Making Innovation Sustainable

Making Innovation Sustainable Gordon Fletcher @gordonfletcher g.fletcher@salford.ac.uk Some examples drawn from research projects and knowledge transfer partnerships Research Project - QR Codes: A business solution solving no real problem? KTP - Mobile Service Representatives Systems development and implementation project Priority placed on management reporting Connecting reps to base proposed but never happened Direct benefits still to be realised and efficiencies gained Academic vs Strategic perspective? KTP - e-Law System Ongoing project Attempt to address the mobile market as clients Underlying changes required to organisation Marketing project, visionary concept or strategic change? KTP - Print-on-Demand System Configurable 'on-brand' point-of-sale material Desire for mobile delivery Project 'locked' into proprietary renderers lending to cost factors vs open source SVG approach Sustainability with Innovation or (equally) Strategy with Vision KTP - Analytics Measure all the inputs for a campaign or brand Metrics of activities between/across devices Influences represented by other data (e.g. weather, holidays, etc) Earlier days but having to make some operational decisions (e.g. Twitter trends) Mintzberg (1978) distinguished between between deliberate (intended and realized), unrealized (intended but not realized because of misinterpretation or changes in expectations or environment) and emergent (realized but not intended) strategies. Papanek’s (1985) separates different forms of thinking with his ‘analytical thinking’ mirroring strategic management and judgmental and routine forms of thinking aligning with what is described as operational management.