Innovative Problem Solving Assignment Sample

Introduction of Innovative Problem Solving Assignment

Get free written samples from subject experts and online assignment writing service in UK.

One of the greatest obstacles in the process of developing a new product is coming up with ideas that are unneeded and have little practical value for customers. In the process of new product development (NPD), corporations invest a significant amount of money to create something that ultimately fails in the market; thus, it is essential to grasp the practical demands of the users/customers to ensure that the innovation is beneficial (Poetz & Schreier, 2012). Rather than depending on the normal method of new product development, crowdsourcing of ideas is an excellent solution to this issue. This is the creative solution that will be discussed in further detail in the next sections. As a part of this discussion, the solution will be critically analysed, and a presentation to pitch the same will also be offered. Apart from this, the business model to make the solution financially viable, a paper critique and a reflection on an activity of the module will also be included within the scope of the assessment.

Innovative solution

Problem definition:

If a company comes up with ideas that customers do not need and that are of little benefit to them, developing a new product might be a difficult task for it. It is vital to understand the practical demands of users and consumers before going forward with an invention that genuinely benefits them since businesses invest a significant amount of money in new product development (NPD) just to see it fail on the market.

Background research:

Studies show that 60 to 80 per cent of new products fail, and knowing why is critical information. Finally, anybody who knows the root reasons for innovation failure may set the necessary measures and attention in innovation management to dramatically increase the chance of innovation success. A new product’s failure on the market is conceivable if it does not provide actual value and hence does not attract purchasers (Poetz & Schreier, 2012). Additionally, a new product might fail internally if the processes of creation, implementation, and marketing aren’t perfect. Even if the concept is perfect, it will not last long if the invention process goes wrong. It’s possible to turn a bad idea into an amazing product with the utmost effort and passion, though. Among the several causes of invention failure, the two most prominent are:

Making wrong decisions:

Innovation projects and concept selection are frequently steered incorrectly by management. Incorrect judgments can impact the priority of ideas, the product strategy for new goods, the selection of development versions, and so on. The reasons behind this are:

Absence of corporate and innovation strategy as a basis for decision-making.
The judgement was based on inadequate or insufficient information.
Occasionally, though, management’s own opinions take precedence over the facts, and gut-based judgments are taken that subsequently show to be incorrect.

(Source: Bayus, 2013)

Lack of market orientation:

Lack of market orientation and consumer demands is another primary factor for the failure of new items on the market. The product lacks a clear consumer value and does not separate itself from competing products. In order to build products that excite customers and set themselves apart from the competition, companies must have a deep awareness of their target market and their processes as well as their needs (Huang, Vir Singh & Srinivasan, 2014). Since the advent of design thinking, it has been increasingly evident that the only way to build innovative products is to thoroughly understand the customer. Many reasons lead to a lack of attention on the market and customers:

Over-reliance on technology.
There is not enough time to do consumer research and develop needs.
Consumers and their personal information are refused access.

(Source: Schemmann et al., 2016)

The third element is very important, as a company may believe it understands its clients, but in reality, it depends completely on its own assumptions and the available data. Unfortunately, the majority of firms who desire to produce new goods are unaware of the latent and frequently genuine need (Schuurman et al., 2012). This is not how unique goods are created. Businesses require a comprehensive comprehension of the requirements and duties of users and consumers.

Ideation:

To overcome the aforementioned challenge, engaging in significant consumer and need research is a crucial innovation success component. The more a company learns about its target market, the better goods it can create, and the less it must rely on half-truths. In this context, crowdsourcing of ideas is a key development. Crowdsourcing may be an effective way to engage users and other stakeholders in the innovation process. In particular, holding a contest allows businesses to avoid innovative and challenging issues (Deichmann, Gillier & Tonellato, 2021). In addition, corporations guarantee that new goods meet client expectations by involving the public. The practice of soliciting contributions from a large group of individuals via the use of an online platform known as crowdsourcing is an example of an innovation management platform. A firm that makes use of crowdsourcing may find that it is easier to not only collect insights, ideas, and feedback but also to organise and analyse the data acquired in an effective manner and work methodically with it.

