Month: June 2020

The last recession taught smart companies a valuable lesson while poorly managed companies bunkered down in survival mode, innovative companies seized the opportunity and took the hibernating companies’ market share.

Consumers are pushing small and large companies to deliver more affordable, better, and exciting products and services. There is no more room for mediocrity in our globalized market place.

Here are seven simple steps to foster a culture of innovation in your organization climate and culture.

1. Lead from the front

Innovation starts with the leadership qualities of the founder or CEO. Founders and CEOs of innovative organizations have to be passionate about their work, display a positive and optimistic outlook, have a real drive and clear vision, be forward thinking, and above all embrace change.

Leaders have to be bold thinkers and from the top-down or across the board, they play a primary role in fostering innovative organizations. Innovation is the high-performance mantra of business leaders.

2. Create a culture of innovation

People perform best when they are driven by inspiration and encouraged to push their boundaries and think outside the box. But employees cannot do this when they are being micromanaged. Employees need to feel independent enough to own their innovative thinking and to pursue the ideas they are passionate about. In fact, if management effectively fosters a creative and open environment, innovation will happen naturally.

A single value creating idea might require hundreds of dud ideas. When the entire organization brainstorms, the process of refining suggestions towards a single idea happens phenomenally quicker versus when only key staff is involved in the process. By creating a strong organizational culture, you devolve power down to every employee to innovate.

3. Build effective teams

The super-performing team has become the holy grail of the business world. Various key requirements need to be in place. Some of these include dependability between team members, effective structure and clarity of objectives; real meaning in the work the team does, as well believing in the long term results of the team’s efforts.

Teams also need to create a real sense of psychological safety where open and honest communication can prevail.

4. Reward failure

One of the most powerful tools for promoting employee creativity and innovation is recognition. People want to be recognized and rewarded for their ideas and initiatives, and it is a practice that can have tremendous payoff for the organization.

One reason employees often don’t express their ideas is that they don’t want to rock the boat. They don’t want to be a failure if something doesn’t work out. Tolerate mistakes and expect failure, and reward lessons learned. Ideas don’t always work the first time.

5. Take ownership of client problems

Innovative organizations encourage staff to take ownership of problems presented by clients. So often client problems are seen as a headache left in the hands of “customer service.”  The truth is that every customer problem or complaint presents the organization with a phenomenal opportunity to showcase real customer service and highlight vast improvements in product or service design and delivery.

Lessons learnt from customer problems should be shared with each employee in the organization in order to get the maximum learning value from the exercise.

6. Benchmark against the best

How do entrepreneurs know they are innovative? Your business does not trade in a vacuum– you and your organization are part of a larger business eco system consisting of other competitor, clients, and industry partners.

If you are not the leader within your industry or niche market, it’s important to determine who the leader is and ensure that your strategies and tactics will enable you to take the top spot. Refrain from vanity metrics that create a feel good factor instead of real organization value.

7. Flat management structure

The management structures of innovative companies tend to be flat, enabling opportunities for open communication and encouraging confidence.

However, if a flat structure does not fit in with your geographic or company culture, then the alternative is to have an “Innovation Champion” who can bring management’s attention to great ideas. Whatever method you follow, ensure that you create genuine pathways for ideas to become reality within your organization.

Adopting the above seven strategies will enable your organization to map, systematize, manage, measure, and improve innovation and subsequently produce a steady stream of innovations- and the occasional game changer.

Product innovation is the creation and subsequent introduction of a good or service that is either new, or an improved version of previous goods or services. This is broader than the normally accepted definition of innovation that includes the invention of new products which, in this context, are still considered innovative.

Product innovation is defined as:

The development of new products, changes in design of established products, or use of new materials or components in the manufacture of established products.

Numerous examples of product innovation include introducing new products, enhanced quality and improving its overall performance. Product innovation, alongside cost-cutting innovation and process innovation, are three different classifications of innovation which aim to develop a company’s production methods.

Thus product innovation can be divided into two categories of innovation: radical innovation which aims at developing a new product, and incremental innovation which aims at improving existing products.

Advantages of product innovation

(i) Growth, expansion and gaining a competitive advantage

A business that is capable of differentiating their product from other businesses in the same industry to large extent will be able to reap profits. This can be applied to how smaller businesses can use product innovation to better differentiate their product from others. Product differentiation can be defined as “A marketing process that showcases the differences between products. Differentiation looks to make a product more attractive by contrasting its unique qualities with other competing products. Successful product differentiation creates a competitive advantage for the seller, as customers view these products as unique or superior.” Therefore, small businesses that are able to utilize product innovation effectively will be able to expand and grow into larger businesses, while gaining a competitive advantage over its remaining competitors.

(ii) Brand switching

Businesses that once again are able to successfully utilize product innovation will thus entice customers from rival brands to buy its product instead as it becomes more attractive to the customer. One example of successful product innovation that have led to brand switching are the introduction of the iPhone to the mobile phone industry (which has caused mobile phone users to switch from Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson,etc. to the Apple iPhone).

Disadvantages of product innovation

(i) Counter effect of product innovation

Not all businesses/competitors do not always create products/resources from scratch, but rather substitute different resources to create productive innovation and this could have an opposite effect of what the business/ competitor is trying to do. Thus, some of these businesses/ competitors could be driven out of the industry and will not last long enough to enhance their product during their time in the industry.

(ii) High costs and high risk of failure

When a business attempts to innovate its product, it will inject lots of capital and time into it, which requires severe experimentation. Constant experimentation could result in failure for the business and will also cause the business to incur significantly higher costs. Furthermore, it could take years for a business to successfully innovate a product, thus resulting in an uncertain return.

(iii) Disrupting the outside world

For product innovation to occur, the business will have to change the way it runs, and this could lead to the breaking down of relationships between the business and its customers, suppliers and business partners. In addition, changing too much of a business’s product could lead to the business gaining a less reputable image due to a loss of credibility and consistency.

Stages

These are the few stages that a business has to undergo when introducing a new product line into the market:

1. Market research

This can be done in the form of primary and secondary market research where the business will gather as much information as possible about the present tastes and preferences of its potential consumers, and the gaps filled in the business’s particular industry. Secondary market research involves gathering data that has already been collected by another party, and is primarily based on information that has been founded from previous studies. One advantage of secondary market research over primary market research is that it is low-cost, thus enabling the business to be able to invest its time into other more important matters and new potential business ventures. Primary market research involves the business gathering data individually, and this can be done via various sampling methods. Other forms of primary market research include focus groups, interviews, questionnaires, etc. One advantage of primary market research over secondary market research is that it delivers much more specific results than secondary market research, and is only available to the business itself, rather than secondary research which is made globally available, as data has already been collected.

