Evaluate creative and innovative organizational structures
Recommend alternative innovations to solve an internal or market need
Implement creative and innovative processes within an organization
Overview
Companies that are innovative must make sure their organization is structured in a way that supports innovation. A key component of innovation is keeping track of what customers want in terms of products and services. Your CTO has asked you to lead a cross-functional team to develop an innovation strategy and a plan for moving the strategy forward.

Scenario
You work as a middle manager for one of the top U.S. producers of luxury and mass-market automobiles and trucks.

The chief technology officer (CTO) of your company has been watching new technology developments that the company could integrate into its vehicles to enhance the usefulness of and access to the data acquired by the many digital sensors that have been integrated into vehicle subsystems over the past 20–30 years. The technology trend of particular interest is the internet of things (IoT)—the interconnection of embedded devices, such as sensors and computers, over the internet. By taking advantage of this trend, the CTO believes the company can seize an opportunity to provide better service and predictive maintenance to its customers, improving customer satisfaction and adding additional revenue streams.

Based on briefings by the CTO, senior management has decided to implement IoT in its product line. Your CTO has asked you to lead a cross-functional team to take this initiative forward. Your first task is to make a recommendation for how the company should approach this business problem. Do you recommend using incremental or discontinuous (that is, slow or fast) innovation? Specifically:

Should the company…

Design a completely new product line, based on the new technology (discontinuous innovation)
or

Add new technology features into one model and then incrementally into the broader product line (incremental innovation)
The recommendation you and your team make is an important first step in pursuing this new technology.

In Milestone One, you and your team defined what that IoT innovation looked like: would it be discontinuous (new product line) or incremental (new features in one existing product)?

In Milestone Two, you developed a strategy plan and a high-level business model. You shared these with various stakeholders, and they agree with your assessment of how best to get this IoT innovation to market, which will help the company stay competitive.

Now, the CTO has asked you to propose an organizational structure that will support the innovation implementation. In this way, you will be assisting in making innovation sustainable in your company.

Directions
Your final project includes three parts. You will use your slides from Milestone One and your document from Milestone Two to complete the first two parts of the project. In Part Three, you will focus on your organization’s structure and culture. You should incorporate the feedback you received on your milestone submissions and add it to your initial research to maximize the quality of your final project submission. It is important to remember that “Proficient” was the highest possible rating for the Milestone One and Milestone Two rubric criteria. Revising the work done in your milestone assignments allows you to enhance your final project submission and aim for “Exceeds Expectations” ratings across the final project rubric criteria.

Use the resources that you referenced in your previously submitted assignments to support your work on the project.

Part One: Innovation Approach
In this section, share your revised slides from Milestone One and make your recommendation for the innovation approach you think the company should pursue.

Specifically, you must address the following rubric criteria:

Explain potential risks and benefits for Options A, discontinuous innovation, and B, incremental innovation.