The value of crowdsourcing rests in its capacity to tap into the innovative thinking of individuals from all over the world and find solutions to a wide variety of challenges, ranging from the most intractable to the most trivial. Simply presenting their thoughts is all that is required for companies to connect individuals, organisations, and stakeholders and get them actively involved in ideation for the purpose of finding solutions that are beneficial to all parties concerned. An organisational database is a fantastic place to keep collected data, which includes new ideas and insights (Fu et al., 2017). This data can be utilised to produce new value for the business, in addition to providing a wealth of information.

Crowdsourcing is a practical solution for open innovation approaches because of its ease of access. Crowdsourcing can be used by an organisation that wants to engage its community around a specific topic or by an organisation that wants to set a challenge to the public and ask for the public’s opinions, insights, and suggestions.

Planning and Development:

“InnoCentive” has helped global enterprises, governments, public sector organisations, and charities harness the power of the crowd by creating chances for anybody to participate and improve lives (Bayus, 2013). With so much innovation stemming from obstacles, governments and corporations seek to tackle critical issues, and here is where human collective intelligence and all brilliant minds join together to develop answers for challenging tasks. With over 500,000 problem-solvers worldwide, InnoCentive has become the market-leading organisation for posting issues online and facilitating access to global knowledge. Whilst it is a potential solution, to the issue, there are certain factors which often lead crowdsourcing initiatives to failure:

The Crowd Does Not Represent Common Users.

A significant failure of crowdsourced usability testing occurs when the researcher collects comments from people who do not represent the website’s average user.

People do not follow their own words.

Focus groups and polls repeatedly indicate that what individuals say they do is frequently not what they do.

Inaccurate Questions Can Affect Outcomes

Subtle modifications in how a question is posed and the type of replies scales or other methods utilised to record findings can have a significant effect on the efficacy of crowdsourced usability testing. Changing only a few words in a survey question can have a significant effect, possibly distorting the findings.

(Sources: Fu et al., 2017; Deichmann, Gillier & Tonellato, 2021)

Demonstration:

The steps to be followed in the process of crowdsourcing ideas for new product development are as follows:

Step 1: Getting early inputs

As a firm begins to consider its new project, it must ensure that it obtains client input in advance.

Step 2: Employee sourcing

Organizations should not forget that they already own a powerful crowdsourcing resource in the workplace, namely their own workers. Therefore, they should involve them in the growth process, as they are the business’s frontline.

Step 3: Testing constantly throughout the process

It is crucial to continue receiving input as organizations refine their concept. Organizations must provide consumers and workers with updates on the status of their programmes. While the organization is still developing its appearance, get their feedback to see if it has reached the mark. The outcome will be much improved as a result (Warner, 2011).

Step 4: Making the correction

Even when a firm releases a new product, service, or marketing campaign, the process is not complete. It can continue to crowdsource its consumers and staff to determine whether it is operating as intended. The company should inquire whether it is providing as expected (Kulkarni, Can and Hartmann, 2012). Social media is an ideal instrument for this purpose. If a problem is identified, it should not be scared to make real-time adjustments.

Future scope:

Even when a company has introduced a new product, service, or marketing campaign, the process is not yet complete. It is able to continue to crowdsource information from both its consumers and its workers in order to determine whether or not it is functioning as intended. The company needs to determine whether or not it is meeting its delivery expectations. The use of social media is an excellent method for doing this. In the event that a problem is identified, there should be no hesitation to implement modifications in real-time.

Pitch Video

“Innovative failure” is a huge and grave issue for any company and this can make the whole system of business to fail. Various reasons are there of innovation failure and this can make a company vulnerable in the market. This is important to make a proper plan to tackle the whole innovation process to serve a perfect innovative approach to the business. This will help the company to make a better business. This report discusses with the problems faced by the innovation failure in a company and the solutions to those problems. This report also discusses the advantages and future scopes of the solutions in the market.

Problems related to innovation

Almost all the companies in the UK are using the important innovative approach to be unique and make a better business in the market (Ge et al., 2020). A proper innovative approach is very helpful to the business organisations to make a better business and this serves the companies with more profit, revenue and reputation. However, the innovative ideas of the companies can create some problems to the business if the idea fails. Some practical scenarios are there that says a company can face a drastic fall in the revenue percentage which can make the company vulnerable in the market.