2. Product development and testing

This stage involves creating a test product called a prototype. The prototype ensures the business that its product is functioning properly, and all the necessary arrangements are made to enhance the product as much as possible. After the prototype has been devised, the business can now use test marketing where the business introduces a product to a small group of individuals to give the company insight into the effectiveness of the product from the views of their potential customers.

3. Feasibility study

The business will now look at the legal and financial restrictions of launching the product into the market. This is where the business will create sales forecasts, establish the price of the product, the overall costs of production and profitability estimates. The business also has to consider legal aspects in terms of safety and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).

After all these stages have been successfully run through, then the business can officially launch the product.

The term new product can mean different things. Six different categories of new products can be identified that are all quite different from each other. Still, they are all called new products. Let’s investigate the different categories of new products and what the term new product may actually mean.

The six categories of new products range from new-to-the-world products (sometimes called really new products), as well as a range of minor repositionings and cost reductions. The list containing the six categories of new products may include things you would exclude. For instance, can we have a new item just by repositioning an old one (telling customer it is something else)? Yes, we can have a new product then. You might consider this to be only a new use, but the firm still went through a process of discovery and development. And a new use may occur in a completely separate division. For example, the Dove soap name has, by now, been extended to almost two dozen box soaps and almost as many liquid body washes.

The Six Categories of New Products

As you see, we have to broaden our definition of new products to include the following six categories of new products.

1. New-to-the-world Products (really new Products)

The alternative expression for new-to-the-world products (really new products) already indicates that this is what most people would define as a new product. These products are inventions that create a whole new market. Examples: Polaroid camera, the iPod and iPad, the laser printer and so on.

2. New-to-the-firm Products (new Product Lines)

Products that take a firm into a category new to it. The products are not new to the world, but are new to the firm. The new product line raises the issue of the imitation product: a “me-too”. Examples: P&G’s first shampoo or coffee, Hallmark gift items, AT&T’s Universal credit card and so on.

3. Additions to existing Product Lines

These are simple line extensions, designed to flesh out the product line as offered to the firm’s current markets. Examples: P&G’s Tide Liquid detergent, Bud Light, Special K line extensions (drinks, snack bars, and cereals).

4. Improvements and Revisions to existing Products

Current products made better. Examples: P&G’s Ivory Soap and Tide power laundry detergent have been revised numerous times throughout their history,  and there are countless other examples.

5. Repositionings

As we already discussed before, you may have an argument about whether repositions are actually new products. Yet, they can be considered as new products, as the firm undertakes a new products process. Repositionings are products that are retargeted for a new use or application. Examples: Arm & Hammer baking soda repositioned as a drain or refrigerator deodorant; aspirin repositioned as a safeguard against heart attacks. Also includes products retargeted to new users or new target markets. Marlboro cigarettes were repositioned from a woman’s cigarette to a man’s cigarette years ago.

6. Cost Reductions

Finally, cost reductions complete the six categories of new products. Cost reductions refer to new products that simply replace existing products in the line, providing the customer similar performance but at a lower cost. May be more of a “new product” in terms of design or production than marketing.

Differences between the Categories of New Products

All the categories of new products are considered new products, but it is clear to see that the risks and uncertainties greatly differ, and the categories need to be managed differently.

In general, if a product is new to the world or new to the firm (the first two categories of new products), the risks and uncertainties faced by the firm are higher, as are the associated costs of development and launch. For instance, it costs Gillette far more to launch its newest shaving system (the Fusion Flexball for example) than to do upgrades to the earlier Mach 3 system (such as developing the women’s version, named Venus, which used the same blade technology).

A greater commitment of human and financial resources is clearly often required to bring the most innovative new products to market successfully.

Companies realize innovations through a combination of market research, internal idea generation, customer requests and a variety of other factors. They also frequently discover innovative solutions by chance.

Manufacturers typically maintain a balance between market and customer-driven innovation efforts. Market research will identify broad market needs or specific market demand that will drive innovation, and resources will be devoted to support organizational goals for product and technology development. Customers bring specific problems to be solved sometimes without understanding what the problem is or realizing a solution is possible.

Customer requests represent an external force driving innovation. Succeeding in customer-driven product innovation can be made easier if companies follow a set of four best practices centering on clear and open communication between the parties. Following this disciplined process is the second strategy in creating product innovation that delivers results.

1. Gather all the facts

Creating a solution for a customer challenge begins with a deep understanding of the customer’s needs the real needs, not just the stated needs. Developers should not simply respond to the request. They need to first ask a series of in-depth questions to clarify the context, which may include: Why do you need the requested product or technology? How does it fit into a complete system? What processes affect its performance? What alternatives have worked and/or failed? Gaining comprehensive insight may reveal that a more complete solution exists rather than one that simply fulfills the customer’s initial request.

2. Get the right parties together and on the same page

Open communication is vital to arriving at the best possible solution for customer-centric development challenges. Often, customers share their initial requests with marketing and sales contacts. It is important for these parties to facilitate collaboration between technical groups on both sides to ensure the proper handoff of information and encourage peer-to-peer communication, which adds richness to the relationship and helps to ensure the most relevant solutions.

Engineers from both organizations need to share detailed application information and explore technical challenges together as early in the design cycle as possible. Bringing people together who speak the same technical language encourages information sharing, brainstorming and efficiency, while enabling the parties to gain as in-depth an understanding of the project as possible.

3. Stay ahead of the curve

Technology developers have a greater chance of successfully meeting future customer requests when they proactively explore potential market opportunities and applications. As discussed earlier, one way to structure these proactive efforts is to set up a technology development track operating separately from but parallel to product development. Developing solutions for specific problems within emerging technologies in advance of customer demands ensures that developers can properly apply those solutions when needed to meet application requirements. In doing so, developers will be able to respond more quickly and effectively to customer needs.

4. Prototype early and often

Developing early prototypes even for individual components enables developers to test and refine parts before moving too far down the product development path. Techniques can include virtual prototyping and virtual design analysis. Developers should test concepts and engage in continuous feasibility studies throughout a project to determine the potential for success or failure. Then, as development proceeds, opportunities exist to make adjustments without requiring major overhauls. Such early prototypes are often less expensive than complete systems and can be made more rapidly, decreasing costs and shortening development time.

In collaboration with the customer, it is wise to test those parts that present the highest risk or biggest challenges first. In doing so, companies and their customers are better able to determine if any barriers are insurmountable and would necessitate putting the brakes on a project prior to substantive investments in time, energy or dollars. Even if a project does not meet its initial goals, it can still be considered a success. The collaborative process strengthens customer-developer relationships and gives each party a better idea of the other’s needs and capabilities, which can help facilitate the next project.

Technology Strategy for Product Innovation development framework based on their observations of top-performing businesses.

1. Define goals and objectives

Developing an innovation and technology strategy begins by setting and clearly articulating innovation goals. Importantly, these must tie into the broader business goals and also translate into specific and concrete objectives, e.g. in terms of expected sales or profits.

