization has the “general powerhouse and master classes” by which the employees can get training and participate in the activities. However, sometimes it becomes very hard to apply the activities into practice (Fuchs et al. 2021). There are some master classes organised by the company for its employees by an external trainer. However, the master classes lack a TUI context which creates complex issues for the employees and they can not follow the training details after the training session.
The TUI organization wants to focus on the creative and innovative thinking of the employees which helps the company to increase its growth in the market. The organization can create an innovative environment which enables the leadership culture that encourages the employees to think about out of the box and limited thinking (Thayer et al. 2018). The management and the team leaders should ask for unique and creative ideas from the employees and make them realize that they are equally important to the project.
The team can make an innovative internal process which helps the employees to submit their thoughts in front of the management and the clients (Qi et al. 2019). Furthermore, for unique and creative ideas, the TUI organization should give incentives to the employees and praise them for their work.
Moreover, while the management and the team leaders see that the employees can not find the actual track to finish the project, they should be provided proper guidance (Wu, and Chen, 2018). It can improve the skills of the employee and the organization might appoint leaders of the innovation process who can “encourage, support, and advise other teammates” and pitch ideas. The organization can give freedom to the employees who want to create something new in terms of strategies and create a framework.
However, the TUI organization has its own leadership model which is VIBE (Vision, Inspire, Build team, and Execute). The ways of work of the TUI organization makes a hybrid environment and create a “culture of trust and passion” which is for the colleagues of the company. The creation is made for the employees because it gives them the freedom to do their work anywhere they want to do it.
Creativity is something different that depends on the different people and organisations should be creative to compete with different companies in the same industry. The TUI organisation takes some initiatives to be unique in the industry and wants the employees to also be creative in their work. “Vygotsky on collective creativity” is a theory which helps to think creatively about the work (Ellis and Childs, 2019).
Lev Vygotsky was a “soviet psychologist” who reached the children’s learning for “social and cultural contexts”. The main theory is “social constructivism” and it defines the importance of cognitive development as well as social interaction. Vygotsky thought that “creativity arises from any human activity that produces something new.” Creativity comes from physical objects and makes new mental constructs.
Creativity also presents the “artistic, scientific and technical discoveries” and creativity helps an individual person to alter, combine, and imagine something new (Lunevich, 2021). Vygotsky thinks that creativity is present in every person and they are different according to their personality and characteristics. Therefore, the same for leadership, is also present in every person and they should polish it to give a path to the followers and other people.
Collective creativity helps the organization and company collect the individual creativity of the employees (Dafermos, 2018). However, with the help of the “Vygotsky on collective creativity” theory, the TUI organization can take creativity from all the employees and compare them with each other to take appropriate creativity for the projects.
Conclusion
The study has concluded that TUI organization is a well-known company in the hotel and tourism industry and it has various services for the customers in terms of flight service, product & purchasing, IT, and finance. Despite this, the organization faced issues during the pandemic situation and it should use different theories to make strong leadership strategies for creative and innovative thinking of the employees such as the “Belbin team development model, Vygotsky on collective creativity, Diffusion of Innovation Theory, Brainstorming, role storming, CPS, and design thinking”.
Recommendation
Brainstorming- It is a combined approach for the problem solving of complex issues and it is a “relaxed and informal approach”. It encourages people and employees of the companies to bring their innovative thoughts and ideas which can be a little crazy for the first time. However, some of the innovative ideas can be applied or used in the project work of the company originally. Crazy ideas and thoughts help the organisation to make creative solutions to complex problems (Milovanovic et al. 2020).
However, the TUI organisation faced several issues during the pandemic situation so it can use the “brainstorming approach” for solving the problems. On the other hand, the company also has some management problems and employee training problems which could be rectified to be a more famous company in the hotel and tourism industry of the UK. In this approach, several people and employees can share their views and thoughts with the team leaders and higher management.
