Global Innovation Management Assignment Sample
Introduction
When an idea is result of something that adds value to the existence of the object is termed as innovation. Innovation can additionally be characterized as procedure where a remarkable idea, executed amazingly, and conferred in a way that is both common and totally recognizes the charm of that basic idea (Potter and Wilhelm, 2019).
Whereas globalization is stated as the procedure that provides a platform to people, companies and government of various countries to interact on the terms of investment and international trade. Innovation is defined on various terms considering: product process, organization and marketing innovation. In this assignment,
I have covered the product innovation. Product innovation is launch of new or renovated product. It is characterised by improvement in material, design, usage, specifications, user friendliness etc (Iwao, 2017).
In short innovation implies thoroughly considering of the crate misusing new innovation and utilizing new plans to create new worth and to realize critical changes in the eyes of the public.
An innovative presentation can only be successful when it satisfy’s it customers. All the companies and government when they come up with the innovation, it is for the benefit of the ultimate user of the service (Betancourt et al, 2017). Therefore, before committing any innovative idea/product one needs to think from the customer’s perspective too.
What mistakes a company make when they talk about innovation
Coming up with a innovative idea is quite easy, the main difficulty lies in executing that idea into practicality. This is the point where companies often fail, by not refining the idea, giving it a demo try before finally executing it (de Moura and Botter, 2017). For designing a project period duration entails the time it needs, budget it requires varies methods to test it etc.
Companies usually think with the internal viewpoint and sometimes forget to track the record of customer perspective. If the customer doesn’t perceive any change in the product, then no one can compel them to purchase it. They will move towards other better substitutes available.
Importance of innovation in any company/organization
For the success of any business it is quite necessary for them to keep “innovation” as priority. As per the “law of diminishing marginal utility”, more a product is consumed, it decreases its satisfaction with time (Amasaka, 2016). Similarly, applies to customers they get bore and also act of preference change due to fashion, consume same product but might differ with the brand choice. To make your customer stick to the brand, there is need of the innovative idea that keeps your product updated and different from the competitors.
It is observed with change in globalization trends need for innovation has been increased and is important for the survival of profit maximization, organisation remain distinct from the competitors (Iwao, 2018). It is observed that the organisation that doesn’t sustain innovation experiences downfall in growth and market position segment.
Accordance to the present scenario, seeing the impact of globalization, migration, technological revolution and pandemic occurring there is requirement for innovators and innovations. Innovation broadens the employment base and adds value to the product. Innovations is important for a company to harmonize with advancing technology for:
meeting the evolving needs of the society, and to be foot ahead in comparison to the competitors, hike in position, and overall growth of the company (Polak & Bunkowska, 2017). Further, with change in preferences and fashion, people set greater expectation with the brand and its product.
Therefore, it’s necessary to keep innovation as priority and at same time preserve it from competitors; good ideas are restructured and and utilized by the competitors to devise the originally launched one. If a company doesn’t prioritize innovation it experience decline in product sale, market position and revenue (Rothaermel, 2016).
Analysis and Findings
Analysis
Toyota Company is progressing admirably and one of those with innovative ideas and products. In present Toyota is a genuine model for advancement on the planet (Chew et al, 2016). Continually company is working on new ideas and converting them into practical use for their products. Company’s advancement can be noticed in Toyota Hybrid Technology (Bertoni, 2018).
Company act as part of the automotive industry, which is concerned with designing, development, manufacturing, marketing, and selling of the world’s motor vehicles (Tampatty et al, 2017). Company is headquartered in Japan, and is assumed as one of the world’s largest company in terms of sales.
The company has more than 320,808 employees around the globe. Toyota is established by Kiichiro Toyoda in the year 1937; it took him to gain immense known and hard work to convert the idea into practicality. It is the remarkable change ever experienced with so much innovation, to convert a textile mill into an automotive industry. In 1934 the company created its first product type A engine and later in 1936 its first passenger car Toyota AA.
Toyota also has and operates Lexus and scion brand and it has the majority of stake in Daihatsu and Hino motors, while a minority of stakes in fuji heavy industries, Isuzu Motors, Yamaha Motors, and Mitsubishi aircraft corporation (Aoki and Wilhelm, 2017). Further, the company entails 522 subsidiaries. Apart from the prominent provider of automotive service, the company also provides financial services under Toyota Financial Services and also develops robots.
