The Innovation Process

Dsicuss about the Inspired Framework Supporting Branding in Automotive.

Innovation enables the firms to make profit or commercialize by utilizing internal and external sources of ideas from the in-house and extracting the outside people. The chosen organization for the report on which the innovation model will be studied is BMW. It is a German based multinational company which is engaged in producing automobiles and founded in 1916. Behind an innovation, two of the reasons can stand out namely technology push and market pull. There are various factors that contribute while in any innovation process of the organization that is interconnected. The factors can be market transition, product creation, technological research and scientific exploration. The report will define the open innovation of the chosen company BMW, in terms of its strong connectivity of its network. The second dimension is technological innovation including internal and external idea. Human capital as its one of the important factor that contribute to build the functional design of the product development, and lastly the business model that shows the intellectual property are protected under the company laws. The report also shows the strength of BMW which is its Research and Innovation Centre at Munich and low dependency over the R&D networks is marked as its weakness. Instead concentrating over its development channels would help to reach the innovation pace as compared to its competitors more efficiently.

Companies are evolving and almost several of the automotive industries have started adopting to new frameworks and modifying their new product development (NPD) frameworks. They mix their right proportion of virtual teams and collaborative and virtual NPD software support tools. Adopting and modifying the NPD frameworks is not the only solution. In addition, a proper implementation of the process will give success is not guaranteed.

Fig 1 Interactive Model of Innovation

Source: (Innovation management and new product development, Trott)

The above figure shows that any organization indulges in innovation process consider two possible factors while before any of its innovation. The needs of the society or the marketplace where the organization operates to position in its target market are one of the main factors that encourage exploiting the technology and ideas to innovate new products. The other factor that generates within the organization and can be considered as the internal push towards exploiting technology results into innovating products for achieving the success in the market to gain competition.

BMW’s Innovation Model

Technology Push: A development of a new product following the research and development in the field of technology. It is based on the finding and research of the company itself on the new plans and ideas to gain competitive advantage and differentiation using innovation (Choi, 2017). 

Market Pull: Market pull factor indicates the need or the requirement of a new product or solution to a problem which arises from the market demand. The need is based on the market research regarding any improvements to existing products or a completely new product from the potential customers (Yun et al., 2016).

Market pull and Green Technology Push: This factor indicates the need and creation of both the market and the organization as well. It had showed that shared interest of the consumers and the company both have a significant effect over the sales and market trends. For example, low emissions improve environment betterment can be enforced by both the organization and consumers.

BMW has been operating in the market driving technology with successful creativity of design in cars. The company creates ideas by various methods to collect and extract ideas on designs, interior designs, creative ideas regarding new technological experience, and ideas represented by customers to encourage, and promote customer needs and satisfaction. In addition, it makes this ideas turn into real experience with the help of its resources and development group. After the development of the product the company processes with its marketing strategy to promote the product by advertising and promotions, in the market to reach to its potential customers.

The company puts its efforts to make the best resulting and attracting product which furnishes the company goals, and vision to become leaders in technology invention of automobiles and motorbikes. For example, the robots that is a part of the innovation of BMW.

The company takes into consideration the ideas that offer an experience of pleasure and care for the customers in addition fulfilling their desire. For example, the BMW’s self balancing bike is an innovative product of the company that fulfils the customers need and increases the satisfaction level by offering quality experience. It mainly serves to those customers a chance to enjoy bike riding without any problem and fear.

Source:  (Innovation management and new product development, Trott)

The above figure defines the innovation circle which shows that the internal factors that generate in putting effort in the creation of new product. It is possible by using technology and researches of the BMW Group Research and Innovation Centre. The Group Research and Innovation Centre is the main source of BMW to become the world leaders in producing innovative vehicles. BMW is popularly known for its design innovation in vehicles and bikes. BMW is completely based on its BMW Group Research and Innovation Centre (FIZ) which is situated in Munich and act as the driving force of innovation. The collaborative approach including the Group of BMW, the resource and development team with almost 31 productions in 41 countries (von Geibler et al., 2017).

BMW’s Innovation Strategies

The company focuses on the making of products that create satisfaction and value to the customers and bring an innovation in the world where they can set the trend of technology and sustainability with the material mix of intelligent. They believe in resource efficient product with gaining flexibility and optimization of value chains to ensure competition. The innovation of technology is being followed by the company since its history.

The company takes into consideration the present market research to generate its development of new product or existing such that it can show benefit and add value to the customers thinking. For example, the company with its efficient dynamics continuously implements sustainable practices in its development by manufacturing low fuel consumption and emission vehicles. The company combines product creation, scientific exploration and market transitions to deliver customer value (Watzenig & Horn, 2016).

