Whirlpool’s Innovation Unit 6 Anontated Biblography

Unit 6 Annontated Biblography

Courtney Thompson

Herzing University

Whirlpool’s Innovation

Whirlpool has been around for over 100 years and has approximately 70,000 employees. The article goes into detail of the ascending form of Whirlpool’s innovation process to provide insight on how the company remains relevant throughout all the technological advances over time. This company approach to innovation is great to learn from. Whirlpool goal was to enter into the 21st century in a stronger position. This company allowed everyone to be a part of the innovation process and looks at innovation as a continuous flow of new ideas. They developed an innovation flow that includes five steps. The steps are idea generation, basic business case formation, competition for development of the idea, testing, and experimentation of the idea and large scale commercialization, and with each step Whirlpools expects a survival rate of 10 to 1. This company is so open to innovative ideas that they constructed an online forum to track ideas. They also conduct ideation sessions in which participants must bring discoveries from a number of resources. A few resources include consumers insights, competitive information, and technology developments. These Ideation sessions are purposely generated by a diverse group. The diversion of the group expands from job types, seniority in the job, as well as general characteristics.  

The company identifies three weaknesses or disadvantages in their companies innovation process. The three weaknesses are core versus not, simplicity versus sophistication and but I’m a special case. Core Versus not challenge is the idea that the company would like for more innovations to come externally however, the majority of the innovations are coming from their core business.  The company is aware of this allows them to be proactive of the issue. The company gives each region a yearly target of a certain percentage of growth from noncore businesses. To always maintain flexibility in resourcing unexpected innovation they hold a certain amount of capital funds centrally each year. Secondly, the executive committee is monitoring and reviewing monthly prospects from each business segment monthly.  The simplicity versus sophistication challenge is the idea that oversimplifying the process leads to less visibility and weaker ideas. Whirlpool set in place a 70/30 split to be proactive about this weakness. They require seventy percent of innovation mechanisms to be globally standardized as thirty percent can vary overtime throughout the region.  The last recognizable weakness is but I’m a special case. This is the idea that general support of an idea or innovation begins to fold once it becomes personally inconvenient. The way to prevent this is by requiring no project to skip the flow process in which that was already established,  as well as making any new innovation process as easy to learn as possible to prevent individuals from shutting down.

This resources could be used for the final project as it provides many great ideas of how to successfully apply innovation to business. It not only provides me with strategic planning ideas that I could apply to a company but also daily life. The most meaningful thing I take away is that the company practices accountability 100% being self-aware that they aren’t perfect and understanding their weakness and triggers and proactively working to prevent letting weakness stunt their business growth. I think it is an exceptional idea to implement a process in which any innovation must go through no matter how easy it may seem to prevent the opportunity of identifying unforeseen challenges within the innovation.

General Electric

This article was to provide a deeper insight into the innovation strategy of General Electricit’s an evolution over the years. The research in this article was achieved through a systematic analysis of the industry’s literature. Qualitative and quantitative approaches were used in the analysis of the research of General Electric. Charles Coffin was General Electric chief executive and led the company from 1892 to 1922. The foundation for the company’s strategy of innovation was based on research. All of General Electric products were launched in the United States and then expanded onto global markets.

The article shows that General Electric strategy hasn’t changed much over time. The disadvantages of this article study were that data was retrieved through secondary sources and some data may be a little bit off. Overall, the content in the article is beneficial in academic and industry contexts.

This article would use to help closely look and compare and contrast how an industry innovation strategy can evolve. It sheds light the outcome of remaining consistent with an innovative approach and how it can help or hinder an industry. It also helps understand that each industry needs a different type of innovation approach but regardless of how the innovation approach takes places they all require some strategic planning even if it is repetitive within the company.

Amazon

The article discusses Amazon’s genius innovative tactics and how it remains a successful business. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, uses a customer focus approach when it comes to innovations. Amazon reinvests into existing profits instead of paying dividends to shareholders. Amazon isn’t afraid of investing in new markets and it has been successful so far as the customer experience reigns as amazing. When investing in the customer’s experience Amazon considers everything from processes to products, in which many consider it too risky but thankfully it’s fearless approach has made the company undefeated. CEO expresses that Amazon success is also from sticking to a plan as well as maintaining small teams. Amazon applies a “two pizza “ rule when designing innovative teams. The two pizza rule is that a team is too large if they cannot be fed two pizzas. They also provide their teams with resources to help them exceed in ownership and move quickly.