CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE MANAGEMENT

Creative and Innovative Management in Sony Company, 2011

AUTHOUR: BISNU KUMAR CHONGBANG, DHANKUTA NEPAL, NOW IN LONDON

1. Introduction
This work is based on the study of importance of creative and innovative process in organization, Sony Company, a global manufacturer of video, audio and information technology products and so one of the best innovative companies in the world. Sony is constantly working to create exciting new digital worlds of entertainment by innovating new products of customers touch. So role of vision and mission of Sony on innovation process will be assessed. Yet more it discusses change models to support the implementation of innovation. Likewise the key priorities and goals set for organization will be discussed. Finally this study assesses the barriers for managing innovative ideas, and strategy to overcome the barriers to make sure that the innovative change is achieved in the organization.

1.1 Current creative and innovative process in Sony Company

Innovation is a core business discipline and process vital to the growth and success of business and organization in the 21st century. As OECD (2011) defines innovation as the implementation of significantly improved or new product (good or service), or process, a new organizational method or new marketing method in business practices, external relation or workplace organization. Some of the latest innovations are such as I-phone 4 of Apple, Internet TV of Sony, and Pentium-4 of Intel etc. Innovation process is a conceptual and operational roadmap for moving a new product project from idea to launch. One of the best theoretical frameworks of
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innovation process is Stage gate model and the innovation process of Sony Corporation is observed with this model here as under:

Concept- idea generation

Innovation process begins with conceptualization and generation of ideas that may be of improved or new in their nature. In this stage the generated ideas are screened on the basis of their strategic fitness, impact on organization, market need and chance of technical success so that the chosen for exploration has worth in the market. In the context of Sony, ideas come from various corner of organization such as most importantly DE (distinguished engineer) community, R&D department, DD (design divisions) of Sony groups, SCCC (Sony corporation creative centre), IGD (interaction and graphic design), external listening and finally SDC (Sony design center) scans and finalizes the ideas to go for project (CSR, 2010).

Feasibility-proof of concept - R & D unit of Sony Corporation assesses feasibility of scooped

ideas using EVA (economic value added) and other measurements and it comes with the result whether proof of concept is fit to market by all means or not. And based on the findings or R&D the final decision will be taken from the board of directors which is highest management body responsible for overseeing and making the final decisions about whether or not to make investment of a company (Sony, 2010).

Development-prototyping and testing

Projects are translated into concrete deliverables and all the product development activities occur, the operational plan and marketing launch are developed. Prototype is tested based on customers satisfaction, marketing and pricing/margins, available strategies on sourcing then it progress to market. SDC of Sony is supposed to be responsible for developing prototype of product, exhibit, and test the samples taking account customer satisfaction and price margins etc.

Implementation - Commercialization of the product means marketing and launch. It is the

phase of full production and the commercial introduction. Sony Company is officially responsible to lunch the product in the market. Then, by using Demand Information Creation System and Delivery Time Forecast System, Sony marketing center Japan working with other Sony group companies (EMS) predicts sales volumes and adjusts production for across its
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market and opens up door for sale of the new products from all of its subsidiaries across the world (Sony, 2010).

Organizational structure of Sony Corporation

As one of the leading companies in rapidly growing global market of electronic appliance requires continue to innovate and open new markets in order to compete, grow and exist in an era of global economy. Sonys organizational structure is based on flat hierarchy includes Board of members, executive board (corporate executive officers), representative officers from subsidiaries (regional office), various independent groups, and departments (Sony, 2010). As a top management body, board of members keeps careful eye on all the subordinates, and collates and coordinates them so as to create value in business.

Leadership in company
Leadership of Sony respects every singles views and ideas of its employee, listen to people as a source of information and it uses the ideas in course of decision making and formulating business strategy and plan. As a result Sony can come up with the products that fits todays lifestyles and reflects each regions local characteristics. Sony has created an exciting environment that unleashes creativity wherein people generate new ideas and execute ideas with process and precision.

1.2 ways of Sony Corporation to encourage employees

Sony as one of great reputed innovation engines and super generator for ideas and products has adopted different ways to motivate its people so that they release their potentialities for companys betterment in long run. Learning and Personnel development People are the key to success of organization this is why Sony recognizes the vitality and development of employees drive dynamic growth for company. Sony is making effort to further encourage personal growth and motivation for its all employees worldwide through on the job

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learning, as well as access to a variety of programs tailored to local touch as needs and wants, including management skills training, education for engineers and training aimed at enhancing the skills and abilities of individual employees.

