Prologue Efficiency and productivity, while important, have become pass. Innovation is now the new frontier of competition among businesses and countries. Unlike traditional goals of productivity and efficiency, innovation demands a new mindset and new ways of managing processes and people. It is fraught with challenges from both inside and outside the organisation. Creativity, imagination and organisational courage are all needed to brave this new arena of competition. This assignment requires you to think and analyse critically about innovation in the real-world. Answer the questions that follow. Illustrations should be based on real-world examples. Desktop research and in-text citations are required. To justify real-world examples, URL references must be specified.

Question 1 (a) Define the concept of product innovation using your own words. Describe one (1) real-world example of a product innovation. Justify why your example can be considered an innovation. What is an ecosystem? Identify any two (2) ecosystems of your innovation example and relate why they are needed. (30 marks)

(b) It takes time for an innovation to be adopted. Discuss why this is so. Using Rogers Diffusing Theory, analyse how your innovation example was adopted over time. Suggest how adoption of your innovation example could be accelerated. Cite the sources of your information. (40 marks)

(c) Identify any two (2) major methods of Gap Analysis along with in-text citations. With the help of two (2) distinct examples or scenarios, examine how each of these two methods can be applied to discover innovation opportunities. (30 marks)