2. Select strategic arenas

Identifying, at a strategic level, the market opportunities to attack and profitably operate in, or the technologies which the business would focus its new product efforts on is central to a new strategy. Cooper and Edgett provide a set of dimensions and questions to help businesses select their areas of strategic thrust (or arenas) that provide new and profitable prospects.

3. Develop attack and entry strategies

The authors explain that a business may choose to attack its chosen strategic arenas as an industry innovator or a fast follower, a low-cost provider, differentiator or a niche player. These attack strategies guide the policies, activities and the businesses initiatives, and whatever is chosen should align with the business’s unique strengths and the knowledge of industry success drivers.

4. Resource commitments and deployment decisions

Determining strategic priorities and allocating resources to them is a key part of a technology strategy. This translates as effective portfolio selection and management that ensures projects and other initiatives are aligned with the business objectives and are balanced against one another.

5. Define a strategic roadmap

A roadmap helps senior management understand and communicate how they intend to achieve their innovation and technology strategy objectives. Using roadmaps, they are able to map out timings of their initiatives, including indications of where technology development or acquisition is necessary, as well as when product platforms would be crucial.

In order to stay successful in the face of maturing products, companies have to obtain new ones by a carefully executed new product development process. But they face a problem: although they must develop new products, the odds weigh heavily against success. Of thousands of products entering the process, only a handful reach the market. Therefore, it is of crucial importance to understand consumers, markets, and competitors in order to develop products that deliver superior value to customers. In other words, there is no way around a systematic, customer-driven new product development process for finding and growing new products. We will go into the eight major steps in the new product development process.

The New Product Development Process are

1. Idea Generation

The new product development process starts with idea generation. Idea generation refers to the systematic search for new-product ideas. Typically, a company generates hundreds of ideas, maybe even thousands, to find a handful of good ones in the end. Two sources of new ideas can be identified:

• Internal idea sources: The Company finds new ideas internally. That means R&D, but also contributions from employees.
• External idea sources: The Company finds new ideas externally. This refers to all kinds of external sources, e.g. distributors and suppliers, but also competitors. The most important external source are customers, because the new product development process should focus on creating customer value.

2. Idea Screening

The next step in the new product development process is idea screening. Idea screening means nothing else than filtering the ideas to pick out good ones. In other words, all ideas generated are screened to spot good ones and drop poor ones as soon as possible. While the purpose of idea generation was to create a large number of ideas, the purpose of the succeeding stages is to reduce that number. The reason is that product development costs rise greatly in later stages. Therefore, the company would like to go ahead only with those product ideas that will turn into profitable products. Dropping the poor ideas as soon as possible is, consequently, of crucial importance.

3. Concept Development and Testing

To go on in the new product development process, attractive ideas must be developed into a product concept. A product concept is a detailed version of the new-product idea stated in meaningful consumer terms. You should distinguish

• A product idea is an idea for a possible product
• A product concept is a detailed version of the idea stated in meaningful consumer terms
• A product image is the way consumers perceive an actual or potential product.

Let’s investigate the two parts of this stage in more detail.

Concept Development: Imagine a car manufacturer that has developed an all-electric car. The idea has passed the idea screening and must now be developed into a concept. The marketer’s task is to develop this new product into alternative product concepts. Then, the company can find out how attractive each concept is to customers and choose the best one. Possible product concepts for this electric car could be:

• Concept 1: An affordably priced mid-size car designed as a second family car to be used around town for visiting friends and doing shopping.
• Concept 2: A mid-priced sporty compact car appealing to young singles and couples.
• Concept 3: A high-end midsize utility vehicle appealing to those who like the space SUVs provide but also want an economical car.

As you can see, these concepts need to be quite precise in order to be meaningful. In the next sub-stage, each concept is tested.

Concept Testing: New product concepts, such as those given above, need to be tested with groups of target consumers. The concepts can be presented to consumers either symbolically or physically. The question is always: does the particular concept have strong consumer appeal? For some concept tests, a word or picture description might be sufficient. However, to increase the reliability of the test, a more concrete and physical presentation of the product concept may be needed. After exposing the concept to the group of target consumers, they will be asked to answer questions in order to find out the consumer appeal and customer value of each concept.

4. Marketing Strategy Development

The next step in the new product development process is the marketing strategy development. When a promising concept has been developed and tested, it is time to design an initial marketing strategy for the new product based on the product concept for introducing this new product to the market.

The marketing strategy statement consists of three parts and should be formulated carefully:

• A description of the target market, the planned value proposition, and the sales, market share and profit goals for the first few years
• An outline of the product’s planned price, distribution and marketing budget for the first year
• The planned long-term sales, profit goals and the marketing mix strategy.

5. Business Analysis

Once decided upon a product concept and marketing strategy, management can evaluate the business attractiveness of the proposed new product. The fifth step in the new product development process involves a review of the sales, costs and profit projections for the new product to find out whether these factors satisfy the company’s objectives. If they do, the product can be moved on to the product development stage.

In order to estimate sales, the company could look at the sales history of similar products and conduct market surveys. Then, it should be able to estimate minimum and maximum sales to assess the range of risk. When the sales forecast is prepared, the firm can estimate the expected costs and profits for a product, including marketing, R&D, operations etc. All the sales and costs figures together can eventually be used to analyses the new product’s financial attractiveness.

6. Product Development

The new product development process goes on with the actual product development. Up to this point, for many new product concepts, there may exist only a word description, a drawing or perhaps a rough prototype. But if the product concept passes the business test, it must be developed into a physical product to ensure that the product idea can be turned into a workable market offering. The problem is, though, that at this stage, R&D and engineering costs cause a huge jump in investment.

The R&D department will develop and test one or more physical versions of the product concept. Developing a successful prototype, however, can take days, weeks, months or even years, depending on the product and prototype methods.

Also, products often undergo tests to make sure they perform safely and effectively. This can be done by the firm itself or outsourced.

In many cases, marketers involve actual customers in product testing. Consumers can evaluate prototypes and work with pre-release products. Their experiences may be very useful in the product development stage.

7. Test Marketing

The last stage before commercialization in the new product development process is test marketing. In this stage of the new product development process, the product and its proposed marketing programme are tested in realistic market settings. Therefore, test marketing gives the marketer experience with marketing the product before going to the great expense of full introduction. In fact, it allows the company to test the product and its entire marketing programme, including targeting and positioning strategy, advertising, distributions, packaging etc. before the full investment is made.

The amount of test marketing necessary varies with each new product. Especially when introducing a new product requiring a large investment, when the risks are high, or when the firm is not sure of the product or its marketing programme, a lot of test marketing may be carried out.

8. Commercialization

Test marketing has given management the information needed to make the final decision: launch or do not launch the new product. The final stage in the new product development process is commercialization. Commercialization means nothing else than introducing a new product into the market. At this point, the highest costs are incurred: the company may need to build or rent a manufacturing facility. Large amounts may be spent on advertising, sales promotion and other marketing efforts in the first year.