Reward and punishment/ celebration or achievement

Sony practices a variety of measures aiming to ensure its technological excellence. In the year 2003, Sony established the Sony MVP award, it honors individual employee who have contributed specialized knowledge and technology to create enhanced value for organization, and which is designed to assist motivate employees to manage achievement and challenges. Thus 196 employees from Sony group companies across the world have been certified as MVPs till this date since 2003. Similarly, company introduced distinguished Engineer (DE) community activities, in which engineers participate in free discussion with other engineers involved in the similar technical fields across the company (Sony, 2010). Clear goals and clear feedback Company has clear goals which are well communicated to all employees around organization. Sony is applying 360 degree feedback system by which it receives information from each and every corner of organization so that company can solves possible problems on time and picks up new ideas which are helpful for organization (Sony, 2010).

2.1 Role of vision and mission in helping innovation

Vision is a desirable future picture an organization draws where it wants to be in future. It incorporates goals for the future which is often value laden statements, broad and inclusive encompasses as many people and perspectives as possible. Vision is supposed to be optimistic and inspiring to employees, organization and community that organization serves. It is thus vision should be overarching statement which defines the direction for business and which people readily understand and remember. Whereas mission statement explains overall purpose of organization and all the efforts and striving undertaken for the vision (Sheila and Blanchard, 2007). Therefore vision and mission is ever vital in helping innovation process because every innovation process takes place within the organization on basis of vision and mission and more importantly to reach the destination designed a vision for organization. Innovation process
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depends on nature and idea incorporated in vision that if it is more change or innovation oriented then it is more helpful for introducing improved or new product in the market if vision and leadership is not innovative then there is less support for innovation process. Sony as one of innovative company has a mission statement, make a thing different which has never been done before. This statement itself talks about the creation and innovation and it is inspiring, encouraging for people who are involved in the innovation process. At the same time, innovation is only the way by which Sony can exist in the market and meet its organization goals in long run.

2.2 SWOT analysis as a tool to identify creative and innovation process

Here, SWOT analysis is applied as a tool to identify the current business position of organization which helps to analyze creative and innovative management process of Sony Corporation.

Strengths - Sony Corporation is the second largest producer of consumer electronics in the
world. It is one of the ten most innovative organizations has diversified business operation such as electronics, games, entertainment and financial service as well which all have significantly contributed to stabilize revenue generation. It is renowned worldwide and has a strong corporate brand adding great value to customers. Sonys business is geographically diversified that its products are available in approximately 200 countries and market accounted for 17.9% of the revenue that helps to minimizing adverse business risks (Sony, 2010).

Weaknesses - Even though Sony is one of the largest global companies, it has some
weaknesses such as it has high cost manufacturing base leading to lower margins, it is facing revenue losses in 2009, specially electronic down by 17%, games down 18%, etc. Sony has great market share in US whereas it has revenue dropped by 15.4% in US and revenue fell 15.2% in Japan. Poor proximity or production to customers and substantial retirement benefit commitments are some other weaknesses of Sony 2010 (Annual report, 2010).

Opportunities
It has access to global market, joint venture and strategic acquisitions such as a joint venture project with sharp to produce and sell lager sixed LCD panels and modules and acquisitions as
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the purchase of TFT liquid crystal display business from Convergent Media Systems and Epson Imaging Devices. Potential growth in the electronic market, strong positioning in emerging economies etc are also some other potentialities for Sony.

Threats
Sony has the negative economic conditions in Japan, Europe and The United States that its revenue is dropping down in the regions (Annual report, 2010). Thus Sonys product and geographical diversification and its brand are the major drivers to encourage it for innovation because it has added great value to consumers and the consumers do have a trust towards a company for its quality product worldwide. Furthermore, Sony has access to global market, joint ventures for the new products etc are the market potentialities of Sony all these support its innovation process. Because joint ventures normally reduces high risks and makes innovation financially easy. It thus makes easy access to the market around the world.

2.3 Risks and benefit of innovations and creative process

As innovation is inevitable proces for firms irrespective of size and nature in order to exist and achieve sustaimable competitive market advantage, however it also brings in both risk and benefit to organization. In todays knowledge based economy, companies must develop new products and services to increase turnover and they must keep developing ideas and concepts to keep ahead of the competition and to remain competitive and profiable. It is possible only through innovation that organization can create value and differentiate their products and services from that of the competition (Sarkar, 2007). The major factors of risks of innovation are financial, market, organizational, techical so innovation always comes up with the probability of hazard to occur in those sectors of business and if it is not effectively managed on time then it leads to severe financial loss, technological failure, market loss, organizational image loss etc. in addition if the risks are efficiently managed then it results in business prosperity and profitability. Whereas the level of risks depends on innovative management capability of organzation. It is therfore Sony company as a global giant innovator should adopt risk management process which means analyzing the possible risks in innovation process and prepare with the measures for facing the risks. The benefits of
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innovation are achieved in manufacturing; developing new product, locating new thechnology, marketing; product line extension, software; new application for existing software etc.

