Develop a PowerPoint presentation of 20–25 slides designed to educate your professional colleagues about important leadership practices and discovery skills that support leading innovation in organizations.
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:
- Competency 1: Analyze contemporary leadership practices from the perspective of innovation in a global environment.
- Analyze three leadership practices for leading innovation.
- Competency 2: Evaluate the leadership skills that drive innovation
- Analyze three discovery skills for leading innovation.
- Competency 3: Evaluate what leaders of innovation do to shape organizational culture.
- Develop a presentation that explains practices and skills critical for success.
- Competency 4: Communicate in a manner that is professional and consistent with expectations for members of the business professions.
- Communicate in a manner that is professional and consistent with expectations for members of the business professions. Innovation is not an issue relevant only to creative people or cutting edge, high-tech companies. The truth is that all organizations benefit from innovation. This is true for high-tech and low-tech companies, for-profit and non-profit organizations, entrepreneurial start-ups and mature organizations, and all other organizations. Innovation is important in all situations because all organizations must be in a continuous state of change to ensure their relevance and competitive standing in the future.One way to illustrate the truth of this is to explore the broad array of companies and product types that engage in innovation. You can easily do this by exploring a number of interesting Web sites that highlight innovative people and organizations.
Preparation
To prepare for this assessment, complete the following:
- Select at least three leadership practices and at least three discovery skills (one of which must be “associating”). Consider works by Dyer, Gregersen, and Christensen listed in the Resources or research you have done for previous assessments to make these selections.
- Look at the Web sites listed in the Resources under the Internet Resources heading; these Web sites highlight new products and innovations in product design. From these Web sites (or others you find), select three articles to analyze in terms of how your selected leadership practices and innovation skills are evident and critical to the success of the products or services highlighted in the articles.
- You may also wish to explore the Harvard Business Review (HBR) Blog Network (linked in the Resources), which is an excellent source of articles on a variety of business and leadership topics, including leading innovation. In addition, you may use your favorite search engine to find other Web resources by searching “innovation leadership,” “leading innovation,” “design innovation,” “innovative products,” or other related search terms. Be careful to evaluate the quality and reliability of any resource that you use for professional and scholarly purposes.
PowerPoint Presentation
Organize your findings from your preparation work into a slide presentation (using PowerPoint or a similar product) of 20–25 slides. Prepare a presentation designed to educate your professional colleagues on what you have learned about important leadership practices and discovery skills that support leading innovation in organizations. In your presentation, be sure to do the following:
- Analyze and clearly discuss the three leadership practices you have chosen.
- Analyze and clearly discuss the three discovery skills you have chosen (one of which must be “associating”).
- Explain to your audience why these practices and skills are critical to the success of the innovative products or services in the articles you selected from your Web research.
Presentation Requirements
Include the following in your PowerPoint presentation:
- Format your presentation with four to five bulleted points per slide, limiting the content to about five to six words per point.
- Use the Notes area of each slide to provide background and support for the content of each slide. Type your full speaking script for each slide. Some of your slides should include a visual component (graphics, images, charts, et cetera) that reinforces and supports the content.
- Provide a title slide and a final slide for your references. Do not count these two slides in the 20–25 required for the PowerPoint content.
- Include a minimum of three scholarly resources on your references slide, listing them in APA format.
- The background color of your slides should be neutral (but not white) and the slide transitions, fonts, and graphics (if included) should not be distracting from the presentation.
- Submit your presentation as a PPT or PPTX file.
If you have limited experience using PowerPoint, take advantage of the self-paced tutorials linked in the left navigation menu under Supplemental Resources to ensure you are prepared to complete this assessment. These self-paced tutorials can help you enhance your skills in PowerPoint, adding a useful tool to your professional communication toolbox.
You will be evaluated on how well you communicate your analysis and insights. It is expected that you will communicate in a manner that is professional and consistent with expectations for members of the business professions.
Additional Requirements
- Written communication: Written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
- APA formatting: Resources and citations are formatted according to APA (6th edition) style and formatting.
- Number of resources: Use a minimum of 3 resources.
- Length of paper: Create 20–25 slides.
- Font and font size: Use fonts and font sizes appropriate for slide presentations.
Assessment 4
Write an analysis of 5–8 pages in which you address how the leader at an organization demonstrates the three levels of thinking and action that support innovation (global, personal, and organizational).
Effective leaders of innovation must consider three levels of thinking and action:
- They must consider the global context in which their organization competes.
- They must strategize their personal actions for innovation.
- They must shape their organization’s culture and processes to enable innovatio
This assessment provides an opportunity to explore and analyze all three levels.
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:
- Competency 1: Analyze contemporary leadership practices from the perspective of innovation in a global environment.
- Analyze which leadership practices would encourage innovation.
- Competency 2: Evaluate the leadership skills that drive innovation
- Assess how the information in a case study exemplifies the five discovery skills of innovation leaders.
- Competency 3: Evaluate what leaders of innovation do to shape organizational culture.
- Assess how the actions taken in a case study shaped culture to be more innovative.
- Competency 4: Communicate in a manner that is professional and consistent with expectations for members of the business professions.
- Communicate in a manner that is professional and consistent with expectations for members of the business professions.
- For this assessment, integrate what you have learned from your research, reading, and previous assessments to demonstrate your mastery of the course competencies. To prepare, use the library databases listed in the Resources, or other case study databases of your choosing, to explore cases in which organizations have demonstrated an environment of innovation. Choose one case study organization to research in depth. Select an organization that has not already been studied in this class. Integrate information from the case study with research from supporting resources that address innovation at this organization.
Develop an analysis discussing how the leader at the organization in your case study demonstrated the three levels of thinking and action that support innovation (global, personal, and organizational). Include the following in your analysis:
- Analyze which leadership practices would encourage innovation, considering the global context of the organization in your chosen case. Explain why you chose these practices and how they would help the leader perform his or her responsibilities as a leader of innovation.
- Assess how the chosen case study exemplifies or does not exemplify (or both) the five discovery skills of innovation leaders.
- Assess the actions that the leader in your case study took in order to shape organizational culture to be more innovative.
Organize your paper into carefully labeled sections devoted to each of the topics outlined above. Make sure that the reader can easily find each section. Support each section by your research on the topics. You may use the readings listed in the Resources as some of your supporting resources for the assessment. You may include graphs or diagrams in appendices if they are well explained and applicable.
You will be evaluated on how well you communicate your insights. It is expected that you will communicate in a manner that is professional and consistent with expectations for members of the business professions.
Additional Requirements
- Written communication: Written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
- APA formatting: Resources and citations are formatted according to APA (6th edition) style and formatting.
- Number of resources: Use a minimum of 3–5 resources.
- Length of paper: Write 5–8 typed, double-spaced pages. The content of your paper, excluding appendices, should be at least 5–6 pages.
- Appendices: Graphs or diagrams may be included in appendices if they are well explained and applicable.
- Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12 point.
- Communicate in a manner that is professional and consistent with expectations for members of the business professions. Innovation is not an issue relevant only to creative people or cutting edge, high-tech companies. The truth is that all organizations benefit from innovation. This is true for high-tech and low-tech companies, for-profit and non-profit organizations, entrepreneurial start-ups and mature organizations, and all other organizations. Innovation is important in all situations because all organizations must be in a continuous state of change to ensure their relevance and competitive standing in the future.One way to illustrate the truth of this is to explore the broad array of companies and product types that engage in innovation. You can easily do this by exploring a number of interesting Web sites that highlight innovative people and organizations.
