IDEAS AND INNOVATION

Managing Ideas and Innovation



Managing Ideas and Innovation

Introduction

Ideas and Innovation have never been more powerful than it is today, as organizations face violent international competition, continuously inventing technologies and minimizing world resources. For launching new ideas successfully, it requires an array of entrepreneurial, research, design and commercialization skills, as well as the ability, to bring these skills into play at the right time; capturing value from new ideas depends upon having the right business models and management of intellectual property. This paper will discuss the management of ideas and innovation in organizations. An example of British Petroleum has been given to show the proper management of ideas and innovation.

Background of the Company

British Petroleum is an energy company, engaged primarily in the oil and natural gas. It is one of the largest companies in the world and the third largest firm dedicated to oil and gas after ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell. Ideas and Innovation in BP are considered a vital element for the purpose of surviving, growing, and significantly influencing the aim or goal of the industry. However, development does not always bring success, but the company should be able to take failure as a challenge. British Petroleum is an international organization, which is operating in the oil and energy sector. There are sixteen refineries, which are partially or wholly owned by British Petroleum Company. BP provides energy for heat, electricity, fuel, retail services and petrochemical products (West, 2004).

Discussion

Innovation

The strong R&D department of BP is mainly contributing in the innovation by using “long string” design, instead of a “liner tieback.” The long string is easy and cheap to construct and does not have the safety traits of the liner tieback. The unprecedented levels of Ideas and Innovation are the requirement in the energy sector in order to supply solutions to expanding demand for the energy to which Bp's strong R&D is mainly focusing upon. Those activities are idea conception or creation, translation of those new ideas into something that the mainstream organization can make sense of, and implementation of that new idea into a new product or process.

Innovation is not about searching far and reaching a certain equilibrium point. Innovation is a process and a process of learning and searching from both within the organization and externally for the ideas and new approaches to current or future challenges. The innovation process is at its core a learning process and one predicated on increasing the BP's ability to adapt. The companies that are innovative are considered as daring, futuristic, and pioneer of social change. For companies to be innovative, they have to react to changes in market forces or needs when they materialize. Companies should have the ability and skills to predict, foresee, or create changes. For the purpose of being innovative, the organization enhances the innovative ability of its employees in order to increase its collective innovative abilities (Thurik, 2001).

A product of Eco-Imagination

Since, the access to energy is a fundamental requirement for growth, in the developing ...