Management and Sam Walton
1. Why is innovative management important and how have Wal-Mart’s leader demonstrated innovation throughout the company’s history?
Innovation management is the discipline of managing processes in innovation. It can be used to develop both product and organizational innovation. Innovation management includes a set of tools that allow managers and engineers to cooperate with a common understanding of goals and processes. The focus of innovation management is to allow the organization to respond to an external or internal opportunity, and use its creative efforts to introduce new ideas, processes or products. Importantly, it involves workers at every level in contributing creatively to a company's development, manufacturing, and marketing. By utilizing appropriate innovation management tools, management can trigger and deploy the creative juices of the whole work force towards the continuous development of a company. The process can be viewed as an evolutionary integration of organization, technology and market by iterating series of activities: search, select, implement and capture.
In 1960s, Sam Walton (founder of Wal-Mart) achieve higher sales volumes by keeping sales price lower than his competitors by reducing his profit margin. He relied on them to give customers the great shopping experience that would keep them coming back. “If we work together,” he said, “we’ll lower the cost of living for everyone… we’ll give the world on opportunity to see what it’s like to save and have a better life.” In order to gain the highest profit in retail business, Wal-Mart’s leader had used innovation.
2. Which management perspectives of the past century influenced Sam Walton and Wal-Mart?
Sam Walton used classical perspective which emphasized on development of large complex organizations demanded a new perspective on coordination and control. It is scientific management. Sam Walton introduced ‘profit sharing plan’. It was a plan for Wal-Mart employees to improve their
Innovation management is the discipline of managing processes in innovation. It can be used to develop both product and organizational innovation. Innovation management includes a set of tools that allow managers and engineers to cooperate with a common understanding of goals and processes. The focus of innovation management is to allow the organization to respond to an external or internal opportunity, and use its creative efforts to introduce new ideas, processes or products. Importantly, it involves workers at every level in contributing creatively to a company's development, manufacturing, and marketing. By utilizing appropriate innovation management tools, management can trigger and deploy the creative juices of the whole work force towards the continuous development of a company. The process can be viewed as an evolutionary integration of organization, technology and market by iterating series of activities: search, select, implement and capture.
In 1960s, Sam Walton (founder of Wal-Mart) achieve higher sales volumes by keeping sales price lower than his competitors by reducing his profit margin. He relied on them to give customers the great shopping experience that would keep them coming back. “If we work together,” he said, “we’ll lower the cost of living for everyone… we’ll give the world on opportunity to see what it’s like to save and have a better life.” In order to gain the highest profit in retail business, Wal-Mart’s leader had used innovation.
2. Which management perspectives of the past century influenced Sam Walton and Wal-Mart?
Sam Walton used classical perspective which emphasized on development of large complex organizations demanded a new perspective on coordination and control. It is scientific management. Sam Walton introduced ‘profit sharing plan’. It was a plan for Wal-Mart employees to improve their