Business is an archaic subject that has always existed in human life throughout history but in today’s world it became a far more innovative and changing system. The fields of business have diversified but more importantly the methods of conducting business are also changing daily, with technology and philosophy both contributing to an ever-changing yet equally productive domain. What used to be simple commerce turned into a global electronic market to include billions of different buyers and sellers, while what once was simple metallurgy transformed into integrated metal industries and what used to be simple truck driving for cargo and passenger travel evolved into a brand new global system of fleet management. The pace is unbelievable, the resources are vast and ambitions are simply breathtaking and as global business moves towards a more integrated future, it becomes increasing more important to pay attention to changing elements and procedures to make the most out of time, resource and effort.
No day passes without hearing or reading about the mighty words of “innovation” and “progress” in the business related headlines, which leads one to consider change within the scope and limits of total transformation and constructivism. Theodore Henderson for Forbes Magazine aims at explaining the notion of innovation for modern day businesses by defining it as “the introduction of something new or different” which leads to the birth of “new ideas, devices or methods.” Henderson then focuses on the ways to utilize innovation to outline the basics of such an act as finding a useful idea, replacing an older element with a less expensive and more effective version or variant and producing social goods and benefits for the society as a whole. The reporter then gives the example of UK’s Hampshire County’s approach to road repair and maintenance which made it a lot easier and less expensive for highway maintenance crews to do their jobs: developing a mobile unit to mix ingredients on-site to create time and capital efficiency. As a result, the roads of Hampshire County are more easily and faster repaired and the society enjoys being able to rely on their municipality to immediately target issues regarding the town’s road infrastructure. Henderson adds that innovation does not necessarily mean that one needs to develop the next Google or Microsoft but rather something that is functional and efficient which is a great way of explaining progress to the upcoming generations of inventors and business leaders alike.
Along with innovation, diversity also has become a centrifugal force in modern day business paradigm and many have investigated into the issue, including Dylan Tweney for the Los Angeles Times. In his article, Tweney has interviewed Joelle Emerson of Paradigm Inc., a company that applies data-driven social-science techniques to the challenge of helping companies increase their diversity and manage more diverse workforces more effectively.” With giant clients such as Pinterest, Airbnb and Udacity, Emerson has learnt valuable lessons regarding diversity in business and has shared his key findings with Tweney for the sake of the newspaper’s readers. Moving on the assumption that diverse teams are always more innovative and prone to producing solutions, Emerson draws attention to different forms of inequality such as racially, ethnically or religiously motivated ones along with gender-based discrimination to define what is wrong about business today. Emerson then gives the example of the Silicon Valley to discuss how regardless of their public personas or statements, the investors still prefer to work with white males, providing the statistical data that most successful founders in the industry are 91.8% male and 77.5% white. Emerson then emphasizes the importance of diversity as a key element of long-term success in business performance to refer to blind audition as a utile tool to eliminate built-in biases. Applying this technique, Emerson attained excellent results for his journalist recruitment process to create an excellent team of writers who all came from different backgrounds yet equally work towards common goals with ease and efficiency. Utilizing the valuable and constructive information they brought into his company, Emerson created an extensive network of investigators to help his clients develop far more elaborate and successful business strategy, being aware of threats and opportunities on their way to greatness.
Along with innovation of the practice, comes the innovation of the mind and as thousands of new companies are emerging daily in virtually every field of business, new methods of finding, organizing and implementing talent and intellect are also making themselves visible. Crowdsourcing is one of such novelties and it has already become a global trend to help aspiring talents to find accommodation and resource and innovatively struggling companies to expand their business capabilities through intelligent new investments. However, crowdsourcing also occurs on a personal level in everyday life and as Ronda Kaysen for The New York Times reports, OurBus of Kendall Park New Jersey is a great example of such a reality. The company optimizes its users’ rides by bringing riders together through a smartphone application to arrange bus rides with special features and services offered to such passengers. The crowdsourcing element in this dialectic enables riders to figure out the proper time and method of transportation and this approach makes it especially easier for certain neighborhoods or regions of the city to organize bus rides for school children, working professionals or elderly who have little time or possibility to carry out such a function on their. The more talented and capable such organizers are, the more efficient and reliable the system becomes. Although the methodology has been experimented with before, OurBus’s efficiency in technology and appeal have placed the company into the winners list already, revealing the true power and potential of crowdsourcing both in business terms and on a personal scale.
Business is all about challenges and this is especially true for physical labor such as shipyard and container management business, which has led Google to develop Kubernetes, a software that provides business solutions to shipping docks and loading companies. The software has created wonders for the industry until certain issues of complexity were discovered about its routine and procedural structure, giving birth to further innovations such as CoreOS Tectonic which is a plug-in that works in conjunction with Kubernetes to increase the software’s efficiency and decrease its complexity. Utilizing the Kubernetes infrastructure, the software integrates existent systems into a cloud based online structure to provide further collaboration and control for its multitude of users. This is precisely why the Open Source giant Red Hat decided to acquire the company and help further develop its technical capabilities to meet larger and more specific demand types emerging from the industry. Complexity in today’s business world should be comprehended as both a problem and a solution in itself to induce and encourage technological and methodological progress to make it possible for innovation to take place. The complexity argument therefore, is only a beginning to a grander array of investigation and improvement in the business context that requires faith in business procedures along with the human factor and its intelligent solutions.
Innovation, as a great subject of investigation, is also quite a large one and a methodological explanation is almost always necessary to make sense of the whole ordeal. Marty Zwilling for The Huffington Post provides a list of list of operations to understand and apply innovation as a method of progress and development that are quite helpful in following his mindset and motivation for success. The author refers to making marching orders clear while also creating a structure for innovation to be able to decide on the parameters and elements to be calculated and used in creating metrics. On the management side of innovation, companies and executives need to reward their employees through recognition and not financial incentives to create a leadership culture that rests on the integral assumption of perfect competitive advantage. In other words, innovation should be considered as a guideline or purpose within which progress and development take form and shape in accordance with both the market and internal company dynamics. Once the structural design is implemented to bring about initial success, the executive strata should add onto the developed trend of progress to guide it smoothly and professionally and finalize the deal, evolving the business structure into the next level. Innovation in today’s business world should not only be considered as a theoretical approach but rather an organic process which includes the businesses, markets and executives of the world and demands them to collaboratively develop aims and work towards them.