The Importance of Innovation Architecture is seen in many organizations. Innovation is what causes organizations to become experts or successful in their field. More importantly, innovation is the creation of an idea that helps the consumer with everyday life as well as ensures that a company can rule out competition and gain significant revenue. In doing so, organizations must develop a culture of innovation. Organizations that rapidly have to change innovative technologies are at the forefront of innovative architecture. Since the innovative creation of the internet, we have seen companies such as Apple Inc, Kayak, and Netflix become major innovative organizations. We have seen their innovation architecture through things such as their marketing, ecosystems and even the creative license of their employees. These skills allow them to be successful and continue creating great innovations.
Apple Inc. has become a successful organization through innovation. Apple has managed to develop a following that transcends that of other organizations based solely on its product innovation. Finding ways to beat themselves with each product they produce. Apple Inc. is in fact in innovation competition with itself. Since its founding, they have discovered ways to penetrate technological barriers. At their core, they believe in consumer satisfaction. Creating products with the consumer in mind. Apple has achieved extraordinary innovative success due to their consumer knowledge, marketing strategies and their closed ecosystem.
Apple’s innovation is led by their Research and Development Unit. Apple has gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure their Research and Development unit is successful. Spending upwards of 3.3% of the company’s revenue on the quality of its team (Hughes, N. 2013). The research and development unit take time to study and meet the expectation of their consumer market.
By managing their own ecosystem, Apple has been able to control every aspect of their design and technology software (Tan, 2013). Within this control they have been able to maintain a lock which keeps its competition out of knowledge. Apple has also made the effort to allow its employees have a shared based compensation which allows its employees to become part owners of the organization (Hughes, 2015). Thus, causing employee loyalty across the board. Though a closed ecosystem works for Apple, many organizations have seen benefits of having an open ecosystem.
Each organization is different; however, there are organizations that want to improve the world through its innovative architecture. Netflix for example, they have been a leading competitor in the streaming field. Netflix’s consumer preferences continue to shift with the growing popularity of tablets and smartphones, online video and audio companies. However, this cannot be said about other organizations (Newswire, 2013).
With their continued innovative success, Netflix has seen the earnings to justify their actions. Recently their share prices jumped substantially. They grew by 1.81 million subscribers causing their net earnings to rise to $0.23 per share (Newswire, 2013).
Interestingly enough, Netflix has created a business model innovation that has given them a competitive advantage. Other organizations just simply do not know how to duplicate this innovation (Rayne. T. 2016).
With the understanding of what innovation is and why it’s important to the success of an organization, Kayak has become a leading travel website competitor. It is evident that Kayak has successfully supported a culture of innovation. Kayak has been an online travel platform that has changed the age of planning trips. Not only does Kayak give the rates of their competitors, they offer exclusive deals and which days are best for travel. Kayak was created with the vision of replacing travel agents and has been successful through innovation (Levine, R. 2008).
To date, Kayak has produced $3.5 billion in annual travel sales, and rakes in at $140 million in revenue while maintain 35 million site visits a month. These views give its employees the sense of urgency to create more innovative ways to transform the travel experience.
Kayaks creators sit in a conference room watching to see what ways the can increase innovation. They have received push back because they do not offer a live customer service agent, but they rather employ engineers to handle their customer concerns. This automatically makes them a forerunner in innovation. Hiring qualified engineers as opposed to random people to solve their issues.
We can see by evaluating organizations such as Apple Inc, Netflix and Kayak that innovation architecture is what makes up the success of each company.
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