Homework: Planning for Innovation
For this homework, write a three to four-page paper that addresses the following points:
1) Evaluation of the Firm - McGrath's and MacMillion's Twelve Factors of Evaluating Firm
• Evaluate your organization, being sure to address six of the twelve McGrath's and MacMillion's Twelve Factors:
o Demand for the Product
o Factors that could speed adoption
o Factors that could block success of an Innovation
o Likelihood of Strong Competitive Response
o Likelihood that the Potential Competitive Advantage is Sustainable
o Ability to Create Standards
o Cost Factors in Commercialization
o Resources Available for Commercialization
o Level of novelty of the innovation
o Cost considerations in development
o Other opportunities that could be leveraged
o Potential area where damage might occur
Remember, in addition to technical factors, other factors that could block success of an innovation include legal, ethical, security, diversity, and social responsibility issues of the organization.
Apply the McFarlan & McKenney Strategic Grid Planning Process
• The McFarlan & McKenney Strategic Grid Planning Process analyzes the organization's readiness to implement innovation strategy. McFarlan and McKenney, in 1983, devised a very useful grid for assessing a company's strategic use of IT (Carboy, 2007).
• The grid has four quadrants built around two straight forward questions:
o How important does management feel the current IT systems are to the company?
o How important does the company think future developments in IT will be required to sustain and enhance its way of doing business (Carboy, 2007)
Definitions of each quadrant are:
1) Quadrant 1 - Support: Low Current: Low Future Impact. IT has little relevance and simply supports existing processes.
2) Quadrant 2 - Turnaround: Low Current: High Future Impact. IT will feature more on the business agenda in the future. The company believes that IT will have a major impact on their business model in the future and IT is in a turnaround role i.e. IT will be a key feature of future strategic planning.
3) Quadrant 3 - Factory: High Current: Low Future Impact. IT is important in terms of day-to-day operations but it is not felt that there are any major IT developments on the horizon that will fundamentally alter the nature of the business. Here, the key issue is the maintenance of existing systems (Factory Role).
4) Quadrant 4 - Strategic: High Current: High Future Impact. In this quadrant, IT plays a crucial role both in terms of its current role and in terms of how future IT developments are viewed as impacting on the organization. IT is mission critical.
Use your chosen organization for this exercise. Based on your research of the organization's use of technology and moving forward technology plans, identify which quadrant most appropriately applies to your organization's readiness to implement innovation strategy (Carboy, 2007).
1) Identify the McFarlan & McKenney Strategic Grid quadrant that applies best to your organization: Low Current: Low, Future Impact; Low Current: High Future Impact; High Current: Low Future Impact; and High Current: High Future Impact.
2) Gen-ED > Provide supporting research to justify your analysis conclusion.
3) Identify 3 examples of your organization's innovation directions to substantiate your points.
Format your homework according to the following formatting requirements:
(1) The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
(2) The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the homework, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
(3) Also include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.