Innovation

The purpose of the learning is for you to develop your own learning. There are a number of tasks that you should complete before you undertake the next section. You can work through this section at your own pace. It is expected that you would take up to 3 hours to complete this section. You must complete this section before you move to the next section.

Task 1

Read the article “The Smart Phone ” and complete the activity in your workbook.

This introduces the activity and enables you to develop your skills at analysing innovative solutions.

The Smart Phone

When telephones were first made widely available very few people bought one.  Initially it was only businesses that took them up.  There were several reasons why, they were expensive for a start and very few people saw any relevance in owning a telephone.  This continued right up to the mid 1970’s when the cost of owning a phone dropped substantially and many people subscribed to land lines.  From the late 1980’s to the 2000’s it became normal for people to have land line telephones.  However, today they are declining particularly in the developed world, with some developing countries missing out on land lines completely by jumping to mobile phones directly.  The telephone changed the way people lived.  It had such a profound impact that today our behaviour is built around how we respond to the phone.  Previously, before telephones were widespread the person you were talking to face to face was the most important person.  Telephones caused a shift where the person making a telephone call to you became more important than the person in front of you.

The development of mobile phones and later smart phones has increased the demand that you respond to the phone before what is in front of you.  What’s more striking is what was originally a device for two people to talk has changed into a device that does so much more.

Take a careful look at your smart phone and in your workbook write a list of all the different products and services that the smart phone has replaced.  To get you started here is one; with appointment calendars on smart phones the market for hard copy appointment diaries has just about disappeared.

You should undertake further reading on the topics in this section.  We recommend that you read the following:

• Bessant, J. & Tidd, J., (2015), Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 3rd Edition, Wiley, Chichester

• Michanek, J. & Breiler, A. (2014) The Idea Agent, The Handbook on Creative Processes, New York: Routledge

The next section is Unit 4 OLL 1