Some factors should be considered before the product is commercialized:

• Introduction timing. For instance, if the economy is down, it might be wise to wait until the following year to launch the product. However, if competitors are ready to introduce their own products, the company should push to introduce the new product sooner.
• Introduction place. Where to launch the new product? Should it be launched in a single location, a region, the national market, or the international market? Normally, companies don’t have the confidence, capital and capacity to launch new products into full national or international distribution from the start. Instead, they usually develop a planned market rollout over time.

In all of these steps of the new product development process, the most important focus is on creating superior customer value. Only then, the product can become a success in the market. Only very few products actually get the chance to become a success. The risks and costs are simply too high to allow every product to pass every stage of the new product development process.

Production Packaging Innovations (PPI) is geared towards providing solutions for your packaging needs. Innovation is not just in our name, it’s in our nature. PPI focuses on meeting customer needs and offering solutions in efficient and affordable ways.

With roots stretching back 140 years, we know our trade inside and out. Our commitment to innovation is also apparent in our past, as during the 1950s we were Australia’s first to perform flexographic printing on poly bags.

Packaging Innovation in Consumer Trends

1. Smart Packaging

Customer-centric brand marketing holds the key to creating and sustaining long-lasting product value. There’s little arguing about what happens when companies know how to solve customers’ problems– they earn greater brand loyalty and broader market share. That’s why every consumer product goods (CPG) maker across every conceivable industry segment focuses on optimizing customer experiences, starting with product packaging. Digitization, experience seekers and a growing base of tech-savvy consumers who are willing to engage with companies on a digital level are driving this packaging innovation.

Also known as active packaging or intelligent packaging, smart packaging refers to solutions with two-level interaction for greater consumer engagement through the use of digital technologies.

Traditional product brands and startups both have the opportunity to take advantage of smart packaging for differentiated offerings, loyalty and rich streams of consumer data that can lead to entirely new business models. 

The ability to align brands more closely and constantly with consumer lifestyles, smart devices and the Internet of Things is transforming how customers choose and interact with consumer devices, consumer packaged goods (CPG), consumer healthcare products as well as food and beverages.    

Think about baby formula, for instance. In response to consumers’ need for safety and authenticity, baby formula producers are looking to smart labels, which can sense first opening and provide information to consumers and companies about authenticity, integrity and freshness. In this data exchange, consumers can use the product knowing that it is safe to do so, while the producers could track information such as the time between purchase and consumption, getting better insight into consumer behaviors.  

2. Sustainable Packaging

As discussions about the environmental impact we make as a society come into question, consumers are becoming more environmentally conscious, which require new packaging innovations. The adoption of sustainable packaging requires a holistic approach. Opportunities must be found to connect people, places and partnerships to make positive impacts on society and the environment while overcoming myriad challenges. Historically, plastics were based on non-renewal resources, so they didn’t convert or breakdown to basic molecules. The broad variations of resin types used also created numerous separation and recycling impediments. 

To overcome these barriers and drive sustainable packaging innovations, industry stakeholders must unite in advancing design improvements that increase the use of recyclable and compostable materials. Equally important is encouraging greater investment in reprocessing technologies that can forever change how plastic packaging is designed, made and re-used.

Organizations of all sizes can put circular economy principles to work and they can start by rethinking the design and development of products and packaging so they can be recycled or repurposed easily and affordably. 

A leader in specialty coffee and innovative, single-service brewing systems, Keurig Green Mountain (Keurig) is committed to delivering exceptional coffee as well as using the power of business to build resilient supply chains, sustainable products and thriving communities. To that end, the company has pledged to make 100 percent of its iconic K-Cup pods recyclable by 2020. 

3. E-Commerce Packaging

Consumers are increasingly willing to shop on alternative channels outside of the physical brick-and-mortar stores. Today it’s hard to remember the days before Amazon, Paypal and SSL encryption. The e-commerce phenomenon has ushered in an extreme shift in consumer experience over the past two decades. Although it started with easily shippable objects including books, CDs and DVDs, it is now possible to buy almost anything you can think of – from razors to Riesling – while sitting in front of a screen.

Brands and their packaging partners are in the midst of a significant transition away from a world where packages primarily sit on store shelves waiting to entice potential buyers to one where packages sit in warehouses awaiting a “ready to buy” webpage click. This requires a different type of packaging innovation to meet e-commerce needs. 

As a result, the brand and packaging professionals responsible for the final product must evolve their e-commerce packaging solutions to support the new retail reality. Adapting to a whole new world of e-commerce potentially means shipping considerations and device-to-consumer platforms designed to support repeat purchases to a wide variety of new technologies, innovations and bottling options.

When detergent pods were introduced into the market a few years prior, they took the industry by storm – entering a market with 100 percent penetration and increasing customer dissatisfaction levels. It was risky, but the right move to make for P&G. 

In 2016, the company trialed an online, direct-to-consumer, subscription business for its Tide Pods: Tide Wash Club. The model was to offer free shipping on Tide Pods and deliver them to the consumer at regular intervals. Since the formula of the product in the pods have significantly less water than the liquid form, they are lighter. The design also makes them less prone to breakage and leakage during shipping. 

4. Devicification

Devicification is the opportunity to create a physical packaging platform that interlocks with smart devices. The physical platform may have various benefits such as smart materials that extend shelf life. It could also utilize the Internet of Things (IoT) as a means of communicating with a mobile device or computer, with most of the intelligence built into a smart device.  

Devicification offers convenience that elevates the consumer experience. The capabilities of existing devices like coffee makers, paper towel dispensers and water filters can be amplified with connected solutions. 

Opportunities for packaging innovation can be driven by shifts in consumer behavior and interests, as well as other macro trends in the marketplace. But true innovation comes from the intersection of people (desirability + usability), technical feasibility and business viability.

Innovation vs New Product (NP)

Innovation drives New Product introduction into markets. Innovation represent a total package of features, forms and functions which marketing program converts into benefits for satisfying the needs and wants of the customer.

Continuous innovations represent minor modifications to existing products, whereas, discontinuous innovations help introduce new products that may change the market and consumer lifestyles and in some cases, rendering existing technologies obsolete.

New Product (NP)

Any product that users consider as a new addition to the current market offerings qualifies as a new product with newness implying change and absence of consumer experience.

Organizations need to replace existing products by NP’s to be competitive in the market. NP’s help in garnering higher margins and hence have a big role to play in growth and survival of an Organization.

New Product could be made available by:

• Reduction in Cost
• Product Improvements to improve form or function.
• Line Extensions which are copies of existing product with unique features.
• Market Extensions which are original products positioned differently in new markets.
• New Category products which are new to the company but not new to the customers.
• New-to-the world products which are technological innovations that create new market that did not exist earlier.

