Case Study Of Elecon Engineering Co. Ltd.

Abstract
This paper contains details about a problem faced in Elecon Engineering Co. Ltd. (Anand-Sojitra road, Vallabh Vidhyanagar-388120, Gujarat, India) and a solution by means of proper application of innovation management. Elecon Engineering Company Ltd. Was established in the year 1951as ‘The Pioneers’ in the manufacturing of industrial geared motors and reducers, material handling equipment and industrial gears in Asia. The company wanted to establish a new fully automated plant in order to double the current gear box manufacturing capacity. It was a very innovative idea back then in 2008-2010 for the company. There was a problem with the idea though. It so happened that not every employee of the company was involved in this decision
The top management didn’t think about the end results of such a drastic change and that to radical change and instead their focus was on just increasing the production which would lead to increased profit. Due to this, the company had to face a huge loss. The investment was so high that it took almost half a decade for the company just to get back on the track with zero profit. The point in writing this paper is that, it suggests a solution through which company would have avoided this situation. This solution can be generalized and applied to almost every industry out there who are thinking of innovation management.
Keywords: Innovation management, Hierarchy, Accountability, Autonomy.
Innovation management through autonomy, accountability and breaking down the hierarchy barrier. Innovation is a source of advancement and development. The management guru Peter Drucker observes that ‘innovation is
hierarchy. It often happens that there might be some amazing and worthy ideas with the employee who is at the bottom most level according to the hierarchy structure. In such a situation, either his/her idea is neglected if presented to the top management or sometimes there comes a ‘may-be-later’ (Moore, 2017) culture or sometimes the idea is not even asked for. The employees are only supposed to do what their superiors ask them to do. However, this should not be the case. This has to change for innovations to really make a breakthrough or on that note even exist. Everyone has creativity to a certain level and it’s just a matter of time until one finds it and decides to act upon it to achieve success as one always dreams about. Again, the innovation model can be divided in two models. The first type is incremental and should be practiced by the portion of the organization that is focused on execution whereas the second type is architectural or discontinuous, which is for more ambitious type of innovation. The Ambidextrous organization model, ensures that the role of top management is to bring together both the components of the organization into a common vision of firm and to put in place the management process that balances both agendas (Stamm