Question
Where are we headed?
Summary:
Based on the week’s readings and your understanding of the current business environment as discussed in this course, outline what you think are the major challenges facing business in the coming years and how business might innovate to address these challenges.
Sample paper
Where are we Headed
The business environment has been changing rapidly especially in the last few years. This has been attributed to a number of factors that include technological growth, an increase in competition, economic changes, and climatic changes that have resulted in the formation of new business laws and regulations to adhere to. Expansion of technology has resulted in globalization, an aspect that has played a great part in business growth and expansion to the international level. This ease of expansion has resulted in an uncontrollable growth of competition in business. For a business to survive in a modern environment, it must devise ways to be more competitive from its existing rivals and emerging rivals. The inability to do so has resulted in constant death of various businesses as their products become absolute within a short time, market shifts, competitors increase and technology changes.
Address the issue of high competitiveness in business, business organization need to be highly innovative (Drucker 1). An innovative business focuses on devising new ways of doing things at all times with the aim of being a technology and change leader in its market. This means the business must find a way of developing more powerful products that address a unique need of customers in a unique and highly satisfactory way for its existence. This must happen constantly to avoid competition as rival businesses copy their idea. Innovativeness serves a great role in addressing the aspect of high competition in business. However, it is important to note that innovativeness does not just exist in an organization. A business organization must identify strategies to employ the right people and to give them the right opportunity to be innovative. It should also devise a way of creating knowledge in the organization and transferring this knowledge to its workers to enhance the growth of innovative ideas. One way to encourage innovativeness in a competitive business environment is to diversify the workforce, and permit open communication, experimentation, and free-thinking in the organization. When workers are permitted to work freely to solve the problems they encounter, they are likely to come up with unique and innovative ways of solving those problems based on their level of knowledge and exposure. Effective collaboration in knowledge sharing among workers can also play a great part in promoting innovativeness in a business environment (Nonaka 1). An innovative business is highly able to drive changes in technology in its industry, and hence making it immune to negative consequences of technological changes such as having obsolete products
Another major challenge is the climatic changes brought about by extreme human activities including industrialization, clearing of land for human survival, and extensive use of fossil fuel among other things. Businesses have been the main contributors to environmental pollution and interference with people’s ways of life, subjecting the majority to complicated health issues, and change of culture among other things. To change this, today’s business environment is focusing more on being environmentally friendly and socially responsible. There has been an introduction of new business laws that dictate our means of production to conserve our environment. According to Alperovitz (1), today’s economy should focus more on being green by conserving on the environment and being more socially responsible by giving back to the surrounding communities. It should also focus on being more democratic rather than capitalist. An economy that cares about the needs of the surrounding and business impact on the surrounding, communities, and employ measures to ensure the wellbeing of the surrounding community and the environment.
Work Cited
Drucker, Peter. F. “The discipline of innovation”. Harvard Business Review, vol.63, no.3, 1985, pp. 67–72.
Nonaka, Ikujiro. “The Knowledge-Creating Company”. Harvard Business Review, vol. 85, no.7/8, 2007, pp.162–171.
Alperovitz, Gar. “Meet the Movement for a New Economy”. Yes Magazine, 26 May 2011, http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/the-new-economy-movement. Accessed 24 November 2019.
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