Shift from textiles to cars
Company is originated out of the Toyoda Automatic Weaving Mill, Founded by the father of Kiichiro, Sakichi Toyoda in 1911.The company shifted into automobiles in the early 1920s, when Kiichiro felt amazed seeing the car’s popularity in the US and Europe and was impressed by the western culture of industry and wealth (Potter and Graham, 2019).
Kiichiro started with the secret project work for his company when Japan suffered from the earthquake in 1923, and the automobile sector played a major role in its recovery. The work includes importing the main machines from the textile industry that would help in the care sector.
Many of the textile techniques invented by Sakichi were advantageous for cars like airbags, seats (Liu and Meng, 2017). Apart from this he also made an in house capability for steel to produce car parts. The main goal was to make quality vehicles at the cheaper cost, than the Americans. Kiichiro was dependent upon the technology.
Toyota Motors spun off its company in 1937, providing it with the name” just in time”, to produce which it was necessary to educate the workers to stop the work whenever an error is detected, such as to avoid heavy costs later (Bilgeri et al, 2019). Inclusive of it extending the concept to Toyota’s suppliers at upstream and bespoke dealership network in downstream.
The combination of these two innovations made Toyota to overcome the incumbent conglomerates and gain the title of the most important company in Japan. The innovative shift from textiles to cars was the result of an innovative mind and the level of global competitors present (Coetzee et al, 2016). This “just in time” technique allowed huge production profits and required workers to be well trained and appraised for loyalty.
Findings
The success of Toyota lay with Kiichiro who with his innovative thinking was able to transfer his idea into practicality. It’s not everyone cup of tea to convert an entire sector into something that already had a competitive market structure (Slack and Brandon-Jones, 2018).
It was due to his innovation and ideology that he could transform the textile industry into a car and without being dependent upon the market product, which would have cost higher. Instead he searches for the product in is an in-home industry and came out with success and also the introduction of just in time technique leads to greater acknowledgment worldwide (Almeida et al, 2018).
Innovative Products of Toyota
Partner robot program
In 2011, Toyota Motor Corporation has organized a ‘Partner Robot’ program. It is responsible for creating robots, which provides solutions to life hardships (Popov, 2018). Under this various robots have been constructed so far to support medical stream, welfare stream, and portability support.
Kirobo in space
A 34cm tall robot, with face recognition technology that is developed by Toyota in Japan. The robot provides accompany in space missions to astronaut Kochi Wakata belonging to Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Mielczarek and Knop, 2016). The robot is considered first ever to speak in space.
Integrated safety technology
Company has also designed the pre-collision system that steer assist and has automated highway driving assistance. It is made to avoid crash of the automobiles, the system with steer assistance use radar detection to detect humans passing by and other hazards nearby that can cause harm, it reduce the chance of collision(Baldassarre et al, 2017). It creates an alert and automatic brake works. Further, the automated highway driving assist ensures safer driving without compromising the calmness. It includes cruise control and also traces the lane, while controlling driving on them.
Wireless EV charging
The company started with testing of the wireless charging system, which is developed for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (Glass et al, 2016). This technology enables cars to get charge in the parking by alignment with a coil set into the surface of the ground-eliminating the needs for cables and adapters.
Image 1: I-Road trials
(Source: Yun et al, 2018)
i-Road trials
The Toyota I-Road is a super-cool electric three-wheeled ‘individual versatility vehicle’ – first launched in 2013 in Geneva Motor Show (Brandl et al, 2018). Since then is released in the city of Tokyo and Grenoble, and at Toyota City.
Further, to check whether they generally welcomed idea would work in reality; TMC chose to test the vehicle on the thickly demanded roads of the Tokyo city in March, with 10 of the single-seat vehicles being taken to the city boulevards (Simão and Lisboa, 2017). Twenty individuals were engaged with the program, and they extended from industry specialists through to individuals from the general population, to increase the scope of input on the I-Road’s trails.
In the year 2013, I-Road was included to the TMC ‘Ha: mo preliminaries’ at Toyota City. Ha: mo is an urban vehicle framework intending consolidation on open and private vehicles – its point is improving the traffic stream as well limits outflows (Solaimani et al, 2019). The framework involves a blend of electric vehicle sharing the traffic directing data – guaranteeing the city occupants that will utilize the one of most suitable type of transportation.
