CMI 517 Assignment Example

Innovation can transform organisations, teams, and individual performance. When a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship is encouraged, new ideas and initiatives can thrive. CMI 517 Principles of Innovation aims to help learners identify opportunities for workplace innovation—such as new practices, processes, products, or services—understand why these initiatives are valuable, and learn how to bring ideas to life.

Ashcombe Mills Limited manufactures technical textiles for automotive, filtration and protective clothing markets from two sites in West Yorkshire, employing 430 people. The business has operated for over a century and competes against lower-cost overseas producers. The author is Technical Director. The worked example used in Learning Outcome 2 is the development of a recycled-content filtration fabric produced from reclaimed post-industrial waste. Organisational detail is illustrative and anonymised.

Learning Outcome 1: Understand the role of innovation within organisations

AC 1.1 Examine the reasons for innovation in organisations

Defending a position that is being eroded. The primary reason at Ashcombe is that the commodity end of its market has moved overseas and cannot be recovered on cost. Examining what follows, the choice is not whether to innovate but whether to move up the value chain or exit. Blockbuster illustrates the alternative: it declined to buy Netflix in 2000 for fifty million dollars, protected a store estate generating late fees, and the estate closed.

Regulatory and legislative pressure. Examining a driver that has become dominant in materials businesses, extended producer responsibility for packaging, restrictions on certain chemistries and customer carbon reporting requirements have forced product reformulation regardless of commercial preference. Regulation compels innovation as often as markets do.

Customer requirement moving ahead of the sector. Examining this reason, Ashcombe’s automotive customers now specify recycled content as a condition of tender, driven by their own reporting obligations. A supplier unable to meet that specification loses eligibility before price is discussed.

Cost and margin recovery. Energy costs in textile finishing are substantial and rose sharply. Examining the consequence, process innovation aimed at reducing energy per metre is not an improvement project but a margin defence.

Technological possibility. Examining this reason, mechanical recycling of mixed polymer waste became commercially viable only recently. Some innovations occur because something newly became possible rather than because anyone demanded it.

Resilience after supply disruption. Examining a reason that gained force after 2020 and again during subsequent freight disruption, dependence on a single overseas supplier for a key input proved fragile. Innovation aimed at qualifying domestic or reclaimed inputs is a resilience investment rather than a growth one.

Attracting and holding capability. Examining a reason manufacturers undervalue, technically ambitious work attracts engineers and holds them, and evidence links how people experience their work to commitment and retention (Barends, Rousseau and Janssen, 2023). Ashcombe competes for graduates against employers with better pay and wins occasionally on the interest of the work.

AC 1.2 Analyse the types of innovation within organisations

Product innovation. Introducing new or improved goods. Analysing an instance, Gore-Tex created an entirely new category in breathable membranes. At Ashcombe the recycled filtration fabric is product innovation in the conventional sense.

Process innovation. Changing how something is made. Analysing its characteristics, process innovation is invisible to the customer and frequently produces the largest financial return, which is also why it attracts the least internal recognition. Ashcombe’s heat recovery on the stenter line reduced gas consumption by 19 per cent and nobody outside operations noticed.

Service innovation. Changing how value is delivered rather than what is delivered. Analysing an example within manufacturing, offering customers technical development support alongside supply changed the relationship from transactional to collaborative without altering any product.

Position innovation. Changing the perceived context of an offering. Analysing this type, a fabric developed for automotive filtration was repositioned into industrial air handling with no technical change whatsoever, opening a market at effectively no development cost. This is the cheapest form of innovation available and consistently overlooked.

Business model innovation. Altering how value is created and captured. Analysing an illustration, Rolls-Royce charging for engine flying hours rather than selling engines shifted the commercial logic entirely. Ashcombe has considered a take-back arrangement in which used fabric returns as feedstock, which would change the model rather than the product.

Incremental against radical. Analysing the balance, a century-old manufacturer accumulates enormous incremental capability and becomes correspondingly poor at radical change. Ashcombe’s process engineers improve yields continuously and the business has introduced two genuinely new product families in twenty years.

Sustaining against disruption. Christensen’s distinction separates innovation that improves offerings for existing customers from innovation that begins by serving an overlooked segment more cheaply or simply before improving to displace incumbents. Analysing why established firms miss the second, disruptive entrants initially look unattractive to the customers an incumbent values most, which makes ignoring them rational right up to the point it becomes terminal.

Open against closed innovation. Analysing this distinction, closed innovation develops everything internally while open innovation draws deliberately on external partners. Ashcombe developed the recycled fabric with a materials science department and a waste processor, neither of which it could have replaced internally.

AC 1.3 Evaluate THREE factors that support a culture of innovation in organisations

Factor one: psychological safety. The shared belief that raising an untested idea, challenging a decision or reporting a failed trial will not be penalised. Evaluating its standing among the factors, it is foundational because every other mechanism depends on people being willing to speak. Research links psychological safety to learning behaviour and to innovative performance specifically, with communication behaviour identified as the mediating pathway (Jin and Peng, 2024; Capezio et al., 2023).

