Innovation and Knowledge Transfer Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Innovation and Knowledge Transfer - Assignment Example In regard to this, a critical evaluation of how certain organisations drive innovation to maintain competitive advantage will be explored. This report will evaluate innovation within Starbucks Corporation, the leading specialty coffee seller in the world. The author will examine how the corporation took on the innovation challenge by evaluating what Starbucks does, who does it, how well the personnel manage innovation, what the process of innovation involves and how it is shared across parts of the corporation. This will be examined against certain concepts and frameworks established by researchers in this field to provide a sound critical analysis. The report to be conducted will encompass a study that seeks to establish the role of innovation in enhancing the competitive advantage of Starbucks Corporation. In achieving this, the paper will seek to identify the potential benefits accrued from adoption of innovation and the threats facing innovation in such firms. Tidd and Bessant (2009) define innovation as â€Å"the process of turning opportunity into new ideas and putting these into widely used practice†. According to Trott (2008, p. 15), innovation involves managing all activities that are necessary to the process of creating ideas, technology development, developing and marketing of a novel or improved product or services. Thus, innovation does not just stop with coming up with a new idea, or inventing something, nor creating new market niches. It is a process that takes into account all these factors and integrates them. The challenge in innovation lies in the process it involves. The process revolves essentially around methods of searching for triggers in the internal and external environment for innovation, selecting viable ideas to invest in, implementation and sustaining the innovation into the organization’s policies and structures (Nelson and Winter, 1982, p. 143; Tidd and Bessant, 2009). Tidd and Bessant