Building The Future Innovation Capabilities For The Organization, An Essay.

For this CW2, you are required to produce a report. From your findings in CW1 you are to develop an innovation road map that outlines the preparation of the innovation process. This audit will factor in the wider, operational environment of both up and downstream suppliers and service providers, whilst developing a fuller picture of the organisation’s full innovation capacity.

This assignment leads on logically from the findings of CW1 and students are expected to use the same organisation as CW1.From your findings in CW1 you are to develop an  innovation road map that outlines the preparation of the innovation process. This will factor in the wider, operational environment of both up and downstream suppliers and service providers, whilst developing a fuller picture of the organisation’s full innovation capacity.

The Future of Industry 2020 and Beyond

Microsoft defines innovation as the process by which the evolved version of an idea is been adapted to get the best of the services for gaining a competitive advantage (Microsoft, 2019). The framework for Microsoft Innovation Management has five primary processes which leads to innovation this involves engage, envision, evaluate, evolve and execute. This framework involves the best practices that can shape the technology and improve the performance in management (Anon., 2013).

Innovation management is the process of planning, developing and executing the technological capabilities that can shape operational and strategic objectives of an organization. For the growth and profitability in business and management, innovation is the key to create efficient and world class performance in operations which is essential in today’s challenging business environment. The strategy in innovation involves addressing the culture, technology and processes as whole (Shakeela, et al., 2016).

Previous report evaluates the firm and its action and abilities for their abilities in future. Company starting from being a program developer, now creating its own Windows operating structure that is adopted by most PC’s. Here the report focuses on the action plan roadmap for the implementation and development of innovation in Microsoft. Furthermore, the analysis of innovation process of Microsoft has been done which includes the operational environment of service providers, and both up and downstream suppliers on operational environment while developing a bigger picture of innovation capacity of the organization.  

The leading change in digital world requires the organization to have a better vision which ensures to build a drive that can optimize operations and the processes which leads the companies to update their products and services. Intelligent Technologies which can brings immense change in the industry are big data analytics, machine learning and flexibility of hybrid cloud computing ( Kearney, 2017).  This helps in the aid of technology, and give the access to unprecedented amounts of data to their customers, industry and themselves.

Today, technological advancement for a company is essential with increase in innovation every tech- based organization needs to build their own solution for proprietary technology that can allow them to evolve and compete ( Vuksanovi?, et al., 2016). Initially, Microsoft was founded with the vision that technology can create new opportunities for an organization and people. Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft speaks about the company’s new focus which suggests their ambitions as bold and clear and this can build their desire to evolve and change their culture (Anon., 2013). According to 2019 status, the company delivered the revenue of about $125 billion, $50 billion in cash flow and in operating income $43 billion (Microsoft, 2019). In recent years, the company is focussing on quantum computing, cloud services, artificial intelligence and mixed reality. Microsoft shifted their time with external customers and internal business leaders than managing IT, this approach was built in order to improve their service offerings. Microsoft has immense opportunity in the area of artificial intelligence and gaming technology, investing in these fields will bring growth to the company’s business. It has been observed that by capitalizing on the increase demand of smartphones and tablets, the company can create greater potential in smartphone industry ( Samarah, et al., 2019).

The Organization's Innovation Requirements 2020 and Beyond

At Microsoft, there are four pillars that act as core drivers for the roadmap to the transformation in digital field. Engaging customers, empowering employees, optimization of operations and transformation of products. The company is no longer focusing on ‘touch points’ during the process of customer services, sales and marketing, instead they are trying to engage in the real world and online interactions. The future possibilities are set for building relationships with customers with lifecycle insights of 360-degree (Bellis, 2019). In Microsoft 365 business central, the main priority is to enhance the modern application which have an overall functionality while focussing the usability and concentrating on the features that are requested by customers. An intelligent system enriches the insights to action and can able to realize the opportunities for the well improved quality with profitability (Lendel, et al., 2014).

Microsoft is integrating their technology to bring out the transformation in digital business. They have an acquisition of GitHub, which is required for a digital based company setup. For developers, this ensures the growth of the industry by increasing the value creation. It has been observed from the previous segments that the company is trying to invest and build independent language, cloud or framework for developers. Variety, volume and velocity of the data has been increasing with the rapid increase of connected devices that are coming online till 2030.

Company has Power BI, Azure SQL data warehouse and Azure Data factory that offers the comprehensive cloud analytics (Warner, 2019). The updated version AI tools consists of a new speech to search text, decision capabilities and vision. From the previous segments it has been noted that the updated version of azure machine learning consists of new training, building and deployment of the models of machine learning. Microsoft 365 is a world’s productivity cloud that requires six key investments in management, security, knowledge, productivity, workflow and compliance.

Company has Free association and collective bargaining policy with their suppliers. Employees are free to involve with any associations of their interest. Direct engagement and open communication between management and workers are the most effective practice to resolve any issues at workplace. At Microsoft, suppliers need to conduct the business work in full compliance to all the regulations and laws (Microsoft, 2019). The suppliers need to make sure that their sub-suppliers must operate according to the requirements of the company (Microsoft, 2019).

Company monitors the supplier assessment and the third part audits which includes the overall evaluation through Microsoft supplier code of conduct. The data integrity and the increased transparency of information indicates the partnership of managers and manufacturers. This drives the supply chain to have a strong base and helps to grow. The categorization of all the contracted suppliers is based on the compliance, SEA culture and self-management (Microsoft, 2019). Combination of auditors and SEA teams finds an action plan which enables the organization to have an understanding about the new trends and opportunities (Microsoft, 2017).

