This paper is dedicated to the significance of communication and employees’ training for the innovation process and the interconnectedness of various factors for its efficiency.
For a successful implementation of innovation, the efforts of a company’s all employees are required. In other words, they should work as a team for the achievement of common innovation-related goals. In this case, communication between staff and management is highly essential in the process of change. In the case of PowerDoc, the finance director and the data processing managers should have communicated with secretaries to share their thoughts, ask their opinion in relation to innovation, and provide training on the basis of an accepted variant (PowerDoc, no date). First of all, according to Goryachev (2018), human progress occurs only when people share their ideas and work together to turn them into reality. Thus, communication allows to collectively reflect on innovation-related options, and people’s various opinions, knowledge, and experience may contribute to the choice of the most appropriate variants. In addition, a lack of communication frequently leads to workers’ rejection of change as they simply do not understand its purpose (Galbraith, 2018; Warrell, 2017). In turn, communication helps spread awareness on the importance of innovation and reduce misunderstanding. Finally, through the communication managers as leaders may improve employees’ productivity, motivation, and commitment to change, which were absent in PowerDoc.
The innovation process may be regarded as the interconnectedness of technological, market, and organizational factors. First of all, it starts with the company’s realization of the necessity of change presupposed by customers’ needs within the framework of the competitive environment (Goffin and Mitchell, 2017; Hayes, 2018). These needs require either the introduction of new products and services or the optimization of organizational processes through the implementation of new systems (Lopes et al., 2016; Satell, 2015). For it, a company’s resources, capabilities, management and leadership style, organizational structure, and employees’ readiness to change should ensure the implementation of innovation (Smith et al., 2008; Clegg, Harris and Hopfl, 2011; Dodgson, Gann and Satter, 2008). In the case of PowerDoc, the company’s failure was determined by the absence of the factors’ interconnectedness (PowerDoc, no date). Market factors imply the necessity to increase output due to extended customer base to stay competitive. Technological factor implies a common word-processing pool for employees’ productivity and cost reduction. However, the organization’s culture, management style, and the absence of communication led to negative outcomes.
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