Critical Evaluation of the Organizational Characteristics Facilitating the Innovation Process
Business organizations tend to incorporate ongoing changes in the environment for achieving a competitive advantage and ensuring their sustainability. The article ‘How Startup Culture is Changing Innovation Strategies at Enterprises’ aims to emphasize on the recent innovation strategies of the organization that places start-up culture as its mainstream idea. This helps the organization to gain knowledge of the innovators outside and thus utilize their skills and competencies in their innovation process. In this context, the present section aims to critically analyze the organizational characteristics of ‘Nestle’ that facilitates its innovation process (Wilson, 2016). Nestle is recognized as largest food and beverage company around the world and has become a leader in nutrition and health on the basis of its continuous innovation efforts that helps it in delivering high-quality products to the customers (Sustainable Innovation and Renovation, 2010).
Decentralized organizational structure of Nestle is largely facilitating it to drive innovation in its products. The Nestle group comprises of about 431 legally independent units that are partly owned and thus have full authority of taking all the operational decisions without gaining approval from the parent company. The company has established a flat and flexible structure with minimal management level and widen span of control to enhance its operational effectiveness. The development of such an organizational structure enables the company to meet instantly the consumer needs by increasing its operational efficiency. The establishment of such a structural framework within the company has proved very beneficial for Nestle to motivate the employees by encouraging their participation in the decision-making process (The Nestlé Management and Leadership Principles, 2013).
Nestle has also incorporated the use of effective talent management strategies that motivates and inspires its employees to create value for the company. The leaders of the company have developed a work-culture that effectively links the personal commitment level of the employees with the organizational commitment. The business leaders inspired the employees to think from different perspectives and have fostered a work environment that has opened to risk and possibility of making mistakes for continuous learning and development of employees. This ensures the promotion of innovative climate in the company. The company also incorporates latest technologies for driving its innovation cycle and stay ahead of competition. Nestle has established its Silicon Valley innovation outpost in 2013 to gain support from high-tech companies in developing its products and meeting changing customer needs appropriately. The development of such an innovation Centre in Silicon Valley facilitates the company to take advantage of latest technologies and engineering practices in manufacturing its products thus driving its innovation (Sustainable Innovation and Renovation, 2010).
Strategic Approach to Nestlé’s Innovation Management
Nestle has developed a strong corporate culture as is reflected by its mission statement that emphasizes on health, wellness and nutrition of its customers. The company has maintained a strong work culture though people orientation in comparison to its products and systems. The company’s culture emphasizes on promoting the employees and customers well-being through developing its shared values and principles (Siegert, 2014). The employees are motivated to work harder through empowering them by the adoption of a decentralized structure. The company aims to create value for its customers by delivering them high-quality products by meeting all the safety standards. The organizational culture also shows respects to the beliefs and customers of people belonging to various diversity and traditions. The company aims to promote integrity in its work culture through strictly adhering to its core values and principles. The development of such a strong work-culture is the main corporate strength of the company that encourages its leaders and employees to drive and sustain a climate of innovation. The leaders and managers of the company promote a work-culture where employee’s creativity and innovative skills are strongly supported so that they continuously develop unique products with high quality (The Nestlé Management and Leadership Principles. 2013).
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The strategic changes formulated for the company to improve its innovation management are implementing a start-up culture through partnering with a global leader in the same industry, developing innovation contests for generating new idea to support the innovation management and giving proper time for successfully completing the innovation process. In accordance with the article, Nestle is recommended to adopt the strategic change of incorporating a startup culture to strengthen its innovation management. The development of a new startup unit will facilitate the company to approach innovation in new ways by recruiting and selecting innovators that develops unique and high-tech products in accordance with customer needs and requirements. In addition to this, the company can also implement the strategic change of implementing innovation contests for seeking new advices and opinions of young innovators to improve its innovation management. Proper time-management is also necessary for the company so that each and every step of innovation process gets completed successfully. This requires the company to identify the various tasks and activities involved in the time-management successfully and allocate sufficient time for very task so that all the activities get completed in a sequential manner (Wilson, 2016).
Action Plan for Establishing an Innovative Environment in Nestle
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Strategies
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Programs
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Activities
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Tasks
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Resource Allocation
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Establishing a Startup Unit
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The company can launch its new startup unit by engaging in active partnership with any global leader in the food and beverages industry such as Cadbury that will support its innovation process by rendering support in terms of talented people and latest technological developments.
