Strategy of Innovation through Stakeholder Integration Krishna Kumar Regmi

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The world has been forced by financial crisis 2008 to reconsider its monetary and fiscal strategies for affecting development and growth within its respective and as a result countries are trying to check and balance economic values in and around, using austerity measures to manage successfully in the horizon of economic turbulence. This phenomenon affects overall life quality and system management of the countries. Countries in industrialized world are forced to manage essential needs of human life in tighter budget and trying to negotiate and reduce the expenses from the possibilities. Globalization is blamed for the globalization of problems and opportunity, which in result is bringing rapid changes in technological, social, socicultural, political, economical and educational life of human kind all over the world. The race of standing out, competing with others is vital since the saturation of innovative grounds in developed countries and increasing knowledge and technological skills of developing countries are being boon and curse to each other. Everyone is seeking for a safe landing struggling with contemporary economical turmoil. Europe is mustering all of what it has and proposing independent survival of institutions, in the row Finland has implied possible austerity measures for long term survival in the form of new policies, cuts, mergers and redundancies. Following the education model approved and successfully applied in Sweden, Finland is forcing change in the roots of its historical educational system and its management by bringing the sense of economic independency and competitiveness to University of Applied Sciences all over the country. As a result of this process Lahti University of Applied Sciences is proceeding towards the path of change where university is going to have a complete new structure of operation and is proposed to be turned in to a Limited liability company in future. There are always two players in every social and organizational context supposition and opposition. The generator of idea and critics of idea are the part of the organizational and social culture. Their existence is universal and prevails in the world with the existence of human civilization. There are different motive and factors for supposition and opposition which can be personal weakness or strength, societal benefit, political move, economical necessity, power etc. Whatsoever the reason is, aim is always to implements ones belief, theories and perspectives since the group either blindly, supports or opposes the idea or philosophy. This attribute of social and organizational groups create a challenge

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during change and managing change. The managers are required to create a check and balance methods and are advice to identify supposition and opposition groups in the organization. Try to train and guide opposition towards knowledge development in the new field where they feel unsecured or has no wish to grab it. This helps building trust among internal stakeholders and helps supporting the change imposed by supreme authority such as Ministry of Education Finland has directed the policy for Lahti UAS. Lahti University of Applied Science is one such University of Applied Sciences in Finland which is struggling for internal identification and branding in it local surface and is regulated by new change with altered economic support. An organization should construct a work package devised strategically to overcome change resistance, economic crisis, knowledge crisis, image crisis and to rapidly grow in terms of branding and quality of services. As a student (a stakeholder of the Lahti UAS) I would like to suggest the following strategic work package for Lahti UAS during the time of change which may help it achieve strategic strength and rapid growth in the time of crisis and grow into a model organization. Figure1 illustrate suggested strategic work package.

Figure 1: Strategy for Innovation through Stakeholder Integration Figure 1 shows that idea generation and processing among internal stakeholders is very necessary which brings the notion of trust and wholeness in the organization,

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develops understanding and an opportunity to be together in order to develop a think tank for the solution of problem and better understanding on ideas. Such a jam is seen beneficial by IBM, Volvo, Tikkurila etc., the bigger organizations in developing and creating solution for extraordinary business, social and organizational problems. According to Boston Consulting Group 2010, IBM is a successful role model of innovation jam techniques which has brought company from productization to servitaization process and business shift with higher number of innovations and patents. The external innovation jam develops understanding and idea sharing from and to organization to external authority which are indirectly affecting the performance of the organization. Such jams update the organizational networking and provide an opportunity for extra support for infrastructure development, research and innovation possibilities and national and international reorganisation. Shared values are sorted out and a new venture to develop organisation for win for alls win are triggered. Thus, it is vital to know when, why and how such events are to be organised. The understanding on stakeholders shared motive is of significance since stakeholders in a value chain are always working for a shared goal of making profit and the profit is shared objective in the majority of the cases. Innovation, social need, need for association and support are the fundamentals which can trigger interest and lead to value creation in stakeholder networks. A number of writers have advocated the role of customers and other stakeholders in value chain for value creation (Lush, 2007; Normann and Ramirez, 1993; Lusch and Vargo, 2006 etc). According to (Lush, 2007), the concepts of value and stakeholders result to an approach that can be utilized to study broader market externalities. Figure1 illustrate possible stakeholders collaboration its factors values created and creation of value in value chain. Frow and Payne (2011) proposes an iterative planning framework which consists of five processes (identify stakeholders, determine core values, facilitate dialogue and knowledge sharing, identify value co-creation opportunities and co-create stakeholders value propositions) and helps in co-creating values proposition in the stakeholder networks that can serve as a value alignment mechanism. Therefore, the process proposed by Frow and Payne (2011) lead to the exploration and creation of values among the stakeholders. Figure2 tries to depict the concepts and traces the

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mechanism developed for an iterative planning framework proposed by Frow and Payne (2011).

Figure 2: Iterative planning framework with its five processes (Concept from Frow and Payne, 2011)

A proper selection of the process can build an innovative and competitive network among stakeholders who may remain able to create value proposition and distribution using shared goals and interests along with need. Hence, identifying and using different types of resources from different sources to create the opportunity and survival by gaining competitive advantage and generating sustained superior performance is termed as value creation (Norman and Ramirez, 1993). Frow and Payne (2011) suggests that value proposition developed among stakeholders in a network can enhance the possibility for value co-creation and can deliver such a mechanism for producing higher stability within these relationships extending and strengthening the networks. Furthermore, by implying the strategy for innovation and stakeholder integration strategic approach Lahti University of Applied Sciences can overcome current crisis and develop a growing image for its future development which leads to winning a race to internationalization and satisfy internal and external stakeholders. Two way communications is recommended with less amount of bureaucracy while communicating and innovating with stakeholder.

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References Pennie Frow, Adrian Payne, (2011),A stakeholder perspective of the value proposition concept, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 45 Iss: 1 pp. 223 240 Lusch, R.F. 2007.Marketings evolving identity: defining our future. Journal of Public Policyand Marketing, Vol. 26 No. 2 Lusch, R.F. and Vargo, S.L. 2006. Service-dominant logic: as a foundation for a general theory. in Lusch, R. and Vargo, S. (Eds), The Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing: Dialog. Debate and Directions. M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY, pp. 406-20. Normann, R. and Ramirez, R. (1993), From value chain to value constellation, Harvard Business Review, July-August, pp. 65-77.

Electronic Source 50 most innovative companies of the world. Available at: innhttp://www.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/innovative_companies_2010.ht ml. accessed on 21.11.2012