Article 1 "Innovation: Its Links with Productivity and Skill Development"

Innovation: Its Links with Productivity and Skill Development

Nur Shaliha Binti Mohd Kahar

MP111096

ARTICLE REVIEW

            John Stanwick in his article entitled ‘Innovation: Its links with productivity and skill development’ was published by NCVER - Department of Education, Employment of Australian Government has discussed about the relationship of productivity at the enterprise level and its contribution towards national prosperity. This article also describes various meanings of innovation and several skills that contribute to innovation. The author has stated that there are several definitions of innovation. One of the definitions for innovation is technological innovation a result of several factors which are including the impact and contribution towards society and productivity respectively. Innovation has two concept’s terms which are incremental innovation and radical innovation. Radical innovation is a changing of major technological meanwhile the incremental innovation is a concept of minor changes and modification for existing products, services and process which is generally related in business improvement or continuous improvement within an enterprise.

The author has described the innovation has left impacts to some aspect of perspective. One of them is the view of economy towards productivity. Basically, innovation does not only leave positive impacts towards productivity, it also has negative impacts as it can be a risky activity. Being innovative has made more firms to increase their profits as these firms managed to compete in the current market while the firms without innovation has become losers in the market. .Innovative firms use more technology rather than the non-innovative firms, as the type of skills used by the innovative firms would be more complex if to compare with the later firms.

The author has also explained the skills for innovation. The foundation for innovative practice is underlying skills and knowledge of a vocation. The skills required depend on the context which a mixture of technical and generic skills. Meanwhile the radical innovation requires the elite scientific, engineering and design occupation. But there is an argument of fundamental skills and knowledge which are important to innovation. The author claimed that the fundamental skills are based on the ability to learn, adaptability, changing and to be creative meanwhile the actual skills used in innovation are learning on the job formally. The skills are used vary in industry which easily to understand by comparison between innovative firm and non-innovative firm.

Innovative firms have made themselves to be able to face the risky world as they have the ability to learn, to adapt, to change and to be creative. These abilities are significant for companies in encountering any problems raised as the world economy are always fluctuating. Thus, these firms are innovative in a sense of other than the skills traditionally associated with innovation. It means that they are more open in the marketing strategies, business management, finance and IT and affirmatively creativity.

Innovation does not only affect the firm solely, it covers the government, enterprises and those working in respective sectors. Being innovative allows the workers to work in variety of situations. Other than the fundamental skills and knowledge of a vocation, the workers have to have the ability to ‘learn to learn’, to solve problems and adapt to different situations. In order to have innovative workers, the primary role, which is the government, must provide a basic education and training. Nonetheless, the people also have to encourage themselves regarding this matter or the effects will not take place. As for enterprises, preparing and enhancing a culture of innovation can create innovative workers by applying the concept of openness in innovations. The management and the organisation themselves should be able to collaborate and share with other networks in order to have a more innovative and flexible workers.

DISCUSSION

Innovation ensures a better life for the people as it leaves big impacts to different areas from life to environment, from education to the standard of living and from economy to wealth. Innovation has created many new things with both positive and negative impacts even it is not necessarily creating a new item. Being creative is more to creating a totally new thing while being innovative is making small or some changes to make one thing to be better or more flexible to suit different situations. A simple example would be a Toyota Camry, where it has undergone a few innovations since it first introduced to the world in 1983. The car is still being used until today, not to mention that it is also still in a high demand in the current car market. Innovation by the Toyota Company has made the car to be suitable in today’s transportation needs. Thus, this shows the relations between innovation and how it can leave impacts towards productivity, economy and prosperity.

As mentioned before, innovation does not only conclude new products, services and processes. It also covers research, development, environment, education, economy and many more, as long as the aspect could undergo a few adjustments in order to make it better in its respective intention. In a more focused aspect, the productivity and skill development, they could also experience innovations. As an example, Samsung Telecommunications has produced different hand phones with a similar technology in order to suit the different walks of life. Innovations by this company are made to achieve the many needs of the users and to increase the sale of its hand phones, where nowadays it is proven that more people are using Samsung hand phones rather than the well-known Apple hand phones, the iPhone. Thus, the productivity of Samsung hand phones increased as the demand for the phones arisen. The relation between how innovations can increase productivity can be clearly seen in this hand phones product.

On top of innovations by a company or being innovative by the workers, skills and knowledge of an occupation are the basics of innovative practice. Application of skills and the knowledge of a job can train the workers to practice innovations in their daily job. Creative ideas will take place when the workers encounter problems in solving certain issues. These ideas are to make the work to be done easier and more effectively. Other than that, modification on certain products requires certain amount of skills for the product improvements. As for example, in order to formulate a better detergent, one has to know about the basic structure of a detergent and what its main purpose is. Knowledge of an occupation can be related to one’s experience about the job, which means they already have the expertise in respective field. By being innovative, one is able to fit the detergent with the necessity of consumers such as detergents for white clothes, coloured clothes, hard-stained clothes or antibacterial clothes. This creates a better opportunity in gaining larger profit for a company other than the increment in producing the detergents.

Marketing skill has the highest difference between innovation-active businesses and non-innovation-active businesses. As for the innovation-active businesses, they do not invest in creating new products where it requires abundance of money. They invest in improving the same product resulting to lesser time and money needed in acknowledging the consumers about their products. Moreover, this innovation helps the company in cutting down the cost to introduce their products as well as creating regular customers and maintaining the products popularity. Marketing is not the traditional innovation skill such as the research and development skills, but it is also able to increase the sales of the products just as how the research and development does. Apart from that, there are many other skills of innovations can be applied to increase productivity and profitability such as engineering, business management, transport, plans and logistics and many more.

Workers who are able to ‘learn to learn’ are mentally prepared with innovations rather than those who are not. New technologies and more problems are created either on purpose or by coincidence that force companies to compete among themselves to always be the leader in their expertise. Thus, the leadership of these companies have to be more open and more encouraging towards their workers to always learn and able to adapt to new situations. Plus, the government preparations on basic education for the people must also be related to innovations. This means that the implementation of innovative skills is needed in the education system, while the people are also ready to absorb the implemented skills. Last but not least, innovative practice is important to increase productivity while applying the various skills of innovations in either learning, training or working.

Stanwick, J. (2011). Innovation: Its Links With Productivity and Skill Development – at a glance, NCVER.