2.4 Change models Kurt Lewins Model to support innovation implementaion

Kurt Lewins three stage of change model Kurt Lewin (1947) suggests that human change whether at group or individual level is an intensive psychological dynamic process. This theory is based on 3 steps process of change Unfreeze- Change - Refreeze. It provides Sony company a framework to implement innovative management ideas which is often more sensitive and must be managed as seamless as possible.

Unfreezing: In this stage, Sony has to prepare its people get to the point of understanding that
innovation is necessary, and get ready to move away from the current comfort zone. It involves build up a new way of operating and break d+own the existing status quo. The more people feel that change is necessary the more the urgent it is and the more change leaders are motivated to change.

Change or transition : Change is not an event but rather a process. Transition is journey or
inner movement people make as a reaction to a change. In this stage people are unfrozen and moving towards a new way of being where people start to resolve their uncertainty and begin to work in ways that support the new direction.

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Freezing or refreezing : Freezing is about establishing stability once the change has been
made. The new changes are become the new norm and accepted. People are supposed to formulate new relationship and be happy with their routines. In this way this change model helps Sony to manage creativity and innovation process in organization.

3.1 Rationale to persuade stakeholders on the benefits of innovation

For the safe landing of innovation process and to create win-win situation , organization needs gain commitment and support from its stakeholders who are the engine to drive the creativity and innovation process in a company. This is the reason why Sony Corporation is supposed to identify its stakeholders on the basis of Johnson and Scholes, (2002) theory of power/interest of stakeholders to organization and persuade them on the benefit of organization. the key stakeholders to be negotiated are: Employees Employees are the means to end in organization thats why their role is most important to lead innovation process to success. employees are directly or indirectly involved in the activities of organization thats why organization needs to communicate them clearly about the innovation process beccause every little helps and if employees dont support then it leads to probably failure of the project. Shareholders they are key players and owners to organization this is why without support of shareholders, no one project of innovation process neither begins nor ends. Because innovation process is finally means of achieving busines objectives in organization which is mainly concerned to shareholders. They are responsible for acceptance or rejection of the project the reason for this is they have to take responsibility of risk and benefits of innovation at the end. Management Board Organization needs to convince to management board about the innovation projects because management board is responsible to recommend and lead through innovation process.

Cosumers
Involment of end user as a co designer in innovation process draws on knowledge in a wide range of disciplines such as participatory design, innovation management and organization

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theory (SPIRE). The reason for this is innovation finally needs to satisfy consumers wants and needs so that it can be succeful if it cant then the process ultimately fails. Similary organization needs to persuade government, financial banks about the innovation in order to gain support for the project both financially and legally.

3.2 Communicate a creative and innovative management idea to stakeholders

Innovation is in a sense a change in organization it is often a long and value laden process that is why implementing innovation process is always risky and challenging for roganization. People specially employees often resist innnovation they think innovation is a vague process that comes with a hefty price tag and unpredictable return in organization. So as in the words of Kotter, (1996) organization should keep communicate the vision of innovation powerfully and frequently within everything with the stakeholders so that it will help to successfully implement the innovation process in the long run. Furthermore Kotter suggests that communicating innovation ideas to stakeholders might reduce potential innovation risk and manage the process effectively. When employees resist the process then it might lead it to an accident and most often resistance occur due to lack of accurate information and analysis of the ideas. That is why in this situation, one of the best ways to over come the resistance is to educate people about the innovation effort. Feedback from the stakeholders is always influential to organization in order to improve its efficiency in product and service delivery. It provides leaders an landmark for the idea of innovation. It is thus organization has to set its goals and priorities taking in to account the feedback coming from different corner of organization. on the one hand feedback coming from end users is most valuable because they are expressing their choice of new products or the down side of existing products and recommending some improvements on the product. If organization ignores the feedback then probably the innovation cannot meet the needs of users. This is why it is most important for building innovation ideas in organization that the ultimate target of innovation is to satisfy the choice of conumers. In this way innovation is often user driven so organization is better to set its priorities of innovation ideas and goals based on the feedback of stakeholders.

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Government policies on the other hand play vital role in establishing goals and innovation ideas because organizational activities can not go beyond the boundry of governments legislation. Government policy on environment protection, product speicfication, natural resuorces protection etc are importanat which provide guidline to organization for setting up its vision and selecting its innovation ideas.

4.1 Barriers in the implementaion of innovative ideas

As innovation is complex process, there are various kinds of barriers associated with the innovation when innovators move through generation to launch the ideas. Basically they face barriers such as inadequate funding, risk avoidance, siloing, time commitments and incorrect measure etc which are common and often stands obstacles for innovation process.

Inadequate funding
Innovation process is financially more expensive that many an exellent innovation requires more than seed money to survive. This is why getting start-up funds for innovations is difficult task because funding in innovation means taking money away from established program. Getting the money at right time is also problematic because organizations usually operate in usual annual fundin cycle which will not match the new project.

