INNOVATION PLAN IN WOOLSWORTH Student Name Institute Name Executive summary From last five decades, countries like Australia have enjoyed a very positive business environment with the rising in population and also development regarding infrastructure. The country is constantly enjoying the weather all across the year along with multiple open are shopping centers. These places also incorporate some outdoor elements along with closed AC areas which provide the respite from the heat in comparatively warmer places.   Contents Executive summary 2 Introduction 4 Body of report 4 Conclusion 9 References 10   Introduction To inculcate the overall spirit of innovation back in the Woolworth and also to come back as a market leader in the supermarket sector, the company must aim at improving the customer focus, and these are some of the key elements as new challenges for the company. The company is facing a lot of losses, and recent brand based issues and rise in overall competition in the sector from many global as well as domestic competitors, the company's leadership team are facing a lot of issues and challenges. There are lots of changes in management, and new concepts are being explored (Bitzer & Hamann, 2015). It is very important to understand here that the process of innovation can be successfully implemented in the right surrounding and in the culture where everyone is welcomed to innovate as well as encouraged to speak and bring in new ideas. This may look like a common logic but in reality, cannot be seen as a common base for practice. Body of report The company has already taken some concrete step on the path of innovation like establishing a state of the art facility which is considered as the first to this scale in the country. The food innovators units or center is established in support office of the country in Bella Vista, Sydney. The unit aims at putting the customer-centric while implementing innovation process on the product as well as testing the brands of the company. The company is presenting the constant efforts by the company to show the dedication toward consumers who are the central focus of the company (Bitzer & Hamann, 2015). Transformation and new concepts in supermarket influenced the Australian market a lot and completely transformed the landscape of the country. One of the top players in this sector is Woolworths which prepared a long back on achieving a way to become largest retailers in the country. The company along with another competitor namely Cols is presently ruling with almost ten percent of total sales (Methner et al, 2015). The retail sector in the country is growing with every passing day because of which the company is trying to remain flexible as well as strategic to cope with different challenges on macro as well as micro levels like changing trends of the consumer, technological advancement, new concepts, globalization and increased level of competition. The need to innovate is increasing since innovation is one of the big corporate buzzwords and has become the main topic on the blog. The main reason behind this is that it is one of the major mysteries to diverse business managers and leaders. So many research have been done for many years, and it is proved that the investment on innovation pays off in the long run. However, with so many failures, there are high percentages of managers who are skeptical about executing a breakthrough concept (Methner et al., 2015). The company also needs to build this hub completely aimed at integrating the consumers into the overall development of the product to make sure that they are giving an innovative and a quality product at reasonable prices. Most importantly, the products must be manufactured keeping in mind what the consumer will love. The company already included a lot of things like cooking school, testing room along with the innovation based kitchen. There are also many test kitchens as well along with a theater showcasing all the modern as well as inspiring designs. The overall facility is build based on creating some kind of desire to have a distinct thought process in addition to increasing the overall quality as well as taste of the food provided by this brand and also continue to make sure that the only best kind of product must reach the customers (Dos Santos et al., 2013). The innovation centre established by the company can be further developed and become successful when following steps will be followed by the company: - 1. The process of innovation always initiates with the invitation. The company has to invite more and more people in bringing more and more new ideas. The innovation in true sense will take place when people are free to raise some important ideas as well as take right kind of ownership along with executing them at the right time (Dos Santos et al., 2013). If people are instructed to take permission for every step, they might entirely stop taking any permission. 2. It is also important to understand here that the process of innovation is not a single person game; it needs a whole group of team members with right skills particularly focused on the right kind of efforts. .There is a number of companies that get appointed by an innovation department as well as recruit a CIO which mean chief innovation officer. The person can make innovation just another chimney in the company. The right message which is sent to the company is that the process of innovation is based on their work and not the responsibility of the employees. The idea here is to promote people along with cross function creativity, collaboration, trust that in reality brings some innovation to reality (Beswick et al., 2015). 