Building the Future Innovation Capabilities for the Organization

Technological Innovation have the power in influencing the operations of businesses and society. Future capabilities are required to give on-demand services that have the potential to deliver smoothly and quickly. At 2019, an innovation roundtable summit is organized where it has been found that corporates are gradually shifting towards their customers, supporting rapid learning cycles and focussing on iterative experimentation (Microsoft, 2019).

From the previous segment of the paper, it has been noted that Microsoft has a core competency in its brand image, which is stronger than its competitors. They have products with high compatibility. Microsoft innovation team is actively involved with the innovation of product, policy and business model. Under the leadership of Satya Nadella, CEO, major changes in the company’s value can be seen with increase growth of 200% in 2014 (Pinder, 2019). Azure system of cloud computing has 20% market share globally (Wunker, 2015). The company’s revenue last year was $110 billion, this signifies their profit margin of 29% which is larger than Apple or Google (Anon., 2013). To optimize their operation, companies are looking for digital technology (Microsoft, 2019). Partnering with other organizations for the digital transformation can create more opportunities for future. It has been observed that by expanding in gaming industry, the company is pushing their innovation boundaries. Microsoft game stack ensures developed in order to bring out to empower the game developers.

 Machine learning is effective to make the technology more intuitive.  To digitize the business process, Dynamics 365 enables the company to develop a digital feedback loop which can take information from one system and optimize the others. The company’s power platform consists of flow, power apps and power BI, which enables the no code app development, analytics of self-service and robotic process of automation in a single platform. The strength of the company lies with the talented workforce in the organization.

According to innovation audit, by Microsoft, internet of things (IOT) can become an accelerator in global business operations and act as a way through with innovation capabilities can grow. Usage of IOT and sensors can have a positive impact in sales and customer satisfaction. Azure IoT suite deploys low cost in IT sensors that enables to learn about the optimize resources and work environment (Microsoft, 2019). Azure IoT Suite also captures the input from sound temperature and motion sensors in each room to learn about the occupancy in room its temperature and noise level.  Azure also displays apps on central dashboard. Power BI and Data Science predicts about the unused rooms and do optimization for efficiency in energy.  

Roadmap for change in transforming products requires collaborative development in individuals and teams. This will boost the productivity of employees and their knowledge sharing furthermore reduce the cost of product development (Fortune, 2018). Secondly, by the usage of additive manufacturing such as 3-D printing there will be increase in revenue and the enhancement of market insight to ideation. Another approach is to implement agile engineering and mobile productivity by using data from social networks, in market products and analytics. This will create lower cost in modelling, testing and brings higher return on the investment in innovation. To increase their “Tech intensity” company’s CEO, Satya Nadella, started designing their process of internal review. This was done to redefine the mission of company and empower people from every culture. He had done a remarkable work to change the company’s idea of knowing-it-all to everything that organization does is in order to increase the mindset.

The CEO, Satya Nadella with his core innovation team evaluates their innovation strategies, which focuses on the methods to increase in technological advances. Firstly, they are focusing on new automation to create the best opportunities and to remove the manual work. Secondly, to modernize the application portfolio, its skills and processes. Thirdly, by prioritizing to fund transformation in relevance to the cloud. The business benefits here is decrease in spending on data modelling, decrease in unplanned downtime, imparting technical ability to the workforce and eliminating the third-party contracts which would be expensive (Microsoft, 2019).

Conclusion

Microsoft has an immense growth in the present and even though they faced problems it is still one of the leading organizations in the field of software industry. The changes and adaptability helped Microsoft as a strong competitor and a tough player in the market. The company has managed to be the largest and the one of the most profitable tech giants in the industry. With the analysis of report, it has been found that the company has learned from their mistakes in the past, but still manages to work on their weaknesses. Microsoft enhances its cloud computing services and invest in its digital transformation.

Currently the company is utilizing its Dynamics 365 AI, which enables their consumers to run their company’s process. This AI system bridges the gap of digital and physical world and have the key motive for the mixed reality cloud. Microsoft is focussing on Artificial intelligence, computer vision and human-computer interaction for 2020. Company is including various advanced technological, methodological, practical and theoretical concepts that can help the market of Cloud Analytics. In the global market the work is on the basis of changing the profile of the product by bringing out the modifications in the process of production techniques, development platforms and the prototypes of the product.

References

Kearney, A., 2017. Technology and Innovation for the Future of Production: Accelerating Value Creation, Switzerland: World Economic Forum.

Samarah, M., Stark, . B. & Kindle, J., 2019. The Keys to Innovation: Defining and Evaluating Attributes that Measure Innovation Capabilities, World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology: International Journal of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering.

Vuksanovi?, D., Ugarak, J. & Kor?ok, D., 2016. Industry 4.0: the Future Concepts and New Visions of Factory of the Future Development, Singidunum University, Danijelova 32, Belgrade, Serbia: International Scientific Conference On ICT and E business related research.

Anon., 2013. Best Practices for Innovation : Micrososft Innovation Management Framework, New York , USA: Microsoft Corporation.

Bellis, M., 2019. A short history of Microsoft. [Online] Available at: https://www.thoughtco.com/microsoft-history-of-a-computing-giant-1991140
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Pinder, M., 2019. 7 challenges innovation managers face in 2020. [Online] Available at: https://www.boardofinnovation.com/blog/7-challenges-innovation-managers-face-in-2020/[Accessed 23 December 2019].

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Wunker, S., 2015. 5 Strategies Big Businesses Use To Build A Culture of Innovation. [Online] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenwunker/2015/07/29/5-strategic-big-businesses-use-to-build-a-culture-of-innovation/#3c7a0bb1740e[Accessed 23 December 2019].