Innovation and Entrepreneurship Management - Tasks, Evaluation, and Opportunities

Contemporary Business Environment

LO1: Critically assess the key tools and techniques for managing innovation for application to actual practical situations

LO2: Systematically analyse the impact of innovation and entrepreneurship on the performance of industries

LO3: Develop innovative solutions to contemporary situations

LO4: Evaluate the nature of innovation and entrepreneurship and be able to identify the potential for innovation and entrepreneurship within an organization and/or network.

The complexity, turbulence and rate of change of the business environment have intensified

in recent decades (Ribeiro-Soriano and Kraus, 2018). Contemporary strategy literature is replete with studies on the effect of entrepreneurial orientation on firm performance in consideration of the effects of internal and external factors (Klofsten, Urbano and Heaton, 2020). Bernardus and Wahjudono’s (2017) study of 24 Indonesian businesses that examined the mediating role of corporate entrepreneurship and reported a positive relationship between entrepreneurial action and the effects of corporate reputation, strategic leadership, and corporate culture on corporate performance. An important factor that is receiving global attention is innovation. For example, Zehira, Canb and Karabiga’s (2015) survey of 991 middle and senior managers of 331 middle and large scale firms operating in the manufacturing industry in Turkey, concluded that innovation performance mediates the relationship between entrepreneurial action and firm performance. Organizations; small and large, private and public, for profit and not-for profit, etc.; create marketplace opportunities by jumpstarting and accelerating innovation. Successful execution of solutions to problems, and not just producing ideas, is what sustainable organizations do. Leaders of modern organizations must either find or develop strategies to implement innovation at all levels of the organization. This innovation can be seen in intrapreneurship, a practice that stimulates the creation of new business opportunities within the organisation or collaborating with enterprising and innovative external organisations.

Task 1

Use relevant organisational and market data to identify and discuss two entrepreneurial/innovation opportunities currently adopted by your case study organisation or relevant to its future competitiveness.

Task 2

Formulate and justify a theoretical tool to evaluate the entrepreneurial/innovation opportunities identified in Task 1.

Task 3

Apply the ‘theoretical evaluation tool’ formulated in Task 2 to evaluate the entrepreneurial/innovation opportunities and recommend one way the senior management can further take advantage of identified opportunities to enhance the future competitiveness of your case study organisation.

Task 4

Present the work to a high academic standard in terms of: appropriate use of referencing, extent and evidence of research, structure of the submission, coverage of issues, presentation and use of appropriate language.

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

The work will be assessed in an integrative manner as indicated in the grading rubric, Table 1, that is consistent with Anglia Ruskin University generic assessment criteria and marking standards: Level 7, reproduced in Table 2.

In completing this task, you may wish to research your case study organisation using a range of sources. Searching for source material may be initiated from Google, Google Scholar or EBSCOhost (accessed through ARU Library). You should consider a specificentrepreneurial/innovation opportunity; its contribution (or potential contribution) to your case study organisation’s competitiveness; challenges of effectuating such entrepreneurial/innovation opportunity (in terms of cost, legislation, etc).

You may consider any of the innovation theories discussed in your lectures and use any methodology to rank or recommend from the identified entrepreneurial opportunities. One approach is the SAFe framework (Johnson et al. 2014).

You may wish to consider entrepreneurial action/effectuation (Sarasvathy, 2001) relating to the opportunity, it is important to appreciate that this is largely about your case study’s ability to organise and combing resources (e.g. human, material, financial, intellectual, etc.) and use its competencies (e.g. intellect, skills, knowledge, technology, experience, etc.) (Tidd & Bessant, 2018). Therefore, the approach you propose needs to be capable of accounting for the resources and competencies required to organise the resources and action the entrepreneurial opportunity