Role storming- It is also an approach similar to brainstorming which helps to make creative and innovative problem-solving skills and strategies. Role storming helps the employees and people to come out of their cells and try something new in terms of strategies and techniques (Buisine and Guegan, J2020. The approach also helps the employees to give concentration on complex problems and identify new ways to mitigate this. The TUI should use this to use new technologies for employee training and provide them with proper materials.
Vignette B:
Critical Analysis
In this vignette, the situation is about the mindsets of the employees which promote various activities of the organisation. According to the case study, the teams of the organisation state that communities and departments are running the hackathons such as, in the year 2021, “a Northern regional hackathon” takes an initiative to solve the complex problems which were not included in the legal and tech team because there were no such IT participants which can solve the issues.
On the other hand, the “Data science hackathon” takes the responsibility to resolve the problems related to the business appeal (Franco et al. 2021). However, the problems were not applicable to the tech infrastructure of the organisation. The issues are not included in the tech infrastructure because there is a lack of participation by the “user interface and software engineers”.
According to the case study, the commercial team of the TUI organisation has a “lightbulb lab” which specifically focuses on the issues of the internal department. The marketing department of the organisation has “an annual forum” where anyone in the company can share their views and ideas of creativity and innovation for improving the “customer experience” and it becomes quite successful for the TUI organization.
The IT management of the company organises “knowledge sharing and innovation meetings” which are highly technical and this is not known in the wider business of the tourism and hotel industry (Franco et al. 2021). Therefore, the company should focus on the process by which the employees can learn the technologies.
Another initiative by the TUI organization is the “monthly innovation forum” which is led by the strategy group and this helps the company to execute great projects. However, all the “ground innovation forums” do not reach to this forum because there is a lack of “early cross-functional involvement”.
Therefore, the TUI organization should improve its leadership management and operating skills which will increase the growth rate in every department and strategy. The company also should be concerned about the training process of the employees and provide them with proper guidance to follow in the future (González-González and García-Almeida, 2021). Furthermore, they will gain more profit from the market with the help of appropriate and efficient employees.
In the “Belbin team development model”, Belbin identified nine team roles which are included in the three different groups such as “Action Oriented, People Oriented, and Thought Oriented” (Rahmani et al. 2021). Every team role of this model is associated with “typical behavioural and interpersonal strengths” and defines the characteristics of weaknesses which should be accompanied by the team roles.
As of now, the “Belbin team development model” is a leadership training model so that the lead management of the TUI organization can use this for the betterment of the employees and help them to improve their skills for the projects. The model stated that a team role is “a tendency to behave, contribute, and interrelate with others in a particular way (Lynch et al. 2019).”
The company can use this model to mitigate the complex issues due to the pandemic situation. The number of tourists and visitors decreased at the time of the COVID-19 situation and therefore the travel and hotel industry faced issues in their economic standard. The training problems within the company and tech infrastructure can be solved by this development model.
Figure 1: Belbin team development model (Source: Lynch et al. 2019)
“Diffusion of Innovation Theory” is developed by “E.M. Rogers” in the year 1962 and this is one of the oldest theories in “social science”. The theory helps the organization in the communication process to explain how an idea gains “momentum and diffuses through a specific population” in the social system (Min et al. 2019). The results of this diffusion are that “people are a part of the social system” and they adopt new ideas and behaviours.
This theory is for innovation which is the adoption of new behaviours and ideas in the social system. It has been seen that those people who adopt innovation have different characteristics and they are different from those people who do not adopt innovation.
However, when the organization adopt innovation and promotes it then the organization should follow different strategies. The strategies are “innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards” and the five main factors are “relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability” which influence the organizations to adopt the innovation (Dong, 2021).
The TUI organization should use theory to adopt innovation for running the initiatives with the creativity of the employees. It will also make differentiation by comparing with other companies in the same industry. The theory also helps to make more strong strategies as the TUI is one of the best hotel and tourism companies in the UK.
Conclusion
It has been concluded that the study is about the hackathon which helps the company to mitigate the lack of the business appeal. The study used the Belbin team development model to improve the ability of the team members and Diffusion of Innovation Theory for improving the creativity and innovation of the TUI Company.