The company aims to become world leader in providing premium and technological advanced products and services for individual mobility. BMW increases its level of technology innovation with every new product it introduces in the market. For example, the connectivity and the digital services offered by the automaker plays an important role in delivering the customer with integral experience and satisfaction. This is a result of scientific exploration, product creation and technological research.

The BMW group has a strong fix position while setting for the innovative and creativity for is design and brand. The technology innovation is one of the important factor and as well the strength of the organization. The quality of labor excellence contributing as a strong workforce stands out to be another significant part of BMW’s innovation success. It has a workforce of 124,729 employees. The BMW group research and innovation centre is the main for all development of its innovation taking place in its product.

It needs to put more effort in its R&D section to gain competitive advantage in terms of not only in internal and its manufacturing department, instead outside the organization.

Lack of appropriate approach to make adequate research from the market before launching its product stands out to be weakness for the company.

In case to drive global innovation, it is important to concentrate on the resources and its development which will make the sources emerge and spread around the world globally. The R&D network across the globe will help to regulate various ideas and enhance the same with each other’s influence.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The company is recommended to continue its level of introducing the technology to its consumers in a more effective way to attract and increase its sales revenue. BMW is innovative oriented as compared to its competitors in the market. The step of collaboration of the external source of technology and ideas with the internal research team will favor the innovative decisions of the organization.

The company is recommended to fill innovation mindset in all levels of the organization. It means that the company having a tendency to improve its innovation context will have one common behavior that each of its company level be it either corporate or operation should nourish innovation and new ideas from all the levels of the company. It will enable to regulate the ideas such as cross functional design groups will be created to harvest and utilize the ideas for the development of the new products.

The company is recommended to collaborate with the universities and institutions which are related with the same interest and field of work.  This will enable them to introduce the entrepreneur career and set a platform to get ideas (Holzmann,  Sailer & Katzy, 2014).

BMW Company was established in the year 1916 and presently is being managed by the CEO of named Harald Kruger. The company offers its product to the middle class and luxury segment of consumers. It belongs to the automobile industry and it introduces best designed vehicles with comfort and safety measures (bmw.com.au. 2018).

The new BMW i8 concept is new revolutionary product of BMW that is a creation to drive over the future. It only consumes electricity with the power of influencing its quality features meeting the required standards of the BMW cars.

The NPD framework for BMW i8 concept relates to interactive model of innovation. The interactive innovation model is framed as where at first the idea is generated, and then research development works, then manufactures the product. After manufacturing the product, marketing staregies are adapted to promote the product and then the product is introduced in the market which is further termed as commercialization.

BMW generates ideas and designs by the help of extracting internal and out resources and then adds values to it according to the organizational mission and vision that is to override technology and stay best technology developer in the world. It focuses on the technical and creative part of the operations. It ensures the development of logistics, engine manufacturing, materials and resources required in future and electro-mobility technology to support the BMW group of brand and sub brands.

Recommendations

As BMW has its own BMW Group’s Research and Innovation Centre at Munich which involves all the other group of BMW namely Rolls Royce, BMW Motorrad and MINI and other departments which work collaboratively on different parts of the car and enumerate various ideas to make the best innovation. The interior and exterior designs are made by the research team during this phase. The company had accepted that it designing of automobile parts are kept apart from the functional designs concept (Salter, Criscuolo & Ter Wal, 2014).

After building the plan, designs and overall of the car, it follows the manufacturing phase where the BMW i8 is tested in terms of behavior, electricity consumption, safety and style of the structure. It follows the manufacturing phase where the car is designed with the technology and new product development team to meet the quality standards (Wilhelm, Aalbers & Whelan, 2015, January).

The R&D team of BMW ensures the quality and final testing to make the improvements which are mainly improved on the basis of the employees and the customers to make potential changes.

Then the marketing strategies are implemented to promote the product BMW i8 to the customers. It includes training of the employees promotional planning and introduction to the market showrooms and individual customers. It follows the phase of commercialization.

The strength of the product became utilization of sustainable resources which enabled the customer attraction. The research on the customers regarding sustaining the resources which was appropriately achieved by the BMW Group’s Research and Innovation centre, which made a car that consumes only electricity.

However, the creation showed a negative impact which was the strength of the car as well. The electricity consumption brought the customers a fear of riding the car.

Therefore, for this innovative BMW i8 Car it was recommended that if BMW had alliances with solar panels that would build self sufficient power plant to produce energy for i8 consumption.  

