- Culture of innovation
- Characteristics of technical innovation
- Differences with technological innovation
- Cycles of technical innovation
- Phases
- Installation phase
- Implementation phase
- Sources of technical innovation
- Creativity
- Organizational creativity
- Business innovation
- Government institutions
- Examples
- - Toyota
- Continuous improvement
- Go and see
- Importance of technical innovation
- Highest range of products
- References
The technical innovation is the process of implementing new ideas, related knowledge or practical experience in a production process. That is, it is a type of invention that occurs with the development or application of new technologies. Understand product and process innovation.
After applying a productive method for a long period of time, organizations and companies find opportunities for improvement. That is, what is sought is continuous improvement within the production process.
Source: pixabay.com
Technical innovation only comes about when the people who are responsible for the production process continually seek to improve. This results in a lower cost of production or higher added value.
A lower cost of production can arise from achieving better production processes. Greater added value may come from new features or higher quality.
Its purpose may be to obtain shorter times in the production of a good, improve the quality of the final product or increase the safety of the production process. In the same way, a product with new and better features can be aimed at.
Culture of innovation
The culture of continuous improvement and technical innovation emerge in an organization to be applied from the top management to the plant worker.
Top management is the one who really starts the technical innovation process by creating a culture. However, the idea of improvement will come from the worker who knows the details of the process.
Characteristics of technical innovation
- It begins with the process of forming an idea and ends with the commercialization of a feasible product or service, in response to a proven market need.
- It is a continuous process, within an internal or external undertaking, which is developed to create value with innovation.
- It is driven by an entrepreneurial spirit, with the support of internal or external funds.
- It is a guide for risk management to decide which technical directions to take, based on portfolio management and execution monitoring.
Differences with technological innovation
Technical innovation places greater emphasis on the application of techniques or practical knowledge in a particular discipline or function, while technological innovation places emphasis on the application of scientific knowledge in production processes.
Technical innovation is generally a process that comes from the experience acquired by completing a production process over a period of time.
On the other hand, technical innovation does not depend on the advancement of science. For technological innovation, scientific discoveries generally lead to this type of innovation.
In general, people whose work is close to production processes are responsible for technical innovation, while technological innovation is generally more related to the academic and scientific field.
Cycles of technical innovation
These are the steps to follow in order to modify a service or product. These cycles exist for two very important reasons, which are:
- Customer demand for new services and products to be created.
- The development of new technologies, which is advancing very rapidly.
The technical changes presented in these cycles and in the new service features are the sum of the previous technical innovations.
The technical innovation cycles are currently very short, because year after year new products are coming out that replace those already existing on the market. The phases of an innovation cycle are as follows:
- Identification of the need or problem.
- Generation of ideas to obtain a solution.
- Evaluation of the alternatives and progress of the innovation project.
- Resolution of the problem through technological and scientific research.
- Construction of prototypes and models.
- Development of the service or product.
- Launch and distribution.
- Evaluation of the service or product.
Phases
Installation phase
In this phase large amounts of capital are required to create an infrastructure. Finance capital is risk-seeking capital, which is distinct from operating capital, which is found on corporate balance sheets.
Implementation phase
During this phase, the new technological advance spreads around the world, changing people's lives.
Investment risks are reduced, because an infrastructure already exists. The business model is clearer and the demand is more evident. Consequently, operational capital is now used to promote technology adoption.
Sources of technical innovation
Creativity
It is the ability of an individual to produce useful and novel work. It is given based on intellectual abilities, thinking style, personality, motivation and environment.
Technical innovation is the implementation of creative ideas in some new device or process. This requires a combination of resources and experience. It often originates from those who create solutions for their own needs.
Knowledge has an impact on creativity. Not knowing enough about the area to be innovated means that it may not be well understood enough to contribute significantly.
On the other hand, knowing it too much means that there may be bottlenecks in logical paradigms that require an alternate approach.
Organizational creativity
It is a function of the creativity of individuals within an organization and the variety of social processes that shape the way these individuals interact and behave.
The suggestion box is the first means by which an organization harnesses the creativity of individual employees. Employees can also use a private network or intranet to share and contribute their creative ideas and suggestions.
Likewise, the organization can implement creative training programs for employees. All are systems for collecting ideas to transform creativity into technical innovation.
Business innovation
A company must have absorptive capacity, which is the ability to recognize, assimilate and use new knowledge.
Innovation can originate in the search to solve an unmet consumer need. Taking this need, we proceed to implement the technical innovation to be manufactured. In other words, the customer draws technical innovation.
On the other hand, technical innovation can be pushed in a linear fashion. Before a scientific discovery, the technical innovation is designed, which then proceeds to be manufactured for commercialization.
Government institutions
Technology transfer offices are responsible for transferring technology developed in research facilities to an environment where such technology can be applied.
Examples
- Toyota
The technical innovation model of this Japanese car manufacturer consists of granting its employees permission and tools to solve problems when they occur and to share the solutions found with management.
Changes in the management of technical innovation have resulted in a continuous flow of small increases in productivity and efficiency. Toyota became one of the most successful car manufacturers in the world.
The management of technical innovation at Toyota is based on these two fundamental principles:
Continuous improvement
All employees are involved in technical innovation, from the CEO to the assembly line workers.
Go and see
To really understand a situation, you must go to the "real" place where things happen: it can be a factory or a sales room. It also means going and seeing how consumers behave in real world situations.
Initially Facebook had nothing interesting on the technical side. Then it started to have millions of users and had to scale to become interesting in its technical innovation.
Examples of these innovations: how to process so much data, how to reach multiple parts of the world, how to optimize the storage of so many photos, etc.
The best example is Google, because this is a technical innovation company, which is a much rarer phenomenon. This company started as a result of research work.
Broadly speaking, the research paper described a technical innovation in data search, which rendered all other search approaches obsolete.
Google practically changed the way information is consumed, so its impact on processes is quite high. That is the goal of any innovation company: to change behavior.
Importance of technical innovation
Technical innovations provide competitive advantages to companies and can also generate benefits for consumers, due to lower prices or better products.
When technical innovation is a systemic characteristic of an organization, it represents an important strength that can eventually position it as a leader in a sector.
For many industries, technical innovation has fueled their competitive success:
- New products are those that take advantage of innovation the most, with more advanced and updated technology.
- Technical product innovations help companies protect profit margins by offering unique and differentiated features.
- Technical process innovations help make manufacturing more efficient.
Advances in information technology have enabled faster innovation. For example, computer-aided design (CAD) means that a design is done much faster and with a shorter production time. These advances have led to:
- Shorter life cycles of products, since they become obsolete faster.
- Faster introductions of new products.
- Greater market segmentation.
Highest range of products
Technical innovation enables a wider range of goods and services to be delivered globally:
-More efficient food production. Countries can specialize according to different factor endowments, improved technologies, better transportation, etc.
-Increases the gross domestic product of countries, by making capital and labor more effective and efficient through an effective allocation of resources.
-Better results in negative externalities, such as pollution, erosion, etc.
References
- Rudy Rigot (2017). How to generate technical innovation? Taken from: hackernoon.com.
- Bozhidar Bozhanov (2019). Technical Innovation vs. Process Innovation. DZone. Taken from: dzone.com.
- Economic Point (2020). Technical Innovation. Taken from: economicpoint.com.
- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (2020). Technological innovation. Taken from: en.wikipedia.org.
- Mrkt Spnkr (2020). The Importance of Technological Innovation. Taken from: mrktspnkr.wordpress.com.
- Evaluation of technological systems (2014). Cycles of technical innovation in processes and products. Taken from: evaluaciondelossistemastec.blogspot.com.