Risk avoidance - Risk avoidance is usually associated with the nature of leaders and
innovation team that they avoid when a risk arise in the process of innovation which can casuse failure of idea implementation.

Siloing - It is all about creating boundaries, assigning responsibilities and put rules in place
because orgnizations want to protect their own identities, get proper credit, sustain and protect themselves. However innovation by nature tend to go beyond the limitation because it is all about an effort to meet the ever unmet needs as an end restult.

Time commitments - Organization creates deadline of innovation that are to be met by every
departments however if some of them fails to meet then it poses barriers to project implementation which might lead project to failure as well.

Incorrect measures
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Generally organization uses tools such as profits, revenue, market share, NPV, ROC etc to measure feasiblility of project which is indeed not enough to identify various intangible factors associated with organization such as reputaion, knolewdge atrtactiveness to talent, leadership etc. it is thus when organization uses only such measures and ingnors others sides then that finally will be abstacle for innovation (IBM, 2006).

4.2 Ways to overcome barriers to innovation

Even though innovation is an imperative in changing maket environment for organizations irrespective of size and nature, many organizations fail to realize the expected outcome of innovations that they adopt. A key reason for this is not failure of innnovation but implementation failure that is because of lack of adopting appropriate measures to overcome barriers to innovation implementation process. Having a culture of risk taking - Avoidance of risk is one common obsatacle arisen in the process of innovation so organization needs to develop a culture of risk taking. Becauase different types of risk may arise in the process but organzation needs to face and most importantly solve the barriers in order to implement innovation successfully. Encourage employee to come up with idea - To overcome the boundaries created within organization, organization needs to encourage empoyees to come up with idea to support innovation process. Yet more Involvment of stakeholders in innovation process helps to manage the problems created by employees regarding the time commitment that if any employee and department can not fulfil their responsibilities on time that can cause failure of the idea implementation. Allowing the stakeholders to participate in innovation process Allowing the key

stakeholder to participate in innovation process helps to face the risk of managing funds for innovation process from beginning to end and to solve the need of leadership and knowledge in the process. These are the ways which can be used to overcome the barriers created in the innovation implementation process in an organization. As such if organization develop a culture of risk taking then innovators will not escape from the problems that arise on the different phase of
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implementing ideas. In this ways, innovators will be encouraged to face the challenge which furhter supports the process. Next when organization energizes and inspires its employee then they will be cooperative to each other and create a strong team work environment which helps to solve fulfil the time commitment so that company can meets its target of launching product. A Strategy plan to overcome the barriers to innovation, Sony Corporation can communicate with its relevant stakeholders by adopting open communication strategy so that it creates an environment of conveying information which enables every member of the organization to feel independent to share ideas, feedback and even criticism at all layers. It suggests that all the members hold regularly scheduled meetings, share information relevant to the cooperation without any hesitation and honest in their communication to each other information (Maddux, R. and Wingfield, B. 2003). It includes the processes by which an organization involves its key stakeholders:

Participative decision making - It suggests that company has to involve their members and
their ideas in decision making process that is helpful to overcome underlying risks.

Team briefings, communication channels - Company has to develop effective

communication channels and conduct scheduled team briefing so that it can fill up the communication gap between the layers of organization and its objectives.

Group think, and building inter- and intra team - By this, organization can keep ongoing
communication among the members and shareholders by building the required inter and intra team within a group in organization. The process helps to reach and understand the ground reality need and problems.

Conclusion
Innovation is an inevitable for organization in order to compete and exist in the market. It is never ending process and always remains challenging for organization. However organizations have no more choice except adopting innovation whether that is of rapid new or improved which is necessary to be in the market ground.

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References
CSR, (2010), Corporate social responsibility report 2010. IBM, (2006), IBM Global business services retrieved Sep 25, 2011, from: http://ibm.com Johnson and Scholes, (2002) Exploring corporate strategty.United kingdom: Prentice hall. Kotter, J. (1996), Leading change. United States America: Hayward business press. Luecke, R. (2004) Managing creativity and innovation. United state: Howard business press. Maddux, R. and Wingfield, B., (2003) Team building (4th ed.).United States: Crisp publication. OECD, (2011), Reviews of regional innovation. OECD Publication. Peter, et al. (2009) Innovation and entrepreneurship. Unites states: Haward business press. Sheila and Blanchard, (2007), Seven step business plan. United States: pelican Publishing. Sony , (2009), Sony corporation Annual Report and Financial Statements 2010

Sony corporation, (2011), Sony corporation Retrieved Sep 29, 2011, from: http://sony.com Sarkar, (2007). Innovation, market archetypes and outcome: an integrated framwork. Heidelberg: verlage press.

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