MPM712 Managing Innovation Trimester 1, 2012 Brief: Assignment 2 Individual Assignment

From the Unit Guide: Report 40% 9 am Thursday 10 May Note: emailed to Anne. This 4000 word assignment requires you to examine key concepts and strategies of innovation, and then to apply this knowledge to your organisation or another one of your choice.

This assignment is to be completed individually group completion is no longer permitted by the university. This assignment will not be circulated to other students via DSO. Task: Referring to a firm you are intimately familiar with (e.g. as an employee, former-employee, or some closely related role) explore and appraise the history of an innovation within the firm that has now moved into commercial production. (You can discuss your innovation with Anne if you feel it does not fit this definition, as other alternatives are also possible). Focus on assessing the management of this innovation from its initial conception/invention, the decisions made, and whether the experiences did/ or did not match the theory in the course. Come to some conclusion(s) based on your analysis of this history, and consider what these imply in terms of recommendations for the firm in question. The objective of this assignment is for you to use your assessment and analysis of this innovation process to demonstrate a thoughtful understanding of the concepts and theories that underpin innovation strategy. You are required to draw on this understanding to critically analyse how well the organizations innovation process performed (and why). It is important that you focus largely on the process, not the actual innovation product, though obviously you will need to talk about the product in analysing the innovation process. You will be judged largely on your critical thinking in relation to the theory you have studied, so you should look for parallels, and contrasts, between theory and experience. You should also explore the reasons things turned out as they did. Your report should clearly identify any gaps between actual practice and theory-based practice recommendations, and should make appropriate inferences. (It might be that the firm did not follow recommended practice, in which case you should explore why it did not, or alternatively there may be gaps in practice recommendations). Remember, that the essential purpose of this assignment is to show off your deep understanding of the ideas presented in the course by applying them to a real situation. This is a different purpose, for example, than you would have if you wrote a report for the firm itself. Additional Notes: For not for profit innovations, you should replace commercial production with the wider notion of adoption.

An essay style of writing (with an abstract) is required, rather than a business report style. All sources should be cited using Harvard (author/date) referencing conventions. Any commercial information provided in this assignment will be treated confidentially. However, you are advised to use a pseudonym for your firm in case your assignment ended up in the wrong hands (highly unlikely, but lets be safe). Before you begin the essay, you should get Annes clearance about the innovation you propose to focus on you can let her know then who the pseudonym firm really is and what your relationship is with that firm. This requirement is designed to protect you against working away on an assignment that might be problematic. If you were personally responsible for the innovation process, you will probably find it easiest to frame your discussion in terms of what I would do differently now I have studied innovation. Keep in mind that the purpose of this assignment is to allow you to demonstrate your knowledge about innovation through the evaluation/appraisal of this particular innovation process - the assignment is essentially a vehicle for this goal. The unit team needs evidence about your knowledge/understanding to allow us to differentiate high scoring students from passing students.