Analyzing Organizational Innovation in the Consumer Goods Industry

TMA Overview

This TMA is intended to assess the following:

• Your ability to apply the course ideas to real business examples
• Your ability to use academic business and management language appropriately and effectively to communicate your ideas
• Your ability to work and communicate with a team
• The initial task of your team is to select an innovative organization and ask for tutor approval.

Businesses are usually classified among business industries based on the products that they produce. There are many types of business industries: aerospace industry, technology industry, financial industry, transportation industry, education industry, food industry, consumer goods industry, etc.

Innovation is a crucial element for economic and organizational success. If a company wants to compete it must be both adaptive and creative. The focus of this TMA is to select an example (preferably a local example) of organizational innovation from the consumer goods industry associated with its business functions- marketing and/or operations management- and analyze the importance of this innovation. This TMA is not about innovative products, but rather innovative processes and methods that organizations implement through their business functions (marketing or operations) to gain competitive advantage such as finding new suppliers, creating new production methods, creating a new advertising strategy, etc.

It is crucial that students use theories and course material they learned in B207A while writing this TMA.

Your answer should be in the form of an essay. The essay should be well organized, that is, it has an introduction (5 marks), body (90 marks) and conclusion (5 marks). The introduction should introduce the topic.

In the body paragraphs, the following points should be discussed:

1. Name the organization and briefly describe its products, markets and activities. (10 marks)
2. Description of the consumer goods industry and the organization’s main competitors (10 marks).
3. How was the organization able to become innovative? Link to the theories discussed in the course material. (10 marks)
4. Discuss how the two business functions (marketing and operations) would identify and address this organization’s innovation needs. Link to the theories discussed in the course material. (20 marks)
5. Discuss the selected process innovation (marketing and/or operations). Which problem did it solve? Which added value did it bring? Link to the theories discussed in the course material. (20 marks)
6. Analyze how the process innovation was implemented and its benefits. (10 marks)
7. Discuss the past or future challenges faced by the organization for innovation implementation. (10 marks)

• Each team will work on the paper as they would normally do with other courses, but this time in a group. This is a good opportunity for students to learn a set of skills that are very important in the professional business world, such as time management, planning, communicating with others, etc.
• Each team is required to select a team leader. The TMA paper should be uploaded to the LMS by the team leader only. This is a very important requirement in order to avoid Turnitin similarities.
• The names of all the team members should be written on the pt3 form, including the name of the team leader. All team members will receive the same mark on the TMA essay paper. Students are required to use the pt3 form provided on the LMS for this specific TMA.
• Students papers are expected to meet the following criteria:

Plagiarism: It’s imperative that team members write the TMA using their own words. Plagiarism will be penalized depending on its severity and according to AOU plagiarism policy.

Format:  expected to write their answer in an essay format: introduction, body paragraph(s) and a conclusion. Failing to do so could result in the deduction of up to 4 marks from the total TMA paper mark.

Word count: TMAs are expected to be within the specified word count. A 10% deviation from word count limit is acceptable. Not adhering to specified word count could result in the deduction of up to 4 marks of the total TMA paper mark.

Referencing:  team members are expected to use the Harvard referencing style for in-text referencing and list of reference at the end. Failing to do so could result in the deduction of up to 4 marks of the total TMA paper mark.

E-Library: team members are expected to use sources to support their answers. A minimum of 3 sources is required. Failing to do so could result in the deduction of up to 4 marks of the total TMA paper mark.