Activity: Recommend Ways to Incorporate Innovation in a Company

Interview an experienced marketer, product developer or someone in a similar function at your company or a company to which you have
access. The interview can be conducted face to face or via Skype (or similar service).

NOTE: You may schedule an in-person appointment, phone appointment, or use online resources such as Skype or GoTo

Meeting to complete this requirement. Email could be a potential alternative choice, but only after the previous options have been requested and declined.If you still have concerns about meeting this requirement, contact your instructor for additional guidance.

You will first develop a series of questions to ask during the interview. The questions should include the following questions from Davila, Epstein, and Shelton, 2013:

1. What efforts is top management putting in place to support innovation?

2. Does everybody devote part of their daily attention to having a better business model?

3. Is it clear to everybody how the company intends to innovate?

4. Does creativity or bureaucracy crowd out innovation?

5. What are the reasons, if any, for why innovation is not as effective as you want it to be?

6. How does your company leverage its internal talent and its access to external talent?

7. How do performance measures and rewards affect innovation? (p. 10).

In addition to these questions add at least 5 additional questions. Information that should be included: What are the constraints or barriers to innovation? How do you leverage various outside constituencies in innovation? Summarize the responses and present them in a report. Then develop an analysis of the responses. How do they relate to best practices and what you read? Finally develop recommendations based on the current process and best practices.

Support your paper with a minimum of three peer reviewed articles published in the last five years. In addition to these specified resources, other appropriate scholarly resources, including older articles, may be included.

Length: 3-5 pages not including title page and references

Your response should demonstrate thoughtful consideration of the ide.