New Product Development (NPD) Process Involves

• Idea generation
• Idea screening
• Concept development and testing
• Marketing strategy development
• Business Analysis
• Product development
• Market testing
• Commercialization

The seeds of failure are sown at the initial stages of development. Using a stage gate method, the NPD process could be developed to reduce failures. Faster feedback and prompt corrective actions could improve success rate.

An NP is declared a failure When

1. It is withdrawn from the market for any reason.
2. The required market share in a desired time period is not realized.
3. The anticipated life cycle as defined by the organization is not achieved.
4. The desired profitability is not realized.

Why New Products Fail?

Reasons could be any one or more than one of the following:

• The product was not new to the customer /market.
• The product offered no tangible benefit.
• The product was not positioned properly.
• Poor support from channel partners.
• High forecast variance.
• Strong competitors’ response.
• Change in customers preferences Environmental constraints.
• Poor after sales service.
• Inadequate return on investment
• Lack of coordination among various departments
• Poor diffusion of innovation
• Conflict of personalities at higher echelons.
• NP not meeting the claims made or creating a new category product necessitating customer education.
• Lack of product distinctiveness.
• High research and/or product development costs and ignoring marketing research findings.
• Consumers not being informed of the applications, and new technologies not addressing market opportunity correctly.

Examples of New Product Failures

Global Products

• Ford Edsel
• Betamax
• Laser Disc

Indian Products

• Tata Nano (Failures due to wrong positioning)
• Tata Estate (Failures due to wrong positioning)
• Bajaj Geared Scooter (Failures due to new technology)
• 2- Stroke Bikes (Failures due to new technology)

1. Profit Model: How you make money

Innovative profit models find a fresh way to convert a firm’s offerings and other sources of value into cash. Great ones reflect a deep understanding of what customers and users actually cherish and where new revenue or pricing opportunities might lie.

Innovative profit models often challenge an industry’s tired old assumptions about what to offer, what to charge, or how to collect revenues. This is a big part of their power: in most industries, the dominant profit model often goes unquestioned for decades.

Recent examples:

• Fortnite: Pay to customise: This Free-to-Play video game by Epic Game Studios is currently one of the most popular and profitable games in the world. Unlike other “freemium” games which incentivise people to spend money to speed up progression, Fortnite is completely free to progress and people only need pay if they want to unlock cosmetic items which don’t affect gameplay but act to personalise their characters.
• Deloitte: Value sharing: Professional Services firm Deloitte is the world’s largest Management Consulting firm and still growing. They noticed a desire from their clients for assurance that the advice they were being given and transformation projects which Deloitte was running would actually succeed. As a result, Deloitte has begun trialling projects where instead of their fee being based just on Time and Materials, they will also share in value delivery, where additional bonus payments are only activated if previously-agreed performance metrics are successfully met.
• Supreme: Limiting supply: While most companies want to get their products in to the hands of as many people as possible, Supreme has built a cult following through deliberately forcing scarcity of its products. The streetwear clothing retailer announces limited items which will only be available from a specific day when they “drop”, and once they are sold out, that’s it, unless you want to pay huge markups for a second-hand item on eBay. Their red box logo is now so collectible and desirable that the company is able to sell almost anything by putting the logo on it for a limited time only. Case in point: you can find official Supreme Bricks (yes, like the ones used to build houses) which are still selling on eBay for $500.

2. Network: How you connect with others to create value

In today’s hyper-connected world, no company can or should do everything alone. Network innovations provide a way for firms to take advantage of other companies’ processes, technologies, offerings, channels, and brands—pretty much any and every component of a business.

These innovations mean a firm can capitalize on its own strengths while harnessing the capabilities and assets of others. Network innovations also help executives to share risk in developing new offers and ventures. These collaborations can be brief or enduring, and they can be formed between close allies or even staunch competitors.

Recent Examples:

• Ford & Volkswagen: Developing Self-driving cars: As two of the world’s largest car-makers, Ford and Volkswagen are competitors on the road. However, in 2019 they announced a partnership to work together to develop technology for self-driving cars and electric vehicles which would be used in both company’s fleets of the future. While Ford brings more advanced automated driving technology, Volkswagen was leading in electric vehicles. Through the combined venture called ARGO, both firms can spread their R&D spending across more cars, while both developing competing products.
• Microsoft: Launching on competitors platforms: Since new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has taken over, he has changed the innovation ethos of the company. Whereas previously Microsoft was a product-first company who tried to eliminate competing products and customers should stay within the company’s ecosystem, Nadella has shifted the mindset to a service company where their products should be accessible to customers should be able to access the products in whichever way they prefer. As a result, products such as Office 365 are now available in any web browser, as well as on the mobile marketplaces of Google’s Android and Apple’s IOS, previously seen as competitors.
• Huawei: Leveraging celebrity endorsement: Until recently, “high-quality smartphone” made people think of companies like Apple (USA), Samsung and LG (South Korea). Brands from China were often seen as competing on price but suffering from lower build quality and a lack of innovation. So in order to raise their profile in Western markets, Huawei has invested heavily in celebrities to endorse their flagship phones, such as Scarlett Johanssen, Lionel Messi, Henry Cavill and Gal Gadot. This initial investment raised brand name recognition, to the stage where it is now focusing marketing more towards features and functionality.

3. Structure: How you organize and align your talent and assets

Structure innovations are focused on organizing company assets hard, human, or intangible in unique ways that create value. They can include everything from superior talent management systems to ingenious configurations of heavy capital equipment.

An enterprise’s fixed costs and corporate functions can also be improved through Structure innovations, including departments such as Human Resources, R&D, and IT. Ideally, such innovations also help attract talent to the organization by creating supremely productive working environments or fostering a level of performance that competitors can’t match.

Recent Examples:

• Perpetual Guardian: Four-day working week: This small financial advisory firm in New Zealand trialed moving to a four-day working week, giving their staff an additional free day each week as long as they got their outputs done. As a result, they found people adjusted their working rhythm to achieve the same outcomes in 20% less time, while also resulting in more satisfied employees.
• Netflix: Unlimited Vacations: In order to drive their breakneck growth, Netflix reviewed their formal HR policies to see what processes were getting in the way of people doing their best work. They discovered that most bureaucratic processes which slowed down high performing individuals were in place to only handle situations where a low-performance individual would do something wrong. As a result, they scrapped most formal HR policies to free people to work in their own ways to benefit the company, summarised in their “Freedom and Responsibility” culture document, including allowing staff to take as many vacation days as they felt they needed to produce their best work.
• WeWork: Leveraging other companies’ hard assets: WeWork’s business model revolves around providing affordable office rentals for entrepreneurs and companies, fitting a lot of tenants into the same space by offering co-working areas. In order to rapidly deploy new working spaces and attract customers, WeWork started using a system called rental arbitrage, where they would rent commercial space, create a ready-to-use coworking setup, and then rent this space to customers. By not having to spend CAPEX on purchasing the buildings themselves, they were able to rapidly expand with lower overhead.

