This individual task (3,000 words) asks you to demonstrate your ability to propose an innovation to address a sustainability / company / industry challenge to improve customer-value, by drawing on the

Innovation Management and Professional Development

Task 2: Innovation Report

Weighting: 55% Type: Business report, 3000 words

The purpose of this task is to propose a leading-edge product, service or process innovation solution (offering) to address a sustainability or company challenge, to improve customer value.

You should draw on the organisational innovation model and follow the team innovation process, paying specific attention to using divergent and convergent thinking of the creative problem-solving process to develop a solution, trial and implementation considerations.

This is an individual (3000 word) assessment task where you need to demonstrate your ability to propose an innovation solution to address an industry / company / sustainability problem or challenge making use of human-AI collaboration, by drawing on the relevant material in this course.

This is a comprehensive task which requires you to apply most of the learning material in this course. It is best to check if the problem you want to work on will be suitable for this assessment during Week 4's workshops.

Your report will be evaluated on the following criteria related to innovative problem-solving (PLO3):

• Problem-solving: Identify and critically analyse the innovation challenge (problem) to be addressed (step 3).

• Solution: Utilise radical (breakthrough) creativity to develop an innovative solution to the problem (step 4).

• Apply the organisational innovation model.

• Develop and propose how you will enhance customer perceived value through the innovation solution (Step 5).

• In positioning the innovation solution relative to current market offerings and competitors, critically analyse existing sources of secondary data and literature in the field (Step 6)

• Innovation leadership: Consider your leadership approach for the innovation you are proposing and your professional skills and presence.

• Formulate an innovation implementation approach that would give your innovation solution the best chance of succeeding within your organisation (‘fit’) and outside, acknowledging the tensions in human-AI collaboration.

• Present your innovation report in a professional manner and argue convincingly, supported by relevant evidence.

Feedback will be provided via My Interim Results. Many students have used this assessment task and the feedback to advance a project they lead at work and make significant improvements to their organisation.

If you have not written a business report before, please consult Chapters 2 and Chapter 3 of the Summers and Smith (2014) Communication skills handbook, which you can find in the Course Readings > Recommended course textbook.

• Referencing: Harvard referencing

• Structure: Your report does not need an Assignment coversheet and letter of transmittal, but the rest of the structure and sections that Summers and Smith (2014) recommend you

can follow. It’s best to include recommendations in this report on the next steps to be taken for your proposed innovation to progress.

• Word count: The 3000-word count applies from the I of the introduction to the last full stop of the recommendations section, with a 10% variation.

Business Report structure

Cover page
as a title page with report title, your name, student number, course
Executive Summary
Table of contents
1. Introduction (3 parts)
a) Authorisation and Purpose
b) Limitations (note: this is the boundaries of the report, word count or personal circumstances like time you have is not a limitation)
c) Scope

2. Body of the report
o (addressing the criteria – see next slide)

3. Conclusion
4. Recommendations
5. References (Harvard referencing)
Appendices
o Clearly name each appendix and indicate its purpose