20 Sep How Does An Organization Learn to Innovate

I have provided you with several reference points about Lego’s – the iconic organization.  This week’s assignment asks you to step back and to analyze the organization, and to analyze the HR systems that were essential in their organization’s history.  This will require that you conduct additional research into the organization in order to better understand their history and market approach towards areas such as supply chain, marketing, and innovation.  Therefore, this assignment will allow you to think deeply about how HR practices can support innovation.

Innovation prompts: 

The questions below are intended to start your thinking, not as a framework for organizing your paper.  

1.  Lego has approached different ways towards innovating including a tie-in to other products such as Star Wars, movies, etc.  Some of those attempts have been useful, and some have not. What steps must an organization take to create and maintain an innovation culture?  Based on your research, is Lego’s an innovative company now? ?  (Note, this will require updating the reference materials that I provided you which are from several years ago. )

2.  What HR and leadership decisions led to their success, or their failure to continue to innovate?  

3.  Imagine that you are a consultant to Lego’s and you are asked to prepare no more than 5 slides which recommend what HR systems HR should put into place in order in the future o consistently remain a high performing organization?  These ideas may be related to the successful implementation of innovation.  The key is that you must connect your HR recommendations to the organization challenge.  In addition, you should use external research to frame your thinking.  Your recommendations must be laser-focused and specific; don’t simply recommend a culture change, for example, state what kind of a culture change must be implemented and why.  (Note, for many reasons I suggest that you NOT recommend culture change.  It is too big of a topic for this assignment. ) 

Format

Your final submission will be a PowerPoint, divided into sections.  The document should be no more than 20 pages in length, excluding the title page, an agenda, and a comprehensive list of references, which should be included at the end of the presentation.  Each slide should include a reference list to the research that is used as a reference for that page.  The final 5 pages should include your recommended HR solutions to the organization.

An assignment of this type typically requires 12 to 15 high-quality citations (which should not include the book or the reference materials that I provided). 

What you should exclude

You do not need to add a supplementary recording, nor should you write any notes at the bottom of the slides.  The slides should stand on their own. 

Please do not embed videos or supplemental links that must be viewed in order to understand your analysis. 

Please prepare in a professional PowerPoint format – which means that you are not simply taking a paper and changing it into bullets. 

Please use images and visuals sparingly as there is a lot of content you need to cover in this analysis.  I suggest that you not use 365’s slide recommendation features, which often result in nicely prepared documents without a lot of content.  If you find yourself spending a lot of time on the look of the slides then you are focusing in the wrong area.  If you are unclear about this approach then please let me know. 

LINKS:
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-lego-stopped-thinking-outside-the-box-and-innovated-inside-the-brick/

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/creating-an-innovation-culture#

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/business/global/06lego.html