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The main activities involved before establishing a new startup unit by the company involves idea-generation that will enable the company to generate new ides regarding the innovative products and services that it can offer through the use of latest technologies. The generation of new ideas can be achieved by the company through the help of brainstorming sessions and launching idea campaigns. Brainstorming session involves gaining the deal of group if people regarding the strategic change that will enable the management people to think more creatively. Idea campaigning can be achieved through incorporating the idea of geographically dispersed team regarding the adoption of the specific strategic change.
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The main tasks involved in establishing a new startup unit by the company involves modifying its organizational structure, implementing employee training and development program and reforming the business structures and processes. This can be achieved by Nestle through carrying out a proper analysis of the external environment in which it is aiming to conduct its business operations. The external analysis carried out will help the company in modifying its existing business procedures and practices in accordance with new environment.
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The main resources require are selecting the business location, gaining funds, obtaining permits and licenses, registering with tax authorities.
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Prizing Innovation
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Nestle can introduce innovation contests such as that done by Amazon by launching its Start-up challenge. The introduction of such a challenge will enable the company to gain views and opinions of different innovators outside to implement the planned innovation. The contests will be associated with a prize for the best mind that provides most creative solutions for the innovation process.
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The innovation contest can consist of activities such as design-thinking that will provide a platform for the young innovators to design the best possible creative strategy for the company to innovate in the new environment. The innovators participating in the quiz contest will be motivated to develop the best possible design by rewarding their creativity with prizes.
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The tasks for the company to introduce an innovation contest consist of designing certain problematic situations that it can encounter at the time of implementing their innovation process. The problematic situations can be then presented to the innovators to seek their help for developing solutions to the problems in context.
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Funds for launching innovation contests for the purpose of posting its advertisements on mass and digital media to encourage participation of the young entrepreneurs.
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Making Time for Innovation
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Nestle need to invest in time for successful innovation. This can be achieved by the company by designing and implementing a time-management strategy. Time-management will help the company to develop a proper framework to carry out the different tasks in their innovation process within a stipulated period of time.
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The activities for the specific strategic change in the company consist of designing various processes that will help in developing a time-management framework for the company.
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The different tasks for developing a time-management strategy consists of identifying and prioritizing the different tasks in the innovation process, avoiding multi-tasking, focusing on high-value tasks primarily and visualizing the idea by taking sufficient time before implementing.
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Allocating adequate time to the group team involved in the innovation process.
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Recommendations
The action plan designed has proposed strategic changes to Nestle for establishing and sustaining an innovative environment in its workplace culture. However, on the basis of its organizational characteristics it can be stated that the company has successfully developed an innovative culture that is responsible for its growth and success worldwide. The company is recommended to implement the strategic changes proposed for sustaining innovation in its work environment. The formulated SPATRes (strategies, programs, activities, tasks and resources allocation has proposed that the company need to implement a start-up culture in its innovate environment. The development of new business unit by Nestle should specially aims to attract and recruit the innovators who have greater demands of working in flexible environment (Wilson, 2016). The innovators can often develop new and unique products and services in accordance with the changing market needs and thus support the entrepreneurial initiatives of the company. Big corporations are emphasizing on startup culture as a part of their innovation strategy such as Nike has partnered with Techstars to start a Fuel Lab. Nestle can also engaged in active partnership with any global leader in the food and beverages industry such as Cadbury that will support its innovation process by rendering support in terms of talented people and latest technological developments. The creation of such a startup unit will provide access to the company to new markets and thus enhance its profitability through improved innovation management. The successful implementation of a start-up culture requires design-thinking by the company through developing innovation contests to generate and acquire new ideas from the talented people across the world. The company must also allocate proper time for its innovation processes to visualize the idea generated to minimize the chances of occurrence of any risk or contingency condition (Wilson, 2016).
References
Siegert, L. 2014. Sustainable development approaches in the food and beverage industry: A comparison between Nestlé SA and Kraft Foods Inc. Anchor Academic Publishing.
Sustainable Innovation and Renovation. 2010. [Online]. Available at: https://www.nestle.co.id/eng/randd/sustainableinnovation [Accessed on: 9 September 2016].
The Nestlé Management and Leadership Principles. 2013. [Online]. Available at: https://www.nestle.com/asset-library/Documents/Library/Documents/People/Management-Leadership-Principles-EN.pdf [Accessed on: 9 September 2016].
Wilson, G. 2016. How startup culture is changing innovation strategies at enterprises. [Online]. Available at: https://www.enterpriseinnovation.net/article/how-startup-culture-changing-innovation-strategies-enterprises-357546913 [Accessed on: 9 September 2016].
