Dilemmas Of Innovative Programme Essay Examples

Many companies neglect their present and past performances as they put more focus on innovating new ways of doing their businesses. They pay more attention to the success of the company in the future fearing that they may lag behind given the rapid changes in their areas of operation. These innovative way lead to inertia as the company fails to follow a consistent trend for growth. Such companies fail to follow the three horizon of business growth (Hamel & Prahalad, 1994, p.24). According to 3 horizon model, a business should grow in all three horizons, namely core business horizon, emerging opportunities horizon and profitable growth horizon over the years. However, many companies may focus only one or two type of horizons and forget the other. For example, a business may only look at the emerging opportunities horizon in line with the innovative programmes and forget about the other two types of horizons. A bank may concentrate so much and invest in embracing ICT in its operations and services in order to gain competitive edge in the market and to adapt to the changes in the banking sector. At the same time, the bank may forget the other two types of growth (core business growth and consistent growth) due to much attention on one horizon only. This will lead to imbalanced growth and inertia in the long run as the bank neglect some its core areas and past businesses. For successful, a company ought to growth in all the three horizons, namely defend and extend the core businesses, build the emerging businesses and create viable options for the future. The successful growth can be well-illustrated by the following diagram.

Growth

Time
Many managers experiences difficulties in achieving all the three horizons simultaneously. Horizon one is not very challenging to many companies since it involves coming up with innovations that will improve their current operations (Dess & Lumpkin, 2003, p.15). Many managers are able to come up with strategies that will unlock their remaining potential. However, horizon 2 is one of the most difficult to manage. This is because it is very similar with the current products and services that the company is offering. Many managers are tempted to use similar metrics to measure their success (Stacey, 2010, p.10). They ought to be very cautious to draw a line between the horizon 1 and the efforts of horizon 2. Otherwise, managers will be making a wrong judgment concerning the performance of the business. Horizon 3 mainly focuses on the future growth of the business. Unfortunately, they are associated with a lot of uncertainties and companies may not be very sure whether investing a lot of resources to the future plan will be rewarding. If companies fail to invest for the future, they may be driven out of the market due to the unknown events (Johnson, Scholes, & Whittington, 2011, p.6). On the other hand, failure to invest for the future may turn out to be very costly for the companies in the future due to changes in the market.
The organization may face the challenge of maintaining status quo especially at the service provision level (Campell, Stonehouse & Houston, 2002, p.25). Innovative programme may require a company to change the way it has been doing things for the past years in order to do them in a better way. However, this may not be easy since many companies would like to maintain their status quo.

References

Campell, D., Stonehouse, G. and Houston, B, 2002. Business Strategy: An Introduction. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann.
Dess, G. G., Lumpkin, G. T., 2003. Strategic Management: Creating Competitive Advantages. Boston, Mass: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Hamel, G. and Prahalad, C. K., 1994. Competing for the future. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press.
Johnson, G., Scholes, K. and Whittington, R., 2011. Exploring Corporate Strategy. 9th Edition. Harlow, England: Financial Times Prentice Hall.
Stacey, R. D., 2010. Strategic Management and Organizational Dynamics: The Challenge of Complexity. 6th Edition. Harlow: Financial Times Prentice Hall.