Need 1100 Words paper (USE the attached Paper)Paper 3Develop a 1,050-word essay to identify one global creative organization, as defined in Ch. 10 and 11 of Mastering Leadership and select the company

Strategic Change: Case Study

Apple is one of the most popular global brands out there today. Innovation and creativity are the basis of their foundation. The following essay will examine why Apple is a creative organization; the opportunities for strategic change; and the impacts of the organizational culture and structure on those opportunities.

Apple is a global creative organization. Known for their creative and ground-breaking product outputs. The story alone of how Apple was founded is based on collective creativity. Making that creativity turn in to a global success is what creative organizations do. They create "category-defining products." Even faced with competition such as Google's Data and Amazon's retail success, they continue to forge ahead with their creative output being superior than most.

According to Madrigal (2012) Creativity isn't a process. "It's people who care enough to keep thinking about something until they find the simplest way to do it. They keep thinking about something until they find the best way to do it. It's caring enough to call the person who works over in this other area, because you think the two of you can do something fantastic that hasn't been thought of before. It's providing an environment where that feeds off each other and grows." (The Atlantic, December 7th, 2012). Creativity such as this can't be seen on a flow chart.

How does Apple do it? It's the leadership and passion for innovation and using that creative collective force. "Apple has managed to add a strong design attitude and a personality to its product development. Hence innovation has become an active process which lead from inside but not a process of passive response outside. This endogenous innovation model makes sure Apple's innovation evolve into difficult to their corporation core competence which cannot be imitated and copied," (Pei, Yu & Tian, 2014, p. 2628).

Leaders who are open minded, encourage nontraditional thinking when problem solving. This encourages staff to use critical thinking skills as well as thinking out of the box. Leaders who show enthusiasm over their own ideas as well as their employees' ideas help motivate further creativity. "Numerous factors may influence organizational creativity including task characteristics, team composition, culture/climate in organization, work processes, leadership factors, as well as external demands like market environment, political environment, and legislation," (Mathisen, Einarsen & Mykletun, 2012 p. 368).

Strategic Change

There are many factors that impact Apple’s strategic direction and the changes they make. These factors may include the industries growth rate, societal changes, product innovation, changes in technology, new players entering the game, increase in the globalization of the industry, change in cost and efficiency, regulatory influence policy changes, and degree of risk. Leadership is another factor that impacts strategic change and organizational culture. Leadership is about creating a vision that others want to participate in.

Leaders create a positive work environment where employees can feel safe and where creativity is cultivated. Employees can see the difference between someone who talks a good game, and one who sets the culture by their work ethic, methods, behavior, and ultimately as the organization’s example. For strategic change to be successful, communicating the vision, the company’s direction, and the reasons why for those changes help with employee buy in.

One of the biggest changes for Apple is moving focus from iPhone to other products. According to Meyer (2017), Apple’s strategy is differentiation. Broad differentiation focused on key features that make them stand out from their competitors. “Apple’s other strategic objective based on this generic strategy is to expand to ensure broad market reach. Such expansion and business growth are achieved through intensive strategies for growth,” (Meyer, 2017). These intensive strategies include product development, which is Apple’s strongest strategy for growth. This strategy is implemented through innovation in their research and development processes.

Market Penetration is another significant intensive growth strategy. In this type of strategy, you are trying to sell all your company’s products that currently exist in order to gain a larger market share. Market development is similar to market penetration, but it’s about branching out into those markets where the company has no reach yet. Apple fixes that by developing new markets through their innovation. A good example of that is the smartwatch market with the creation of the Apple Watch. “Differentiation in function and design supports the firm’s goal of leading the market through innovative products. Innovation is at the heart of Apple’s business. However, to improve its application of this generic strategy, the company must aggressively penetrate markets, especially developing countries where Apple’s market reach is still limited,” (Meyer, 2017).

Creative organizations tend “to establish systems, structures, and cultures that are creatively unique and different. These change efforts have many different labels—lean, agile, adaptable, fast, innovative, flexible, empowered, involving, inclusive, participative, engaging, self-managed, intrapreneurial, creative, fluid, flat, purpose-driven, visionary, and so on,” (Anderson and Adams, 2016, p. 229-230). Apple Inc. is one of those organizations.

Conclusion

To support strategic change, leadership must monitor the progress that has been made and remove any organizational barriers. They must combine the vast amounts of knowledge and creative resources they have to stimulate connections that create these breakthrough ideas. As previously stated, Apple’s success was built on innovation and creativity. They are a diverse company, known for being aggressive when it comes to the goals they set and how they achieve them.

“This type of innovation success comes with risks that the company has accepted in order to pursue their vision and maintain a profit. Apple believes in team work and individual greatness. The company believes that they are only as strong as their weakest link. Each and every employee can make a difference at Apple, Inc. and it is seen that individuals themselves determine the character and strength of Apple. Winning is a team effort. Victories and rewards should be shared by everyone,” (Johnson, Li, Phan, Singer, & Trinh, 2012, p. 41).

References

Anderson, R., & Adams, W. (2016). Mastering Leadership an Integrated Framework for Breakthrough Performance and Extraordinary Business Results. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley& Sons, Inc.

Johnson, K., Li, Y., Phan, H., Singer, J., and Trinh, H. "The Innovative Success that is Apple, Inc." (2012). Theses, Dissertations and Capstones. Paper 418.

Madrigal, A. (December 7, 2012). Tim Cook on Creativity at Apple. Technology. The Atlantic. Retrieved from: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/tim-cook-on-creativity-at-apple/265996/ .

Mathisen, G., Einarsen, E., & Mykletun, R. (2012) Creative leaders promote creative organizations. International Journal of Manpower. 33(4), 367-382.

Meyer. P. 2017. Apple’s Generic Strategy & Intensive Growth Strategies. Panmore Institute. Retrieved from: http://panmore.com/apple-inc-generic-strategy-intensive-growth-strategies .

Pei, H. N., Yu, S. H., & Tian, B. Z. (2014). Analysis of apple's design management policy. Applied Mechanics and Materials, 496-500, 2626-2629.