4. Process: How you use signature or superior methods to do your work

Process innovations involve the activities and operations that produce an enterprise’s primary offerings. Innovating here requires a dramatic change from “business as usual” that enables the company to use unique capabilities, function efficiently, adapt quickly, and build market–leading margins.

Process innovations often form the core competency of an enterprise, and may include patented or proprietary approaches that yield advantage for years or even decades. Ideally, they are the “special sauce” you use that competitors simply can’t replicate.

Recent Examples:

• Tesla: Vertically integrated supply chain: Tesla’s electric cars require huge packs of EV batteries, made of thousands of lithium-ion cells. Until recently, the lack of demand for electric vehicles meant that companies had not invested in battery technology development, resulting in prices remaining high and making the cost of cars prohibitively more expensive than their gasoline counterparts. Tesla invested in a massive gigafactory to produce the newest battery packs themselves, and the economies of scale, as well as not paying markups to manufacturers, are estimated to save them 30% of the cost of the batteries.
• Amazon Web Services – opening internal technology to third parties: When Amazon Web Services initially launched in 2006, it effectively launched the cloud computing market, allowing external companies to not just host webpages but run code and calculations at a fraction of the cost of building their own server network. Since then, Amazon has continued to develop new technology it would use for its own services, such as artificial intelligence, image recognition, machine learning, and natural-language processing, and later make this technology available to their customers.
• AliExpress – Making everyone a Shop Owner: AliExpress is one of the world’s largest eCommerce sites, and serves as a commercial storefront for thousands of Chinese companies, allowing you to purchase everything to phone cases to forklifts. However, AliExpress also allows the platform to handle purchases as listed on external storefronts using a system called drop-shipping, where anyone can set up their own store, sell someone else’s products (but to customers it looks like they are coming from the seller) and then have those manufacturers send the product directly to the customer.

5. Product Performance: How you develop distinguishing features and functionality

Product Performance innovations address the value, features, and quality of a company’s offering. This type of innovation involves both entirely new products as well as updates and line extensions that add substantial value. Too often, people mistake Product Performance for the sum of innovation. It’s certainly important, but it’s always worth remembering that it is only one of the Ten Types of Innovation, and it’s often the easiest for competitors to copy.

Think about any product or feature war you’ve witnessed—whether torque and toughness in trucks, toothbrushes that are easier to hold and use, even with baby strollers. Too quickly, it all devolves into an expensive mad dash to parity. Product Performance innovations that deliver long-term competitive advantage are the exception rather than the rule.

Recent Examples:

• Gorilla Glass: Changing chemistry to improve smartphone durability: Gorilla Glass by Corning was listed as one of the original Ten Types by becoming scratch resistant. I have included it again for how it has changed the properties of its glass based on customer feedback each year. In 2016, version 5 of the glass was designed to resist shattering when dropped from 5+ feet, dubbed “selfie height” drops. However, after discussing what properties their customers wanted, by 2018 version 6 was no longer trying to resist shattering when dropped from a height once, instead the chemistry and manufacturing process had been changed to make it resistant to cracking after 15 drops from a lower height (1 meter, or a “fumble drop from your pocket”). I love this example of innovation as the product performance doesn’t just try to become “better” by resisting one drop from a higher height than last year, instead figuring out what really matters to customers and delivering that.
• Raspberry Pi – full PC for $35: The original Rasperbby Pi was developed by a UK charity to make a simple yet expandable computer which was affordable enough for everyone. Their credit-card sized PC may look bare-bones (it comes without a case and is effectively an exposed circuit board), yet it contains everything which someone needs to run a Linux operating system, learn to program and even connect it with external sensors and peripherals to make all manner of machines. The latest version 4 is now powerful enough to serve as a dedicated PC, all for a price so low you can give it to a child to tinker with without fear of it being broken.
• Lush Cosmetics – Removing what people don’t want anymore: As people become more aware of their impact on the environment, customers are demanding that customers do more to reduce the amount of plastic packaging their products use which could end up in landfill or the ocean. Lush Cosmetics was an early pioneer in bringing packaging-free cosmetics to scale, offering some of their packaging-free products like shampoo bars and soaps in dedicated packaging-free stores.

6. Channel: How you deliver your offerings to customers and users

Channel innovations encompass all the ways that you connect your company’s offerings with your customers and users. While e-commerce has emerged as a dominant force in recent years, traditional channels such as physical stores are still important — particularly when it comes to creating immersive experiences.

Skilled innovators in this type often find multiple but complementary ways to bring their products and services to customers. Their goal is to ensure that users can buy what they want, when and how they want it, with minimal friction and cost and maximum delight.

Recent Examples:

• Dollar Shave Club: Direct to your door: Razor Blades have always been high-margin products, and Gillette was one of the original innovators by giving away the razor handle to make money on the subsequent razor blade sales. Dollar Shave Club has taken a different approach, by reducing the cost of each set of blades, but having people join a subscription service where blades are delivered to them automatically. While the margin on each set of blades is lower than retail, the subscription model has provided steady, predictable revenue for the company, to the extend that subscription boxes can now be found for almost any consumable product.
• Zipline: Blood Delivery for remote areas: In hospital settings, getting fresh blood can a matter of life and death. Unfortunately, many Sub-Sharan African countries don’t have road infrastructure suitable for quickly delivering blood between hospitals or storage locations. This is why Zipline has developed a simple, reliable drone network where hospitals in Rwanda and Ghana can order fresh blood from a central processing area and receive it within an average of 15 minutes, rather than the hours or days it would take using conventional transportation.
• 3D Printers: produce whatever you need at home: Instead of a single company, the industry of 3D printers is slowly beginning to change the way in which consumers get simple tools and parts. By downloading schematics from the internet (or designing their own), people owning a 3D printer now no longer to go to a retail location or order the parts they need. In commercial settings, this is also speeding up how quickly companies are able to prototype new ideas and designs, waiting hours rather than days or weeks.

7. Brand: How you represent your offerings and business

Brand innovations help to ensure that customers and users recognize, remember, and prefer your offerings to those of competitors or substitutes. Great ones distill a “promise” that attracts buyers and conveys a distinct identity.

They are typically the result of carefully crafted strategies that are implemented across many touchpoints between your company and your customers, including communications, advertising, service interactions, channel environments, and employee and business partner conduct. Brand innovations can transform commodities into prized products, and confer meaning, intent, and value to your offerings and your enterprise.

