Our world has changed greatly during the last several decades. Technologies develop, and many things we use in everyday life are constantly enhanced (phones, TVs, etc). The same happens in other spheres; better services and products enter the market and compete for costumer’s attention. But people are not surprised by the ordinary development anymore. They want to have something brand new, which has not existed earlier.
That is why the organizations are to innovate. Only in this way they will meet ever-changing customer needs. Innovations are the key instruments that make the company competitive and prosperous, as the clients tend to choose it among others. Still, unsuccessful innovations entail huge expenditures that may ruin the whole business. To prove the value of the innovations, the organizations measure them. Recent researches usually discuss measurement models theoretically, but ours will prove the necessity of innovation by dint of its measurement referring to the experience of one of the most successful companies that are the leaders on the market today.
Polaris Industries Inc. builds and designs various machines. It gained success due to its innovations, which are one of the most important company’s values (About Polaris, 2015). Measuring the innovations, the company gains an opportunity to “understand the hidden and exposed drivers that will help fostering a sustainable competitiveness in economies around the world” (Madrigal-Sánchez & Quesada-Pineda 2012, p. 901).
Innovation is crucial for any business as it makes the business grow by inventing new products, maintaining new strategies of management and decision-making procedures. As the company starts to innovate, its performance is to be assessed so that the progress or its absence can be seen, and the personnel can conclude whether the expected benefits are gained. Considering innovations, we underline input and output of the company, its competitiveness, workers motivation and consumers’ satisfaction (Rosenblatt 2011).
We will conduct the research to prove that Polaris Industries Inc. gained their position due to the advantageous innovations that enhanced their working process and attracted new clients even though there is a possibility that innovations failed to bring expected success. The qualitative part of the research will be based on the interview with the personnel. The interview is chosen because it will help to get to know how the workers treat innovation and whether they believe it to be useful. Moreover, they will tell their ideas on how to define whether the innovation is successful or not. The research method will be inductive as we will start it with theory and will prove the hypothesis by the observations.
The population will be diverse to gain general and less biased results, in other words, to make it valid. It will include the company’s personnel who work for this organization for more than 2 years and know all peculiarities of the working process. The exclusion criteria will be the lack of knowledge about innovations implemented by the organization, the role of other employees and their contribution; the positions (department heads, leaders, and employees).
The research will consider such variables:
- Independent: innovation;
- Dependent: the position of the worker, his/her involvement in the organizational processes and view on the issue.
The sampling will be opportunistic, as during the research new data will be gained and new issues that will need to be solved for proving the hypothesis may be found. Some information received during the interview may also need to be supported by the secondary source. We will refer to quasi-statistics to perform the views of the whole organization on the basis of the answers given by several employees.
The quantitative research will be based on the literature review, as it is the source of such numerical data as company’s income, a number of employees, satisfied clients, etc. It will be a case study (as we consider a particular company), and the data will be collected with the help of a survey. Statistical analysis will help us to identify the enhancement in percentage.
The literature review includes secondary sources (organization’s website, annual reports). The sources are connected with Polaris Industries Inc. and their innovations; are not outdated and can be easily accessed.
The information from all sources will be gathered to make the arguments authoritative and show the way in which primary and secondary data coincides and disaccords. The findings will show how the personnel treat the importance of innovations and how they influence the income and competitiveness of the organization.
As the research includes people, the ethical side is to be considered. The population was informed about the purpose of the research and its process. The personal information of the majority was not included in the study even though the department heads allowed to note their words and cite them, mentioning names. To make the interview more private, the workers we questioned separately in the free room.
Their answers were marked just by their position at the company, as this information enhanced the understanding of the issue. Still, everyone was pre-admonished and accepted such terms. Personal information was not saved and uncovered by the researcher. It was also considered that the potential harm to any individuals dismisses the research.
References
About Polaris. (2015). Web.
Madrigal-Sánchez, J., & Quesada-Pineda, H. (2012). “Innovation: case study among wood, energy and medical firms”. Business Process Management Journal, 35(1), 898-918.
Rosenblatt, M. (2011). “The use of innovation awards in the public sector: individual and organizational perspectives”. Innovation: Management, Policy & Practice, 13(2), 207-219.