The Aerospace Division manufactures components exclusively for the aerospace and defense industry. It maintains its own divisional accounting system and policies and procedures that conform to the government's requirements to participate in competitive bidding for government contracts, most of which are multiyear contracts with follow-on opportunities. The division has its own culture and the workers very rarely interface with any other divisions in Redstone. The long-term success of the Aerospace Division was largely due to its R&D personnel that had made technical breakthroughs on many of the products that were eventually sold to the government. Almost all the major innovations came from funding on government contracts for R&D activities. Most of the smaller innovations were low-cost incremental changes internally funded by the division and related to quality improvements in their products and looking for ways to lower production costs. All the contract awards were in the millions of dollars and some multiyear contracts had been in the hundreds of millions. The Aerospace Division developed their own status reporting system aligned to government requirements and using the concepts of earned value reporting for providing status on time, cost, and scope. The status reporting system was used exclusively in the Aerospace Division. THE COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS DIVISION (CPD) The Commercial Products Division was the most profitable business unit in the company. The success of CPD was largely due to brand recognition and acceptance by their worldwide customer base. Most innovations were incremental, and management was complacent with the success of the firm and CPD's performance. However, this was about to change. Market research indicated that consumer tastes were changing. CPD's customers were expecting to see next generation products with more advanced features rather than small incremental changes to existing product lines. CPD's profitability and market share were beginning to decline. Innovation activities in the CPD were highly unstructured. Project management activities were conducted on an informal basis. Anyone who had an idea for an innovation, regardless of the type of innovation, could spend a portion of their time doing stealth or hidden innovation. Their managers would most likely provide any funding needed for experimentation, testing, or prototype development. Senior management was pleased with the results, but because innovation was unstructured, they often had no idea how much money or resources were being committed to noncontractual innovation activities. Management also did not know what innovation activities people were working on until an innovation project was officially announced. Senior management was reluctant to act as sponsors for any critical projects for fear that a project failure could damage their reputation and career. As such, lower and middle level managers were forced to assume the role of project sponsors with little if any support from above. THE CHALLENGE Redstone's management was fearful that, unless some degree of control over the internal innovation processes at the CPD took place, and reasonably soon, there could be a significant downturn in Redstone's financial health. The simplest solution was the decision to try to duplicate the innovation processes that were being performed successfully in the Aerospace Division into the CPD. First, management transferred two middle level managers from the Aerospace Division to the CPD. Both managers had more than 20 years of experience working in the Aerospace Division. Second, so as not to have to "reinvent the wheel," the managers were asked to bring with them all of the forms, guidelines, templates, and checklists used in the Aerospace Division, along with the earned value software program that tracked and reported time, cost, and scope. 

1.) Did Redstone have good intentions in wanting to add structure to the innovation processes in the CPD?

2.) Why didn't senior management in the CPD take the lead in adding structure and control to the innovation processes? 

3.) Was it a good idea to bring two experienced managers from the Aerospace Division to head up the innovation development activities at the CPD

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

Yes Redstone had good intentions in wanting to add structure to the innovation processes in the CPD ... View the full answer