Give two examples of ‘listening posts’ established to scan the environment and diffuse innovation from one geographical location to other parts of the company.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Scanning involves gaining access to external knowledge from what people read, hear, or experience at first hand. Important observations and innovative ideas can emerge from anywhere in the multinational. Although new insights often come as a by-product of ongoing operations and especially when lateral thinking is encouraged and rewarded in the organisation, specific investments in scanning may also enhance the external acquisition of new knowledge. The establishment of a ‘listening post’ is a fairly inexpensive way to begin. P&G appointed 70 technology entrepreneurs to work in the company’s regional hubs to scan their environments for ideas that might be useful for the corporation worldwide. The Taiwanese PC-manufacturer Acer established a small design shop in the US, through which it acquired skills in ergonomic design that were fed back to the parent organisation (Doz et al., 2001). Ericsson, the Swedish telecommunications firm, created ‘cyberlabs’ in New York and Palo Alto (next to Stanford University in Silicon Valley) whose task was to monitor developments in these markets and to build relationships with local companies (Birkinshaw, 2004).