Creating an Innovation Discussion Paper

Evaluate the internal processes or strategies within an organization in which you are involved, such as your workplace, school, church, or community group, in order to identify a problem that provides an opportunity for innovation. Then, determine an innovative solution for addressing that problem. Examples of potential solutions are entering a new market, implementing a new practice or process, or even changing management structures. The ultimate goal of your solution should be to increase the diffusion of innovation within the organization and contribute to a culture that appreciates innovation as a key to competitive advantage and organizational success.

Though your final paper will not be due until the end of the course, you should identify your problem and generate potential solutions early on. Begin drafting your implementation plan in stages as you work through the course topics. As with your CLC project, you should research and select a model for evaluating both the feasibility of your idea and the implementation plan.

1. Describe the problem your innovation targets. What is the scope of the problem and which stakeholders, both within the organization and without, does it impact?
2. Describe your innovation and explain how it addresses the problem. 3. How will it meet the needs of the organization and all stakeholders involved?
4. How does the innovation contribute to the organization’s competitive advantage?
5. Develop an implementation plan for effectively diffusing the innovation within the organization. Make sure the plan addresses potential resistance and obstacles, including people and processes.
Identify an appropriate method that could be used for measuring the impact of the innovation on the organization. Explain why you think this is a relevant measure.
6. Finally, assume your innovation is adopted by the organization. Make recommendations for additional improvements within in this organization (in processes, practices, structures, etc.) that could create and sustain momentum for innovation.
Include at least eight in-text citations from at least five secondary resources from your research.
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide

Creating an innovation

1. Describing the problem the innovation targets

The problem has been identified as people arriving late for the church services so that the scheduled program is not followed as intended. In this case, the pews are noted to fill up as later as 30 minutes after the scheduled beginning of the service. For that matter, most of the congregation only gets to attend part of the teaching. This ends up interfering with both the service leaders and congregation as the church presents two Sunday morning services with the delay in the first service extending to the second service and even affecting the afternoon service. It interferes with the service leaders since they must delay the service to accommodate the late attendees. It interferes with the congregation since the service ends up running over to account for the late arrivals. Interestingly enough, the root cause of the lateness among the congregation has been identified as the habit of perfectionism whereby the members of the congregation seek to squeeze in as many activities as possible before going to church. Still, there are church members who are late because of genuine hindrances such as getting their children ready for church and directing them to the right Sunday school rooms, parking problems, and heavy traffic. Also, there are those who arrive late because they are newcomers to the church and do not know where the church is located. Regardless of the reason, the congregation members arriving for service late presents a problem for the church.

ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE

2. Describing the innovation and how it addresses the problem.

The problem is that the congregation members arrive late for church service. The innovation identified for the problem is to restructure the church services so that the more exciting portions are placed at the beginning. Creating an Innovation Discussion Paper   This is anticipated to motivate the church members to arrive on time in order to participate in the exciting segments of the church service.

3. How the innovation meets the need of the organization and all stakeholders involved

The proposed innovation meets the needs of the organization by motivating the congregation to arrive for the service on time. In this case, the exciting segments of the service are placed early. Given that the congregation wants to participate in the exciting segments of the service, they are forced to arrive for the service early. To be more precise, an engaging service opener that rivals the congregation’s expectations (such as having an engaging praise and worship session at the beginning of the service) is anticipated to be incentive enough for the congregation to arrive in church. In addition, the innovation improves the church’s competitive capacity by encouraging the congregation to attend service on time, and this will create a ripple effect that influences other members of the public to attend services at the church (Kim & Mauborgne, 2015).

4. Innovation’s contribution to the church’s competitive advantage

Applying the presented innovation is anticipate to contribute to the church’s competitive advantage. Firstly, it indicates that the church has a genuine concern for its congregation and values people thereby placing it in a superior and favorable position. In this case, this would be something that the church does better than other churches by beginning its services with exciting segments that engage the congregation thus motivating them to arrive for the services on time (Roetzer, 2014). Secondly, it ensures that the church pews are filled as the church begins so that persons who attend the church for the first time can see that the church is filled and are encouraged to continue attending the church in future occasions. In fact, this helps the church to create the right impressions with the public (Mitra, 2017). Thirdly, this is an innovative solution that does not require much in terms of resources and input. The church only needs to restructure the order of service to actualize the innovation. Fourthly, it allows the church to play to its strengths, by focusing on segments that it considered exciting and in which it already performs well. Finally, it presents the church as ready to change and adapt to the prevailing conditions (Hussain & Coleman, 2015). As such, the innovation contributes to the church’s competitive advantage.

5. Implementation plan

A four-step implementation plan has been identified for effectively diffusing the innovation with the church as an organization. The first step is to identify the goals and strategies of the innovation. This entails preparing the problem and goals statements before presenting them to the church stakeholders who would be affected by the innovation. In addition, this step would engage the stakeholders in discussing the innovation and convincing them that it is necessary to address the problem of late arrivals. This step is intended to convince the stakeholders to buy into the innovation and support its application even as their concerns are addressed. The second step is to identify the application approach. This includes identifying the team responsible for applying the innovation in terms of their names, departments and role in the team. Also, this step presents the activities associated with the innovation and communication strategy. The third step is to present the resource needs for the innovation to include the estimated time and expenses, as well as approvals needed. The final step is to measure the performance of the innovation through comparing the church attendance and later arrivals before and after the innovation was implemented (Hisrich & Kearney, 2014; Mathews & Brueggemann, 2015).

6. Recommendation for improvement

Although the innovation is anticipated to improve early church service attendance figures among the congregation, this would only work for the members who have the habit of perfectionism and choose to be late to church. For the church members who are late because of genuine hindrances such as getting their children ready for church and directing them to the right Sunday school rooms and parking problems, there is a need to engage more support personnel to assist them. This innovation would further reduce the number of late attendance.

References

Hisrich, R. & Kearney, C. (2014). Managing innovation and entrepreneurship. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Hussain, T. & Coleman, S. (2015). Design and development of training games: practical guidelines from a multidisciplinary perspective. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Kim, W. & Mauborgne, R. (2015). Blue ocean strategy: how to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.

Mathews, C. & Brueggemann, R. (2015). Innovation and entrepreneurship: a competency framework. New York, NY: Routledge.

Mitra, J. (2017). The business of innovation. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Inc.

Roetzer, P. (2014). The marketing performance blueprint: strategies and technologies to build and measure business success. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.  Creating an Innovation Discussion Paper