Investment decisions
Every organization exists for a purpose, whether to make cutting edge high tech products or to safe children in the third world every year. Being clear about the purpose, in a way that inspires and encourages the people in the organization, means articulating that purpose, i.e. sharing the vision. The vision describes why the organization exists and usually remains constant for many years.
Dreams and the developing of valuable ideas
Dreams are a succession of ideas, images, emotions and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind. Dreaming gives direction to the imagination of valuable ideas. Dreams are developing itself after seeing the daily journal, an impressive movie or after a conversation with clients, colleagues and competitors.
Mission
The Mission is measurable. It describes what the organization as a whole will achieve and the overall time-scale for achieving it. The Mission does not deal with how the end is to be achieved nor who will be the key players in it’s delivery. Having clarified the Vision, the next step is to decide what it means in terms of the big steps that must be taken.
Strategy
The strategy, or strategic plan as it is sometimes called, is still a fairly high level look at the key milestones which need to be achieved if the mission is to be accomplished. The Strategy explains how the organization as a whole will do it. The strategy sets out:
– The major steps that are planned
– How each will be achieved
– Key responsibilities
– Time-scales and
– Agreed measures of success.
Innovation management
Innovation management is the discipline of managing processes in innovation. It can be used to develop both product and organizational innovation. Without proper processes, it is not possible for R&D to be efficient; innovation management includes a set of tools that allow managers and engineers to cooperate with a common understanding of goals and processes. The focus of innovation management is to allow the organization to respond to an external or internal opportunity, and use its creative efforts to introduce new ideas, processes or products.[1] Importantly, innovation management is not relegated to R&D; it involves workers at every level in contributing creatively to a company’s development, manufacturing, and marketing. By utilizing appropriate innovation management tools, management can trigger and deploy the creative juices of the whole work force towards the continuous development of a company. The process can be viewed as an evolutionary integration of organization, technology and market by iterating series of activities: search, select, implement and capture.
Innovation processes can either be pushed or pulled through development. A pushed process is based on existing or newly invented technology, that the organization has access to, and tries to find profitable applications to use this technology. A pulled process tries to find areas where customers needs are not met, and then focus development efforts to find solutions to those needs. To succeed with either method, an understanding of both the market and the technical problems are needed. By creating multi-functional development teams, containing both engineers and marketers, both dimensions can be solved The lifetime (or product lifecycle) of new products is steadily getting shorter; increased competition therefore forces companies reduce the time to market. Innovation managers must therefore decrease development time, without sacrificing quality or meeting the needs of the market.
Business plans
A business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals, the reasons why they are believed attainable, and the plan for reaching those goals. It may also contain background information about the organization or team attempting to reach those goals.