Image: BMW i8

Source: (Authors creation)

Here, in this framework the role was played by the factor of market pull and green technology push was implemented where the electricity consuming car was a market pull and a green technology push product designed by the BMW Group’s design. BMW i8 had reduced the fuel consumption and in addition lowers emission (Cini & Farrugia, 2017).

The company indulges activities that held the customers to engage in sharing and promoting of the ideas which will be utilized by BMW Group in its ideation process. Activities such as BMW have organized a contest where the people had to come up with their innovation approaches by sharing their ideas and opinions about the development of the future cars. It also includes the related products and services of the company. Hosting competitions such as the BMW Group Interior Design Contest for extracting personalized ideas about the interior of cars and other kind of contest. The idea adopted was ‘The BMW Urban Driving Experience’ where the company turned towards the crowd to ask for innovative ideas (Hofstetter, Dahl, Aryobsei & Herrmann, 2017).

Conclusion

The organization BMW is one of the leading automobile makers in the world with mixing the right amount of innovation and quality.

The first ever challenging note that BMW faces is the competition of making the most innovative creation to serve the customers. The company makes huge investment towards achieving quality, safety, appearance and performance. The effort is always to provide the terms of quality, comfortable, building fast and efficient level higher than ever (Trippner, Rude & Schreiber, 2015).

The other challenge that was faced is they need to maintain their innovation strategy of standing a strong position in the market. The needs and changes of technology are changing everyday that arises innovation of new creation by the companies each time. For this BMW has to maintain its position in the market by regulating its innovation cycle.

Conclusion

In the end it can be summarized that interactive innovation model of innovation that enables firms to create a platform where the consumers can provide their own ideas to the organization. It will be useful for the organization to develop new products based on the consumers demand and interest. The open innovation framework is applied on BMW, indulge in an automobile industry. It is a globally operating company established in 1916 in Germany. The four elements of the framework is analyzed namely network, technology, human capital and business model. It was found that BMW is an innovation driven company which serve its consumers with luxury vehicles at present and in future. The internal factors contribute together in the innovation process. The BMW Group’s Research and Innovation Centre is one of the main dependants of the organization for innovation development and it is its main strength situated at Munich. The organization forms a strong collaborative network with its chain of employees and other brands and sub brands. The company would be successful if its efficiency of introducing new technology will be continued as it is in present times. BMW should also focus to extract ideas externally and utilize them in the product development.

Reference

bmw.com.au. (2018). Bmw.com.au. Retrieved 2 April 2018, from https://www.bmw.com.au/

Choi, H. (2017). Technology-push and demand-pull factors in emerging sectors: evidence from the electric vehicle market. Industry and Innovation, 1-20. doi/abs/10.1080/13662716.2017.1346502

Cini, M., & Farrugia, P. (2017). A Semiotics Inspired Framework Supporting Branding in Automotive Integrated Product Development. In Emotional Engineering, Vol. 5 (pp. 117-146). Springer, Cham.

Hofstetter, R., Dahl, D. W., Aryobsei, S., & Herrmann, A. (2017). Creativity in Open Innovation Contests: How Seeing Others’ Ideas Can Harm or Help Your Creative Performance.

Holzmann, T., Sailer, K., & Katzy, B. R. (2014). Matchmaking as multi-sided market for open innovation. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 26(6), 601-615. Doi/ 10.1080/09537325.2014.913786

Salter, A., Criscuolo, P., & Ter Wal, A. L. (2014). Coping with open innovation: responding to the challenges of external engagement in R&D. California Management Review, 56(2), 77-94.doi/ 10.1525/cmr.2014.56.2.77

Trippner, D., Rude, S., & Schreiber, A. (2015). Challenges to digital product and process development systems at BMW. In Concurrent Engineering in the 21st Century (pp. 555-569). Springer, Cham.

von Geibler, J., Baedeker, C., Liedtke, C., Rohn, H., & Erdmann, L. (2017). Exploring the German living lab research infrastructure: opportunities for sustainable products and services. In Living Labs (pp. 131-154). Springer, Cham.

Watzenig, D., & Horn, M. (Eds.). (2016). Automated driving: safer and more efficient future driving. Springer.

Wilhelm, M., Aalbers, H. L., & Whelan, E. (2015, January). The Complementing Roles of Online and Offline Channels for Open Innovation. In Academy of Management Proceedings(Vol. 2015, No. 1, p. 15004). Academy of Management.

Yun, J. J., Won, D., Jeong, E., Park, K., Yang, J., & Park, J. (2016). The relationship between technology, business model, and market in autonomous car and intelligent robot industries. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 103, 142-155.