Recent Examples:

• Gillette / Nike: being willing to lose customers who don’t align with purpose: I have combined both Gillette and Nike into this example of brand innovation since they have both recently aligned their brands to a purpose (social and political), which has been positively welcomed by some people but has resulted in hatred from other groups. Nike began by making former NFL Quarterback Colin Kaepernick the face and voice of one of their advertising campaigns. Kaepernick rose in prominence when he refused to stand during the national anthem before his games, his way of protesting the police brutality and inequality towards his African American community. This led to some people claiming he was disrespecting the American Flag, and therefore what the flag stands for. When his advert launched, a vocal minority took to social media to upload videos of themselves saying that Nike no longer aligned with their values, and they burned their shoes, vowing to never buy Nike again. Similarily, Gillette came out with a commercial urging all men to be “The best a man can be”, by pushing aside previously ‘masculine’ traits like bullying, chauvinism or fighting, and showing children how a modern man should behave. As soon as the ad was released online, many media outlets praised its message, but it brought the wrath of angry men who claimed that the razor manufacturer shouldn’t tell them what to think or how to behave, how they would never buy the products again, and how the world was becoming too politically correct, with women and minorities getting preferential treatment over white men. The advert quickly became one of the most disliked videos on Youtube, and even my commentary about the innovative message (seen in the video below) had the comments section covered by hate-filled messages. What both Nike and Gillette realised was that if they wanted to align with positive, progressive messages and values (which align with their target demographic of the future), then they would risk upsetting and alienating the proportion of their current customer base who didn’t share those views. In both cases, these were decisions that would have been signed off by all levels in the company, through marketing, sales, legal and the board, and the brands will be stronger in the future because of it.
• Burberry – modernising a classic brand: Burberry had built its luxury fashion reputation by aligning itself with the British Aristocracy, and its famous chequer patterned fabric was iconic. However, when trying to modernise and make the brand “sexy” in the early 2000s, a misstep happened when the luxury house began to license the chequered fabric, resulting in it becoming a status symbol and desired motif for a different social group: the British “Chavs” (rough, lower class and sometimes aggressive). This poisoned the once iconic brand in the eyes of their intended luxury clientele. In order to survive, the company and brand embraced innovation, by becoming one of the first fashion houses to redesign their website to be mobile-optimised, aligning their store layout to mirror the website, highlighting young British talent and livestreaming content and fashion shows. Most importantly, they moved away from the iconic chequer pattern in their fashion designs, where it is now limited to less than 10% of products.

10. Customer Engagement: How you foster compelling interactions

Customer Engagement innovations are all about understanding the deep-seated aspirations of customers and users, and using those insights to develop meaningful connections between them and your company.

Great Customer Engagement innovations provide broad avenues for exploration and help people find ways to make parts of their lives more memorable, fulfilling, delightful even magical.

Recent Examples:

• REI: closing their stores on the busiest shopping day: Outdoor equipment retailer REI had begun closing its doors on Black Friday, traditionally one of the busiest shopping days of the year. They claim they are doing this to Eddie their customers to actually get outdoors and use their equipment, rather than queuing for discounted material goods.
• Peloton: bringing the gym into the home: Many people benefit from going to joint gym classes because the sense of a group working toward is goals together with a coach is more powerful than trying to exercise by yourself. Peloton makes exercise equipment with built-in screens, powered by a subscription to live and on-demand classes. It’s like being part of a workout group with the benefits of being at home.
• NBA – bringing the fans into the action: The NBA had invested heavily in innovation to make their sport more immersive. From live analytics and player statistics, new ways to watch like VR video, and official video game players for each team, they are finding new ways to bring basketball to the next generation, while making it even more exciting for existing fans.

A process innovation is the implementation of a new or significantly improved production or delivery method. This includes significant changes in techniques, equipment and/or software.

Process innovation is the application or introduction of a new technology or method for doing something that helps an organization remain competitive and meet customer demands.

Process innovation happens when an organization solves an existing problem or performs an existing business process in a radically different way that generates something highly beneficial to those who perform the process, those who rely on the process or both. For example, the introduction of a completely new sequence to an existing production process that speeds production by 100%, thereby saving the organization money and time, could be considered a process innovation. Organizations today often bring in new information technology systems or find ways to use older in new ways at the forefront of their process innovation efforts.

Process innovation is different from incremental innovation in both scope and size. Whereas incremental or continuous improvements generate limited value, innovation generates improvements that increase value by upward of 50%, 100% or even more. Some describe process innovation as creating radical or game-changing shifts. In addition to the introduction of a radically new approach or technology, process innovation generally requires a longer planning time and support from high-level management. It’s also riskier than incremental improvements and requires a higher level of cultural and structural change. Process innovation also typically impacts a broader portion of an organization than do incremental improvements.

Process innovation can generate value to either internal customers, including employees or the actual organization itself, or it can create value to external customers, including business partners, end users or actual consumers. Values stemming from process innovation include reducing the time it takes to produce a product or perform a service; increasing the number of products produced or services provided within a time frame; and reducing the costs per product produced or service provided. Additionally, process innovation can generate significant gains in product quality and service levels. Overall, an individual organization needs to see a significant increase in some of its key performance indicators (KPIs) to be a true process innovation.

Process innovation is probably the least sexy form of innovation. Process is the combination of facilities, skills, and technologies used to produce, deliver, and support a product or provide a service. Within these broad categories, there are countless ways process can improve.

Process innovation can include changes in the equipment and technology used in manufacturing (including the software used in product design and development), improvement in the tools, techniques, and software solutions used to help in supply chain and delivery system, changes in the tools used to sell and maintain your good, as well as methods used for accounting and customer service.

While product innovation is often visible to your customers, a change in process is typically only seen and valued internally. Speaking generally, changes in process reduce costs of production more often than they drive an increase in revenue. Of the three types of innovation, process is typically the lowest-risk.

Examples:

• One of the most famous and groundbreaking examples of process innovation is Henry Ford’s invention of the world’s first moving assembly line. This process change not only simplified vehicle assembly but shortened the time necessary to produce a single vehicle from 12 hours to 90 minutes.
• Recently, Differential built a mobile sales dashboard for Grupo Bimbo. The baking company has 65 manufacturing plants and 2.5 million sales centers located in 22 countries, across 3 continents. As a result, the executive team members travel a lot, meeting with their direct reports around the world. Having a mobile sales dashboard gives the team quick access to the sales information and other KPI’s for each country, channel, and brand, cutting out guesswork in sales decisions, and reducing meeting time.

Process Innovation Stages

One of the most cited examples of process innovation stages goes back to the beginning of the auto industry. The period when Henry Ford created the production line.

Another well-known example is Dell, in which computers are assembled according to customer specifications, practically tailored to meet their needs.

But how do you come up with this type of idea capable of innovating processes so radically and successfully?

Some methodologies define certain steps for process innovation, but, in essence, are not very different from the steps used in other types of innovation, such as: the identification of opportunities; understanding opportunities; the exchange of ideas; innovation; selecting the best ideas and the development of innovation.

