Importance of innovation, example of Altech

Innovation is sometimes, used glibly as a buzzword that loosely translates into introducing some novelty. Technically, 'innovation' is defined merely as 'introducing something new'. There are no qualifiers of how ground-breaking or world-shattering that something needs to be; only that it needs to be better than what was there before (Brianna Sylver, 2008). West and Farr (1990) advanced a more apt definition for innovation as, the intentional introduction and application within an organization of ideas, processes, products or procedures, new to the unit of adoption, designed to significantly benefit the organization or wider society. This definition proposes moving into valuable action and it encompasses the idea, which is somewhat intangible, and suggests that innovation is more than a simple creativity of an idea. The definition suggests that real, valuable innovation creates a valuable outcome. That outcome could be a new program, a new product, a new business model, a new service, or a new initiative. Firms are invariably involved in either generating and/or selling products or services, and for them to continue doing it profitably, there is always a need to find new and better ways of conducting business. This assignment looks at Altech, a very well established technology company that is a subsidiary of Altron, a renowned South African family business. It will assess the current status of innovation in the company and how it relates to its corporate culture and strategy, as well as make recommendations on further deepening the integration of innovation into the corporate culture. The frameworks applied in the assessment will be based on the innovation value chain and management innovation as proposed by Hansen & Birkinshaw (2007) and Hamel (2006) respectively.