Recommendation
CPS- “Creative Problem Solving” is a process which helps to break down critical and complex problems into different parts for better understanding. It also helps the employees and organization to generate ways to solve problems and identify the appropriate ones (Beda et al. 2020). TUI organization faced an economic issue during the pandemic situation while the tourists were not coming to visit the places in the UK and the flights are also cancelled for reducing the chances to get affected by COVID-19.
Design thinking- This is a way to mitigate complex problems and it relies “on techniques and methods from disciplines like psychology and ethnography in order to understand human needs” (Kannengiesser and Gero, 2019). This helps the TUI company to make innovative ways to solve the issues of COVID-19, employee training, management issues, economic issues and more.
References
Dafermos, M., 2018. Developing creativity in science: The case of Vygotsky. In Rethinking cultural-historical theory (pp. 215-242). Springer, Singapore.
Dong, O.M., 2021. Using the Diffusion of Innovation Theory to Understand the Challenges and Opportunities to Advancing Use of Nutrigenetics in Clinical Practice. Lifestyle Genomics, 14(4), pp.124-128.
Ellis, V. and Childs, A., 2019. Innovation in teacher education: Collective creativity in the development of a teacher education internship. Teaching and Teacher Education, 77, pp.277-286.
Franco, S., Presenza, A. and Petruzzelli, A.M., 2021. Boosting innovative business ideas through hackathons. The “Hack for Travel” case study. European Journal of Innovation Management.
Fuchs, M., Fossgard, K., Stensland, S. and Chekalina, T., 2021. Creativity and innovation in nature-based tourism: a critical reflection and empirical assessment. In Nordic perspectives on nature-based tourism (pp. 175-193). Edward Elgar Publishing.
González-González, T. and García-Almeida, D.J., 2021. Frontline employee-driven innovation through suggestions in hospitality firms: The role of the employee’s creativity, knowledge, and motivation. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 94, p.102877.
Kannengiesser, U. and Gero, J.S., 2019. Design thinking, fast and slow: A framework for Kahneman’s dual-system theory in design. Design Science, 5.
Lunevich, L., 2021. Creativity in Teaching and Teaching for Creativity in Engineering and Science in Higher Education—Revisiting Vygotsky’s Psychology of Art. Creative Education, 12(7), pp.1445-1457.
Lynch, D.S., Lynch, M.J. and Clemens, C.M., 2019. Belbin team roles. In The handbook of communication training: a best practices framework for assessing and developing competence. Routledge.
Milovanovic, J., Hu, M., Shealy, T. and Gero, J., 2020, August. Evolution of brain network connectivity in the prefrontal cortex during concept generation using brainstorming for a design task. In International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (Vol. 83976, p. V008T08A034). American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Min, S., So, K.K.F. and Jeong, M., 2019. Consumer adoption of the Uber mobile application: Insights from the diffusion of innovation theory and technology acceptance model. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 36(7), pp.770-783.
Qi, L., Liu, B., Wei, X. and Hu, Y., 2019. Impact of inclusive leadership on employee innovative behaviour: Perceived organizational support as a mediator. PloS one, 14(2), p.e0212091.
Rahmani, F., Scott-Young, C., Tadayon, A. and van der Walt, J.D., 2021. Team composition in relational contracting (RC) in large infrastructure projects: a Belbin’s team roles model approach. Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management.
Thayer, A.L., Petruzzelli, A. and McClurg, C.E., 2018. Addressing the paradox of the team innovation process: A review and practical considerations. American Psychologist, 73(4), p.363.
Thukral, E., 2021. COVID‐19: Small and medium enterprises challenges and responses with creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Strategic Change, 30(2), pp.153-158.
Wu, C.M. and Chen, T.J., 2018. Collective psychological capital: Linking shared leadership, organizational commitment, and creativity. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 74, pp.75-84.
Yang, M., Luu, T.T. and Qian, D., 2021. Group diversity and employee service innovative behaviour in the hospitality industry: a multilevel model. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.
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