How Does Innovation Operate as a Knowledge Creation and Transfer Process?

“How does innovation operate as a knowledge creation and transfer process?”

Introduction

In the current complex and dynamic business environment, every company has its own competitive advantage to make them compete successfully in the market.  Cooper (2011) stated that innovation is the dynamic force for continuing growth and maintaining sustainable competitive advantage in the firms.  Entrepreneurs drive innovation to provide new products or services in the markets.  Thus, innovation is one of the most important factors for economic growth nowadays.  In this report, one of the innovative product – iPhone, will be evaluated and examine how this product being invented and commercialized in the technology market.  Consequently, lead to increase better living standard in the community and generate productivity growth in Apple.

Invention and Innovation

Invention and innovation are two different notions but are complementary.  The act of inventing means to create, design, and build new processes that did not exist previously.  Innovation starts with creative ideas that ultimately are translated into new products or services.  Innovation also includes the continuous improvements on helping your life to run better, following the sustainable growth in the business.  iPhone is one of the good examples of the innovative product.  In 2007, the iPhone transformed Apple and revolutionized the entire telecommunications industry.  At that time, people were starting to receive this innovative product in the market.  It is absolutely a new phone product, from design to functions, compared with the traditional mobile phone.  Time magazine heralded the iPhone as the best invention of 2007 (Appendix I).  It is not only due to the iPhone’s good and simplicity design, but also its new technology.  The first generation iPhone has already provided some new functions that people might not think a mobile phone can provide.  For example, the touchscreen created a whole new kind of interface on phones.  However, the touchscreen is not invented by Apple, but Apple’s engineers just used the touchscreen technology to innovate the smartphone’s user interface.

Source of the innovative iPhone

New ideas merely come from brainstorming, collaboration or experimentation.  The innovative idea of iPhone at the beginning is its minimalism.  While many phone manufacturers kept adding more and more buttons and features, Apple went in the opposite direction to produce a phone that looking simple and less clutter but with more functions.  The former CEO, Steve Jobs wanted to remove the keypad, which is one physical feature that can be found from every traditional cell phone.  Therefore, an innovative design of “single home button” was appeared on iPhone.  Jobs and his team found that the traditional cell phones got many problems on both the software and hardware.  They also got the same experiences from their friends.  For this reason, Jobs and his team wanted to make a leapfrog product – iPhone, that is smarter than any mobile device and super easy to use.  It provides a clear strategy for Apple to identify the new idea of smartphone in the market, and it is also the source of sustained competitive advantage of Apple.