This sequence of process innovation stages sounds bureaucratic and stifled.

Therefore, for the effective use and implementation of process innovation stages, we suggest the use of approaches such as design thinking and disruptive methodologies, which we will summarize below.

Using Design Thinking in process innovation

Basically innovation based on the methodology of Design Thinking has 4 stages:

1. Inventing the future

This consists of analyzing the situation and finding something that people need, but which they don’t yet have.

Thus, in cases of process innovation, the focus can be on both a benefit for internal and external customers.

For example, if in a law office lawyers dream of getting feedback from fellow experts in areas that don’t currently operate quickly, even a simple solution like adopting Slack in the company can be an innovation in the process of internal communication.

2. Develop a prototype

In our example, a group of lawyers could be chosen and some channels created in Slack by area of ​​activity.

3. Test

With everything formatted as discussed above, there must be a testing period. This allows you to collect feedback from users and adapt the solution to their real needs.

4. Implement

After defining the new process’s attributes, you can replicate it in the entire enterprise with much more security and assertiveness.

Management is a process which brings the scarce human and material resources together and motivates people for the achievement of objectives of the organization. Management is not a onetime act but an on-going series of interrelated activities. The sum total of these activities is known as management process. It consists of a set of interrelated operations or functions necessary to achieve desired organizational goals. A process is a systematic way of doing things. It is concerned with conversion of inputs into outputs. An analysis of management process will enable us to know the functions which managers perform.

Features of Management Process

Management process is characterized by the following features:

1. Social Process

The entire management process is regarded as a social process as the success of all organizational efforts depends upon the willing co-operation of people. Managers guide, direct, influence and control the actions of others to achieve stated goals. Even people outside the organization are influenced by the actions of managers.

2. Continuous Process

The process of management is on-going and continuous. Managers continuously take up one or the other function. Management cycle is repeated over and over again, each managerial function is viewed as a sub-process of total management process.

3. Universal

Management functions are universal in the sense that a manager has to perform them irrespective of the size and nature of the organization. Each manager performs the same functions regardless of his rank or position in the organization. Even in a non-business organization managerial functions are the same.

4. Iterative

Managerial functions are contained within each other the performance of the next function does not start only when the earlier function is finished. Various functions are taken together. For example, planning, organizing, directing and controlling may occur within staffing function. Similarly, organizing may require planning, directing and controlling. So all functions can be thought of as sub-functions of each other.

5. Composite

All managerial functions are composite and integrated. There cannot be any sequence which can be strictly followed for performing various functions. The sequential concept may be true in a newly started business where functions may follow a particular sequence but the same will not apply to a going concern. Any function may be taken up first or many functions may be taken up at the same time.

4 Functions of Management Process

1. Planning and Decision Making: Determining Courses of Action

Looking ahead into the future and predict possible trends or occurrences which are likely to influence the working situation is the most vital quality as well as the job of a manager.

Planning means setting an organization’s goal and deciding how best to achieve them. Planning is decision making, regarding the goals and setting the future course of action from a set of alternatives to reach them.

The plan helps to maintain managerial effectiveness as it works as a guide for the personnel for future activities. Selecting goals as well as the paths to achieve them is what planning involves.

Planning involves selecting missions and objectives and the actions to achieve them, it requires decision-making or choosing future courses of action from among alternatives.

In short, planning means determining what the organization’s position and the situation should be in the future, and decide how best to bring about that situation.

Planning helps maintain managerial effectiveness by guiding future activities.

For a manager, planning and decision-making require an ability to foresee, to visualize, and to look ahead purposefully.

2. Organizing: Coordinating Activities and Resources

Organizing can be defined as the process by which the established plans are moved closer to realization.

Once a manager set goals and develops plans, his next managerial function is organizing human resource and other resources that are identified as necessary by the plan to reach the goal.

Organizing involves determining how activities and resources are to be assembled and coordinated.

The organization can also be defined as an intentionally formalized structure of positions or roles for people to fill in an organization.

Organizing produces a structure of relationships in an organization and it is through these structured relationships that plans are pursued.

Organizing, then, is that part of managing which involves: establishing an intentional structure of roles for people to fill in the organization.

It is intentional in the sense of making sure that all the tasks necessary to accomplish goals are assigned to people who can do the best.

The purpose of an organization structure is to create an environment for the best human performance.

The structure must define the task to be done. The rules so established must also be designed in light of the abilities and motivations of the people available.

Staffing is related to organizing and it involves filling and keeping filled, the positions in the organization structure.

This can be done by determining the positions to be filled, identifying the requirement of manpower, filling the vacancies and training employees so that the assigned tasks are accomplished effectively and efficiently.

The managerial functions of promotion, demotion, discharge, dismissal, transfer, etc.  Are also included with the broad task “staffing.” staffing ensures the placement of the right person in the right position.

Organizing is deciding where decisions will be made, who will do what jobs and tasks, who will work for whom, and how resources will assemble.

3. Leading: Managing, Motivating and Directing People

The third basic managerial function is leading it is the skills of influencing people for a particular purpose or reason. Leading is considered to be the most important and challenging of all managerial activities.

Leading is influencing or prompting the member of the organization to work together with the interest of the organization.

Creating a positive attitude towards the work and goals among the members of the organization is called leading. It is required as it helps to serve the objective of effectiveness and efficiency by changing the behavior of the employees.

Leading involves several deferment processes and activates.

The functions of direction, motivation, communication, and coordination are considered a part of the leading processor system.

Coordinating is also essential in leading.

Most authors do not consider it a separate function of management.

Rather they regard coordinating as the essence of managership for achieving harmony among individual efforts towards accomplishing group targets.

Motivating is an essential quality for leading. Motivating is the function of the management process of influencing people’s behavior based on the knowledge of what cause and channel sustain human behavior in a particular committed direction.

Efficient managers need to be effective leaders.

Since leadership implies fellowship and people tend to follow those who offer a means of satisfying their own needs, hopes and aspirations, understandably, leading involves motivation leadership styles and approaches and communication.

4. Controlling: Monitoring and Evaluating Activities

Monitoring the organizational progress toward goal fulfillment is called controlling. Monitoring progress is essential to ensure the achievement of organizational goals.

Controlling is measuring, comparing, finding deviation and correcting the organizational activities which are performed for achieving the goals or objectives. Controlling consists of activities, like; measuring the performance, comparing with the existing standard and finding the deviations, and correcting the deviations.

Control activities generally relate to the measurement of achievement or results of actions that were taken to attain the goal.

Some means of controlling, like the budget for expenses, inspection records, and the record of labor hours lost, are generally familiar. Each measure also shows whether plans are working out.

If deviations persist, correction is indicated. Whenever results are found to differ from the planned action, persons responsible are to be identified and necessary actions are to be taken to improve performance.

Thus outcomes are controlled by controlling what people do. Controlling is the last but not the least important management function process.