Assessment item 2 - Innovation audit report

Task

Innovation is increasingly being considered as a core competency that organisations must develop. Companies that consistently innovate don't rely on chance; they address innovation in a systematic way.

Your task is as follows:

• Drawing on a wide range of literature on innovation develop a framework that you could use to assess an organisation in terms of innovation. Describe your framework and justify the critical elements (with reference to the literature).
• The next step is to apply this framework to a particular organisation of your own choice. Where are the gaps? What is being done well, what areas need to be improved? Note: This organisation may be your own workplace, or an organisation you would like to work for.
• Finally, develop a plan to address areas of weakness. You may choose to focus on a few key areas and discuss them in detail.

Note: If your chosen organisation has a focus on services make sure that you choose literature that is appropriate for service innovation.

Rationale

This assessment task is designed so that you can utilise your work experience in conjunction with your critical literature work on innovation to design a theoretical framework to conduct an audit of your workplace and make recommendations for change.

This task aligns with subject learning outcomes 1 and 2:

• to be able to critically reflect on the role of innovation in organisations and the challenges companies face in new product development.
• to be able to synthesise innovation literature to develop a theoretical framework for use in an audit of innovation practices of a specific organisation and make recommendations for improvement.