3. The company must take efforts to motivate everyone to put all the concepts as well as ideas on the test as fast as possible and then reiterate. It is not the time anymore to just wait for the perfection before putting any idea to work, and the efforts will further lose the excitement before it ever takes off. Establishing a state of art facility will obviously take a lot of time, investment regarding money as well as resources. To implement it in a perfect manner, a strategy is very important which can be treated as a commitment to set of mutually reinforced policies or attitude aiming to accomplish a particular set of competitive objectives. There are good strategies which help in promoting proper alignment among many groups within the company along with clarifying goals as well as priorities (Beswick et al., 2015). It also helps in aiming the overall efforts around the aim. The company regularly has to discuss the complete business strategy along with the scope and also discuss how many functions like marketing, finance, operation, and R&D will be able to provide some support for it. Woolworth will have to set an innovation strategy where the improvement efforts of the innovation can easily become the best practice for them. In this, the company will be able to divide the whole R&D department into small teams, setting up different corporate venture based capital arms along with pursuing some external kind of alliances (Nhamo et al., 2014). It is important for the company to embrace an open innovation process along with crowdsourcing as well as collaborating with consumers and executing quick prototype function. It is also important to understand that there is nothing wrong with any of practices. The issue is that the company's capacity for innovation comes from the system along with a proper and coherent set of processes which are interdependent and these structures should also dictate the searches of the company for many novel issues as well as solutions that synthesize with ideas into the proper concept as well as product designs (Nhamo et al., 2014). Best practices of people are based on trade-offs and adoption of a particular practice normally needs many changes in the innovation system of the company. The trade off process is crucial and the company will have to understand that without proper innovation strategy it won't be able to make any trade off the decision as well as choose all the factors of the system related to innovation. The process of manufacturing is not distinct by nature from rest of the company. Woolworth will have to understand that for effective in-house manufacturing needs the best options to bring harmony in products that design specification with capabilities of the process as well as retaining and protecting much intellectual property for the company. Also, there are some restrictions as well while entering in a new area of expertise (Biddle, 2016). The retail industry specifically supermarket concept demonstrate that there are long-term influences on outsourcing. The labor cost is high for in-house manufacturing in the company which is about those of international competitors that must address through the creative process of deployment of the company's HR process. There are multiple advantages to getting from the flexible base for job design policy that motivates the overall process of transfer of the daily tools for maintenance from different operators to technicians. These kinds of advantages are based on prospects of happier and a more motivated employee. The main element is to provide the workforce with the same kind of job security while presenting optional work issues that are rewarding intrinsically and further contributes to the overall competitiveness of the company. For instance, every member of the team can have some good or positive idea about the company's development, and a successful advice permits every member in the company to safely contribute to the environment and overall competitiveness (Biddle, 2016). The evolution of supermarkets and retail industry in Australia provides an important lesson in the overall loss of the present competitive advantage. During the early time, there are some important and crucial companies including Woolworth that along with outsourcing so many products also produce things in-house. It is important to understand here that the productions of unpopulated products which cannot be fined anywhere are usually the first step to getting outsourced (Culley et al, 2017). There are many path-breaking technologies that Woolworth can introduce to make the business more sustainable. Like the concept of a smart fridge which is a innovation in the modern kitchen. There are many large manufacturers including, Samsun, GE and Frigidaire are presenting their version of the smart fridge (von Briel & Recker, 2017). Some common characteristics consist of sensors that can easily monitor the temperature along with right kind of air flow and adjustment with different areas of the refrigerators. Then there are voice controlled speakers as well as like Google and Echo Dot that are powered by the artificial intelligence technology, and these devices have the potential to completely disrupt the overall path to purchase grocery in coming time. This technology has a built-in capacity that can easily sync with the company's website for multiple shopping motives. There are some simple voice-based commands where the voice behind the technology can order multiple items for direct delivery to customers (Morioka et al., 2016). Conclusion Innovation strategy is crucial for every company these days, and there are many parts of a company that can comfortably wind up the current conflicting options even when there are some clear business strategies. Sales representatives will constantly hear about the pressing needs of some of the biggest consumers. The option of marketing may look like an opportunity to leverage the brand through many complementary products, or it may further expand the share of the market with the help of new distribution modes (Philpott, 2014). The company needs to focus on the target market, and the R&D department will take care of rest of the opportunities in new kind of technologies.   References Beswick, C., Bishop, D., & Geraghty, J. (2015). Building a Culture of Innovation: A Practical Framework for Placing Innovation at the Core of Your Business. Kogan Page Publishers. Biddle, I. (2016). The Wesfarmers/Woolworths duopoly war: The Bunnings vs. Masters battle. Busidate, 24(3), 3. Bitzer, V., & Hamann, R. (2015). The business of social and environmental innovation. In The Business of Social and Environmental Innovation (pp. 3-24). Springer International Publishing. 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