Managing the Art of Innovation Assignment
Question 1
One of the world's leading diamond mining companies (De Beers), was struggling to find ways to control and minimise diamond theft. As a result, this threatened their business viability due to substantial profit losses at many of the mines at the time. In attempts to start mitigating this problem, De Beers used a combination of physical body searches and conventional x-rays to detect any smuggled diamonds.
According to Brian Ainsley, operations director at De Beers, was quoted in a Sunday Times (25 July 1999) story, ‘Rays of Hope’, as saying: "However, in the later 1980s, the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), a multilateral agency that promulgates international …show more content…
Scannex - Lodox Critical Imaging Technology, this was a radical product innovation as it was the only full body scanner of its kind in its time. It was and still is the only system in the world that provides an excellent full body image of an individual of up to 6 feet tall in only 13 seconds.
Xmplar-dr, this competence enhancing innovation enabled them to use the success they gained from their security-screening tool to venture into the medical industry. This device plays a significant role in the initial management of trauma patients and is a notable advance in the trauma-imaging repertoire. This system received a noteworthy upgrade with the introduction of the rotating C-arm, which allows images to be captured at any given angle between zero and ninety degrees. This system offers ease of use with results in as little as 5 …show more content…
The conditions within Lodox (Pty) Ltd that continued to cultivate innovation are:
The willingness to explore ideas outside of the immediate core business;
Regulatory changes and the risk of diamond theft were the first drivers of this innovation because the system had implications for people's health it was decided that it should be medically accredited. It was at this juncture that the medical possibilities were proactively explored. The principles of body scanning were not new; but the project team was thinking about them in a different context, applying different rules to the medical environment. They were thus able to generate a unique solution.
A depth of intellectual resources that enable the project to advance from one developmental stage to the next;
With the start of a new democracy in 1994, many of the state-owned military-equipment manufacturing companies started large-scale retrenchments or simply closed down as the state's defence-related expenditure dried up. Consequently, many highly skilled engineers suddenly found themselves on the labour