The reasons of innovation failure are as follows-

Lack of market research can make the company to choose a wrong market to promote the product and this can lose in the marketing process.
The wrong market can promote the product to the wrong group of customers and they can face drastic business failure in the market.
Making a wrong decision in the innovative planning and strategy can make the company to face challenges in the market and this makes the business vulnerable.
The wrong decisions can make some incomplete innovation for the company which can make the company vulnerable in the market.

Solution of the problems

Innovation failure is a crucial problem for any business organisation and this can make a long-lasting drastic effect on the business of the company. This can make the company loss reputation and they can face challenges in the market. This is very important for the company to mitigate the challenge inputting some solutions to their plans (Wazny, 2018). These solutions can help the company to make a perfect outcome of business mitigating the challenges of the company. The solutions are also helpful to serve a perfect business for the company to start a new plan contributing some important resources.

The solutions to this problem are as follows-

The “InnoCentive” model of “crowd sourcing” is helpful to the company to make a perfect innovative plan to serve a better innovative approach.
One of the most helpful solutions of this process is to make a better business using the innovative idea from “open innovation” where the customers can involve.
The important market analysis tools serve a better idea about the market and thus this is helpful to use these tools before choosing a market.
Important decision-making tools are useful to make a better business decision and thus help to make innovative decisions for the business body.

Advantages serve by the solution

The important tools used to solute the problems from innovation failure make some long-lasting effect on the business of the business body. This helps the company to have some positive effects on the business organisations and serves a better business. The tools used by the companies make the company to make a perfect business using the innovative practices and helps them to have some competitive advantages (Tong et al., 2020). This also helps the companies to make a better reputation in the market and serves them an innovative approach to the market. This will also help them to expand the business to the outer markets and grab more customers easily.

The advantages of the tools are as follows-

This helps the company to achieve business success along with the reputation from the market and serves a better business.
These tools are helpful to make a long-lasting and authentic innovative approach for the company and serves most perfect outcome.
These tools are also helpful to serve the best decision-making approaches that can help the company to make a better business decision.
The tools serve the company with an idea of customer needs which is important for the company to make a better business satisfying the customers.

Future scopes of the solution

This is very important for any company to make plans taking their future plans into account and this will help them to serve a better business. One of the most important factors of this scenario is, the companies can trust on the business outcomes with this and they can satisfy all the changing needs of the customers (Tan et al., 2021). The plans and strategies made by the company must be done such a way so that the company can get the maximum benefits from the plans. The solutions to the innovative failure help the company to make a better and long lasting business.

The future scopes of these solutions are as follows-

The solutions help the company to achieve business success which serves the company with the highest reputation and business profit.
The innovative approach of the company served by the tools helps the company with better business for a longer time and helps them to satisfy the customers.
The decisions made by the company with the help of these tools will help them to make a better business along with a huge business success.
The “open innovation” process helps the companies with more feasible plans and makes the customers of the company happy with the projects.

Conclusion

The tools taken by “crowd sourcing” help the companies to make a better business using all the important data and resources. The companies must take the initiative to solve the problems of “innovation failure”. This report found with the problems faced by the innovation failure in a company and the solutions to those problems. This report also found the advantages and future scopes of the solutions in the market.

