Functioning of the Internal Market for Innovation
The internal market focuses its efforts on establishing standardized business activities aimed at promoting customer satisfaction through consistent quality experience with both the company and its products. In Nypro, innovation processes in the internal market help to streamline and shape customer interactions and production processes through different plant-staff competition (Christensen & Voorheis, 1998). The improvement of the internal market innovation through competitively strengthening joint ventures and continuous research in the external environment eases market penetration and promotes organizational growth rate (Gupta, Malhotra, Czinkota, & Foroudi, 2016). The goal of this competition is to align every aspect of a company’s internal operations to facilitate the provision of high-value products and consistent experience to their customers. Nypro adopted various techniques in establishing its internal functioning that include the use of top performers, staff training, performance-based incentives, and internal and external collaborations.
Staff Competition and Rivalry
Nypro has thousands of employees in different plants across the world who works in various departments such as sales, marketing, production, and logistics. The company makes a concerted effort to create a culture of competition and rivalry amongst its employees. Training of employees enables them to project the vision and goals of business and nurture innovation, as well as create a culture that extends across the company to the customers. Christensen and Voorheis (1998) say that “organizational structure facilitated aggressive internal competition and constant attention to performance statistics” (9). Staff training imparts job morale, increases efficiency, enhances capacity to adopt new technologies, and improves overall product and innovation strategies, leading to increased plant competition, customer satisfaction, and low staff turnover. Competition enables employees to create new opportunities for providing service to clients and efficient production processes.
Performance-Based Incentives
From the article, corporate managers rewarded employees based on their performance on service appraisal. The reward given to the well-performing employees includes high-role benefits that comprise participating in the company’s major decisive roles to motivate and induce a sense of being part of the company. Christensen and Voorheisn (1998) note that Nypro exercises good governance as stakeholders have an important role in choosing the board of directors. This performance incentive positively influences employee attitudes about job satisfaction, loyalty, and company policies. The program encourages employees to maintain concerted efforts towards achieving consistent service improvement under positive competition, remain loyal, and grow the business. The company’s loyalty reduces employee turnover, retains a skilled workforce, and reduces the staff recruitment cost, leading to the achievement of low-operational cost, improved profitability, and enhanced business growth.
Continuous Staff Training
Nypro prepares staff to meet their expectations through recruitment and on-site comprehensive training programs on strategic business objectives, communication, and the use of existing and new technologies to improve production efficiency. Gupta et al. (2016) assert that extensive training enhances the development of competent employees who make a significant contribution to business operations and promote staff growth within the organization. On-site training of employees includes departmental meetings, corporate conferences, and team retreats, which remind employees about the organization’s focus and goals. Overall, training facilitates workplace safety, boosts productivity, deepens job satisfaction, and enriches business operation.
Collaboration between Units and Customers
The organization’s collaborative network involves inter/intra-unit and clear client network communication platform. The network consists of well-established partnering agreements that bring staff from various departments and clients from different disciplines together. This collaborative business process promotes the collection of diverse information, which is significant in promoting understanding, clear communication, and development of customer-oriented production strategy. Collaborative strategies with clients improve business performance through the distribution of ideas and new technologies, enhancement of staff skills, and promotion of cost-reduction measures, hence occasioning competitive advantage over rivals. Workplace collaboration in Nypro promotes an active team, pools creativity, builds robust relationships, and augments flexible production, leading to the distribution of high-knowledge and expertise for improved productivity.
Lankton’s Management of Innovation Process
The company’s CEO manages the innovation process through the evaluation of production procedure and determination of the changes needed with a goal to execute valuable framework of business activities. De Massis, Audretsch, Uhlaner, and Kammerlander (2017) hold that evaluation, improvement, and analysis of the outcome of the innovation process moderate the risk via continuous assessment of the implementation process, business objectives, and strategies. Nypro’s process is customer-centric because it focuses on tailored production to fit customer specific needs, improve product quality, and reduce uncertainty.
Setting Goals and Laying Plans
The company CEO manages innovation through strategic alignment of business objectives, viability, growth, and profitability. The CEO engages stakeholders, employees, and customers on a continuous monitoring of the market, resources, and structural flexibility to shape production plans within the company for he felt the need for change was overdue (Christensen & Voorheis, 1998). The CEO coordinates and monitors the overall technological changes, market shift, and facilitates designing of plans to meet current and future needs of the customers as well as understand competitors. Laying-out of plans and setting-up of realistic goals across the company network establishes a robust collaboration amongst staff and the customers, which promotes employee competition that is essential in the development of new ideas for development.
Motivating and Aligning Efforts
Lankton rallies his colleagues in reinventing production processes through the continuous identification and development of talents. Knowledge acquisition process includes employee-client interaction in various organization-sponsored programs, strategic meetings, and production processes that encourages knowledge sharing. According to Gupta et al. (2016), collaboration is essential in maintaining sustained low-cost production and high-quality precision strategies that help build customer loyalty. Harmonization of the diverse knowledge gathered from different regions within the company’s network maintains and expands the expertise of production process and operation strategies while keeping up-to-date with latest innovations worldwide.
