User blog:Actzikas/Chapter 10 - Blog on Organizing for Innovation

Chapter 10: Organizing for Innovation: 

 Key Take-Aways:  

“Innovation is something that comes when you’re not under the gun.”

Reflection is key!

Disaggregated: Large firms try to create a Small Business feel by breaking down or disaggregate the hierarchy into different sub-units and then infuse them with an entrepreneurial spirit.

Organic Structure: is an organization structure characterized by a low degree of formalization and standardization. Employees may not have well defined job responsibilities and operations may be characterized by a high degree of variation. (Fosters Innovation).

Ambidextrous Organization: is a complex organizational form that is composed of both internally inconsistency architectures that can collectively achieve both short-term efficiency while fostering long-term innovation.

Skunk Works: is a term when a new product development team is isolated from the mainstream organization to develop a new product. Originally developed by Lockheed Martin.

- The organization of innovation activities are particularly interesting for multinational firms.



Center for Global strategy = Apple

 Chapter 10 Summary:  

At first I didn’t really get what the title of Chapter 10 meant, “organizing for innovation.” I thought to myself what does that mean? How can one organize for innovation? Essentially, how does one organize for idea generating and creativity. However, upon further reading the chapter I understood it. An example would be how Google creates a creative environment. They initially foster and promote creativity by creating informal communication networks with structured assignments such as each member being required to perform 20% of their time to some innovative project.



                Chapter 10 shows us that organizing to innovate is no simple tasks. There are many decisions between how a big firm should foster innovation vs. how a small firm should foster innovation. What I really thought was the best way firms should innovate is what Lockheed Martin did with “Skunk Works” in the 50’s. I enforce this idea that firms should always be creating new subunits to get away from the main stream production line and go out there and find new product ideas and markets. This is especially empirical when running a large firm, when one has the financial resources and the ability to stay competitive. By finding these new markets one can maintain competitive advantage