Business Model Canvas

Key Partners	Key Activities	Value Propositions		Customer Relationships	Customer Segments
Generally, the partners of this business are the people, who provide significant ideas regarding the development of a new and necessary product or service to fulfil their distinctive needs. Moreover, the employees also play the most effective role in successfully producing and designing the appropriate product or service to meet the expectations of the customers.	In this aspect, in order to collect the most appropriate and significant information and knowledge, the organisation will implement the process of crowdsourcing during their organisational business operation. In this way, by gathering a large number of people, the organisations will be able to acquire the most effective and appropriate information about their distinctive needs.	When introducing a new product to the market, a company's concept or idea should be both original and disruptive. In this regard, the organisation will be able to efficiently provide unique items and the most appropriate and needed products to clients at a fair cost via the adoption of crowdsourcing.		Fundamentally, the organisation will interact with the customer in person or by email, through phone calls or other mediums. In this way, the organisation should assign some dedicated employees to each customer as the organisational representative to collect the most effective information through crowdsourcing.Customers should be able to be engaged in the design or development of the product.	These are the demographics that the company is attempting to reach with its offering. By dividing their clients into groups based on commonalities, companies may better satisfy their requirements, particularly by tailoring the service they are giving. The organisation may identify which consumers they must service and which ones they should disregard after doing comprehensive customer segmentation research. Once this is done, the organisation should construct personas for each of its chosen consumer groups.
	Key Resources			Channels
	In this aspect, the organisation needs to identify and gather the key resources for successfully meeting the consumer's needs in the market during their organisational business operation. These resources are human resources, financial resources, intellectual resources, and physical resources.			A channel is a place where clients may interact with the business. The product or service's value propositions may be communicated to clients via many channels. Consumers may also utilise channels to purchase items or services and get post-purchase assistance. One of these channels is owned channel, while the other is a partnership channel.
Cost Structure			Revenue Streams
Creating and providing value propositions, generating income, and preserving client connections are all priorities for the organisation. Defining their primary resources, activities, and partners will make this process a lot simpler.			A company's revenue streams are the ways in which it makes money by selling its goods and services to clients. In this section, the company should explain how its value propositions will generate income.

Table 1: Business Model Canvas

Paper Critique

The paper found related to the issue and solution has said about the importance and feasibility of “crowd sourcing”. This paper discusses the important factors of crowd sourcing to make some creative changes of a product and a comparison between the ideas of professionals on the product and the solution found from “crowd sourcing”. The paper also discusses the theories and models of innovation and serves a better idea about the issues faced by the organisation professionals to make some innovative changes. Furthermore, the paper says about literary aspects of the issues and solutions related to “crowd sourcing” and make a better idea about the project. The paper mainly serves a research project about the comparison of the innovative ideas about “crowd sourcing and innovative” ideas and discusses about the literary sources about the issues and solutions. The chosen paper shows the important sources and statistical factors in the “discussion” part and this says a clearer idea to the ideology of the issue. The paper also serves a critical evaluation of the practical scenario of the issue and serves a better idea to make a proper innovative approach to the statistical imbalance between the data. Apart from that, the paper uses the “Kripendorff’s alpha” method to solute all the statistical findings and deserted the important data regarding the file. Again, the file has converses the important innovative models and research method to complete the research project and serves a better idea about the selected literary perspective taken in the paper.

After analysis the paper critically, this can be said that the paper serves an authentic and perfect outline of the important business factors of the conflict between the process of “crowd sourcing” and the professional factors of the innovative approaches in the market. The research topic taken to complete the paper is focused on the comparison between the contribution and solution taken by the consumers and the professionals of the business organisations to make a better business and which solutions are better for the company to make a better business. One of the most important factors is that the paper serves that some challenges can be faced in this process and they must be mitigated by the business organisation.

The “best versus the rest” concept taken by the researcher to finish the project serves a better explanation of the comparing factors to the business bodies and thus helps to make a perfect idea about the differences. The result identified by the researcher serves a good interpretation about the factors that the solutions served by the consumers of the product are far more batter than the ideas served by the professionals. However, this can be said from the paper itself that the solutions given by the consumers are less feasible I comparison of the ideas served by the professionals. This can be said that the research project makes a better view of the fact focuses on the controversial scenario of the conflict. In short, this research paper is complete and authentic.

Reflective Piece

Gibbs Reflective Cycle

Description:Generally, I was suffering through the issues regarding having some lacking in different kinds of skills. Due to this, I could not significantly and confidently perform my work in the workplace. In this aspect, I have taken different kinds of initiatives for efficiently developing and enhancing my credibility and consistency within the workplace environment. In this way, my organisation also will be able to enhance its productivity and profitability by enhancing the rate of meeting consumer needs.
Feeling:In this way, evaluating my decision for undertaking different kinds of initiatives to prominently develop my skills and knowledge about my job practices will proficiently help me to achieve all of my set goals. Through this, I will be able to also enhance my competency and innovative ideas and notions during my organisational job practices.