Coordinating and Controlling Activities
Lankton controls and coordinates internal innovation through a systematic approach to establish proper implementation of processes and strategies in different plants and across the entire network. These processes involve evaluation of the system to ensure the establishment of adequate solutions to problems and positive outcomes in production. According to Ejimabo (2015), the creation of synergies between all functional units, processes, and customers through collaboration and staff training to motivate and maintain the disciplined workforce. The process builds a robust innovation portal to allow the implementation of new processes and the appraisal and assessment of each unit or staff to ensure that business operations remain on course
Building and Nurturing Relationships
Building relationships is a fundamental concept in the management of innovation of the company. The CEO focuses on establishing a culture of teamwork amongst the staff and its customers through the involvement of high-performing employees in choosing board members from different plant units, incorporation of client representatives in production, and process improvement, and engagement of employees in team retreats. The culture of enhanced relationship builds robust communication resources between staff and company clients, resulting in an effective production process (De Massis et al., 2017). Appraisal process provides the means utilized by plant management teams to supervise and monitor the relationship, assess company’s business perspective, and align competitive staff rivalry towards increased production and value of the organization.
How to Make Decision
Novaplast decision making is critical to the future opportunities and a wider market of the company depend on its implementation. The guiding principle involves a focus on the company’s strategy of business sustenance that resonates with consistent growth (Ejimabo, 2015). Effective and successful decisions facilitate organizational growth in market share, profitability, and sustained development. A stepwise approach is an efficient approach to making informed decisions that positively influence organization’s short- and long-term goals
Identify the Goal
Keeping the focus on the organizational goal is essential as it helps to identify and align the purpose of the decision to a problem. In Novaplast, the company’s goal is to maintain its high growth rate. De Massis et al. (2017) expound that controlling production cost and product lead-time is essential to maintaining organizational profitability and sustained growth. In Nypro, the old molding machines do not process low-volume and high-mix production, hence limiting organizational flexibility and capacity to address all customer orders that compromise brand loyalty. Therefore, Novaplast is a revolutionary technology invented with the goal to address these production challenges and achieve the company’s objective of growth (Christensen & Voorheis, 1998). This area of production provides an opportunity for the expansion. Thus, identification of the goal is essential in highlighting the problem and the effectiveness of Novaplast in addressing the current and future needs.
Analysis of Alternatives
Comparison of available options enhances the understanding of the likely choice that will solve a problem. This approach guides in evaluating feasibility, acceptability, and desirability of options and the determination of the best option with the highest chances of success and the lowest risks. Considering the inefficient high cost of old machines with high cost of labor available across Nypro plants, opting out of the duteous production processes is essential in addressing speed and product variety in all units (Christensen & Voorheis, 1998). Despite the fact that piloting with selected branches is significant in creating trust and limiting implementation challenges, installation of few machines in each plant distributed across the market helps to maintain the close-to-customer approach, serve low-volume orders from the established customers, maintain internal competition and innovation, and keep customer collaboration.
Consider Consequences
This process aids in determining the impact of the final decision on the company’s business. Ejimabo (2015) argues that analyzing consequences facilitate review of possible shortcomings and benefits of different decisions while putting into account the current and future life of the company. As it stands, Novaplast holds the current and future market presence and the expansion ability of the organization (Christensen & Voorheis, 1998). In this view, the decision must address the current and future consequences of failing or implementing the new technology in the organization. Significantly, curtailing the execution does not alleviate consequences of the current and future implementations. Therefore, with the dynamic customer needs and technological advancement, considering the harsh consequences, Novaplast requires immediate implementation.
Consider Business Opportunities
The business opportunities surrounding the plastic molding market include high-mix, high-volume, and low-volume productions. The objective of Nypro is to exploit all the customer business opportunities and increase its market share. However, the company has not tapped the high-mix market and the low-volume market due to technological challenges. Gupta et al. (2016) hold that market expansion is essential in the maintenance of growth, diversification of scope, and enhancement of competitive advantage. Given the need to expand business activities, implementation of Novaplast technology helps to diversify production, improve product quality, and provide flexible operating procedures. Therefore, considering the prospect, the adoption of Novaplast technology in all plants across the network is necessary to diversify production, new market entry, and globalization of production processes to meet various customer needs at a low cost.
References
Christensen, M., & Voorheis, R. (1998). Managing innovation at Nypro Inc. (A). Harvard Business School Case, 696(61), 1-14.
De Massis, A., Audretsch, D., Uhlaner, L., & Kammerlander, N. (2017). Innovation with limited resources: Management lessons from the German Mittelstand. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 35(1), 125-146. doi:10.1111/jpim.12373
Ejimabo, N. (2015). The influence of decision making in organizational leadership and management activities. Journal of Entrepreneurship & Organization Management, 4(2). doi:10.4172/2169-026x.1000138
Gupta, S., Malhotra, N., Czinkota, M., & Foroudi, P. (2016). Marketing innovation: A consequence of competitiveness. Journal of Business Research, 69(12), 5671-5681. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.02.042