I-Road joined the range of 70 Toyota vehicles in a vehicle sharing task in Grenoble, France, in 2013. Task expects to discover individuals’ mentalities to regarding vehicle share concept, along with inquire about how various methods of open and individual vehicle can be interconnected in urban focuses (Kamarudin and Nakanishi, 2017).
The winglet
In response to the aging population of Japan, the winglet was launched to strain out the pressure of walking. Winglet was used as the part of trial by many employees of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (Bansal, 2017). It has a speed of 3.5mph and is capable to cover distance till 6 miles on a single charge. Battery capacity to charge 80% takes 60 minutes.
Toyota Prius
Toyota Prius is an additional, conventional and progressive grown new innovative car available at cheap price. It is a fully hybrid electric and middle size vehicle created and produced by the Toyota Motor Corporation. It was originated in 1997, making it the principal mass-delivered half breed vehicle (Brown, 2016). It therefore presented worldwide in 2001. It is being sold in more than around 41 nations and locales, and has biggest markets in Japan and North America. In the year 2008, May the worldwide combined Prius deals reached at the one million vehicle score, and by August 31, the Prius reached at overall aggregate deals of 1.43 million units. Prius is most eco-friendly gas vehicle as of now that is sold in the U.S. as indicated by the United States environmental Protect Agency(McMillan, 2018). The EPA and (CARB)California Air Resources Board likewise marked it as the clean vehicles being sold in the US dependent on non-co2 harmful discharges. The UK department for transport revealed that the car is the 2nd least co2-transmitting vehicle marked down in the UK with 89 g/km.
Toyota Motor North America (TMNA) is one of Top 50 Companies of 2020 by diversity, positioning 10th from 18th a year ago. Toyota is the main car producer positioned in the Top 10 and has climbed a noteworthy 38 spots on the rundown since 2013.
“Regards to decent Diversity and inclusion (D&I), every year company attempts to set new difficulties and new objectives with an arrangement for accomplishing them (Neumann et al, 2018). This acknowledgment gives support that the company is on the correct way since we know it’s an excursion, not a goal,” states Sandra Phillips Rogers, who is chief diversity officer and the chief legal officer in TMNA.
Toyota properties developing notoriety as a pioneer in decent variety to its act of motivating, empowering, and displaying D&I all through the association. This training applies to the organization’s connections both inside and remotely (Toma and Naruo, 2017).
Phillips Rogers included, “Across North America, company is building and reinforcing organizations with partners who grasp a shared objective — to make an increasingly comprehensive society that celebrates and is advanced by our disparities, which we see as a particularly significant characteristic during these difficult occasions.”
Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, Toyota collaborated with non-benefit and private division partners to give financing, aptitude and in-kind gifts for in danger and excessively affected networks.
For instance, network administration declarations were made to carry mindfulness and trustworthy data to the African American and Hispanic people group as a component of Toyota’s general reaction endeavours. Diversity and Inclusion includes (Cherrafi et al, 2018): D&I essential to Toyota’s foundation values and vision to mobility for all, team member-driven, reflected in business partnership etc.
Further, regardless of whether the company is making fake skin for passerby security mannequins, by helping the independent recognize, while securely responding to crisis of the vehicles or textures that perfect themselves, Toyota drives the path in envisioning and designing the vehicles of future generation (Hemilä and Jaring, 2016).
Success of Toyota can be assumed when in the year 2015; Toyota got 1,636 licenses and in the recent years has been provide with a larger number of licenses than some other car organization (Levidow et al, 2016). The accomplishment represents the organizational well-being and innovative progress (Beraha, 2018).
Conclusion
The assignment is concluded on the note that, from all the above introduction analysis of the company and its function and considering it innovative products throughout, has cleared that Toyota is one of the automobile sector companies that have shown fast growth throughout.
The company excel on all the sphere sectors on which it has put her foot on. Changing a textile mill into a car company, without being dependent on external sources for raw material has indicated the true meaning of innovation. Seeking the growing global needs and still stuck with the plan without being hesitated about the competitors using better resources. Kiichoire proved he was born with innovative mind, where his thought could have washout on the success of other competitors, he remained focused and positive towards his idea.
Though there were many constraints while executing the plan, yet he didn’t stop. And here he is with the most successful company. Though at the initial stage he feared from America, which was quite developed in technologies, but he didn’t gave up instead took their techniques as a learning ladder and tried to create something better. As stated above with growing time success of the company can be assumed through its innovative products that make it quite different from others.
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