Evaluation:Through putting the focus on developing my communication skills, problem-solving skills, research skills, decision-making skills, innovative skills, etc. I will be able to effectively develop my organisational job practices. Generally, these skills will proficiently help me to efficiently collect the information and knowledge about the consumer needs in the market. Moreover, through conducting a wide range of research and gathering people for crowdsourcing, I will be able to make the effective and most appropriate decision for developing and producing and launching my new product in the market.

Analysis:In this way, by extensively developing and enhancing my skills, attributes and knowledge during my organisational job practices, I will be able to successfully and efficiently meet the expectations and needs of the customers. Usually, developing my communication, issue solving, research, decision-making, inventive, etc. abilities can help me improve my organisational work practises more successfully. When it comes to acquiring information and understanding the market's customer demands, these abilities will be quite useful. As a result, I will be able to make the best and most informed choice possible when it comes to creating, manufacturing, and selling my new product on the market.
Conclusion:Thus, it becomes concluded that during the implementation of the crowdsourcing system before launching a new product in the market, I have decided to collect the most prominent information and data from the people.
Action Plan:However, during the entire crowdsourcing process, I have significantly identified little lacking during making my decision for launching new products. Therefore, I have to take effective initiative in developing my decision-making skills to successfully enhance the potency of my decision-making skills.

Conclusion

Through considering the entire data and information, it becomes concluded that meeting the distinctive need of the consumers through products and services is the most significant thing for a business. Therefore, the organisations have decided to utilise and implement the crowdsourcing system within the workplace environment. Through this, the organisations will be able to proficiently develop the organisational business practices and their productivity and profitability in the market. Moreover, by developing different kinds of skills among the employees, the organisations also will be able to manufacture and produce a high-quality products for the customers

References

Bayus, B. L. (2013). Crowdsourcing new product ideas over time: An analysis of the Dell IdeaStorm community. Management science, 59(1), 226-244.

Deichmann, D., Gillier, T., & Tonellato, M. (2021). Getting on board with new ideas: An analysis of idea commitments on a crowdsourcing platform. Research Policy, 50(9), 104320.

Fu, S., de Vreede, G. J., Cheng, X., Seeber, I., Maier, R., & Weber, B. (2017). Convergence of Crowdsourcing Ideas: A Cognitive Load perspective. In ICIS.

Ge, W., Qin, Y., Li, Z., Zhang, H., Gao, W., Guo, X., Song, Z., Li, W. and van Gelder, P., 2020. An innovative methodology for establishing societal life risk criteria for dams: A case study to reservoir dam failure events in China. International journal of disaster risk reduction, 49, p.101663.

Huang, Y., Vir Singh, P., & Srinivasan, K. (2014). Crowdsourcing new product ideas under consumer learning. Management science, 60(9), 2138-2159.

Kulkarni, A., Can, M. and Hartmann, B., 2012, February. Collaboratively crowdsourcing workflows with turkomatic. In Proceedings of the acm 2012 conference on computer supported cooperative work (pp. 1003-1012).

Poetz, M. K., & Schreier, M. (2012). The value of crowdsourcing: can users really compete with professionals in generating new product ideas?. Journal of product innovation management, 29(2), 245-256.

Schemmann, B., Herrmann, A. M., Chappin, M. M., & Heimeriks, G. J. (2016). Crowdsourcing ideas: Involving ordinary users in the ideation phase of new product development. Research Policy, 45(6), 1145-1154.

Schuurman, D., Baccarne, B., De Marez, L., & Mechant, P. (2012). Smart ideas for smart cities: Investigating crowdsourcing for generating and selecting ideas for ICT innovation in a city context. Journal of theoretical and applied electronic commerce research, 7(3), 49-62.

Tan, L., Xiao, H., Yu, K., Aloqaily, M. and Jararweh, Y., 2021. A blockchain-empowered crowdsourcing system for 5G-enabled smart cities. Computer Standards & Interfaces, 76, p.103517

Tong, Y., Zhou, Z., Zeng, Y., Chen, L. and Shahabi, C., 2020. Spatial crowdsourcing: a survey. The VLDB Journal, 29(1), pp.217-250.

Warner, J., 2011, June. Next steps in e-government crowdsourcing. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Digital Government Research Conference: Digital Government Innovation in Challenging Times (pp. 177-181).

Wazny, K., 2018. Applications of crowdsourcing in health: an overview. Journal of global health, 8(1).