Evaluating it critically, the concept is often mistaken for a comfortable atmosphere. A safe team is one where disagreement is possible, not one where it is avoided, and organisations pursuing harmony frequently suppress the very challenge that produces improvement. Its weakness as a management lever is that it cannot be declared; staff infer it from how the first failed trial is treated. At Ashcombe a shift manager was publicly criticised for a scrapped batch during a trial run, and the flow of process suggestions from that shift stopped for months.

Factor two: structural slack and protected resources. Evaluating this factor, innovation requires capacity that is not committed to current output, and a plant running at full utilisation with every hour cost against a job has no room in which anything new can be attempted. Ashcombe allocates one production shift per month to development trials, which costs measurable output and is the clearest signal the business gives about priority.

Evaluating it critically, slack is the first thing removed under commercial pressure and the removal is always defensible in the moment. It also requires discipline, since unstructured slack produces activity rather than progress. The version that works pairs protected time with a requirement to state what is being tested and why.

Factor three: cross-boundary contact and diversity of input. Evaluating this factor, innovation typically occurs where different knowledge meets, and an organisation whose technical staff talk only to one another produces variations on what it already knows. The recycled fabric originated in a conversation between a process engineer and a waste contractor, which is not a conversation the organisation chart provides for.

Evaluating it critically, cross-boundary working carries coordination cost and generates friction, and research on functionally diverse groups indicates the benefit is realised only where psychological safety allows the differences to be voiced rather than smoothed over (Wax et al., 2024). Diversity of input without safety produces polite meetings and no new information, which returns the argument to the first factor.

Learning Outcome 2: Understand the process of managing innovation in an organisation

This section uses one example throughout: the development of a recycled-content filtration fabric produced from reclaimed post-industrial waste.

AC 2.1 Evaluate THREE methods used to drive innovation in an organisation

Method one: stage-gate development. A structured sequence in which a project passes through defined phases with a formal decision at each gate to continue, hold, redirect or stop.

Evaluating its use at Ashcombe, its strength in a capital-intensive manufacturer is that it prevents commitment of plant time and materials until each stage of technical risk has been retired. The recycled fabric passed four gates over eighteen months, and at the second the fibre length achievable from reclaimed waste proved marginal, which triggered a redirect towards a blended construction rather than the abandonment that would otherwise have followed.

Evaluating its limitations, the method is deliberately slow, it favours projects that can articulate a business case early, and it can suppress genuinely novel proposals that cannot yet demonstrate a market. It also encourages sunk-cost thinking, since gates are more often passed than failed once investment has begun.

Method two: structured internal idea generation. A managed route through which staff submit improvement and product ideas, with defined feedback, visible outcomes and recognition.

Evaluating this method, its strength is that the people who see the problems daily are the operators, and Ashcombe’s scheme generates around ninety suggestions annually of which perhaps eight become projects. Evaluating what determines whether such schemes survive is feedback rather than reward: a suggestion acknowledged and explained sustains participation, while silence ends it within a quarter regardless of any prize offered.

Its weaknesses are that internal schemes generate incremental ideas almost exclusively, because operators think within the system they know, and that quality is highly variable.

Method three: open innovation through external collaboration. Deliberately drawing capability, knowledge and ideas from outside the organisation.

Evaluating this method, Ashcombe possessed no polymer science capability and could not have characterised the reclaimed feedstock alone. The university partnership supplied that, and the waste processor supplied material knowledge and a route to supply. Evaluating the costs honestly, the collaboration agreement took five months to negotiate, intellectual property ownership required careful definition, and academic timescales did not align with commercial ones.

A note on cost and sequencing. Evaluating the three on what they consume, stage-gate is expensive in management time and cheap in capital because it prevents commitment; internal idea generation is almost free and produces low-value ideas in high volume; open innovation is expensive in elapsed time and is the only route to capability the business does not hold. Evaluating the sequencing that worked, open innovation had to come first because without polymer characterisation there was nothing to take to a gate.

Comparative evaluation. The three operate at different points and were used together. Open innovation supplied capability the business lacked, internal generation supplied the process improvements that made production viable, and stage-gate governed the commitment of capital. Evaluating them on their failure modes, stage-gate alone produces safe incremental projects, internal schemes alone produce no radical change, and open innovation alone acquires capability without the discipline to convert it.

AC 2.2 Examine the process for innovation in an organisation

Search and idea generation. Scanning for signals internally and externally: customer requirements, regulatory direction, technology developments, competitor activity and staff observation. Examining the origin here, the idea came from a supplier conversation rather than from any formal scanning process, which is a common pattern and an argument for cross-boundary contact rather than for better scanning systems.

Selection and screening. Filtering against strategic fit, technical feasibility, market potential and resource requirement. Examining why this stage carries disproportionate weight, a manufacturer can run perhaps three development projects concurrently, so selection determines everything that follows. Ashcombe screens against published criteria, which matters principally because it makes rejection explicable to the person whose idea was declined.

Development and technical validation. Laboratory work, sample production, testing against specification and trial runs on production plants. Examining this stage, it consumes the majority of elapsed time and is where most projects should stop, and a development portfolio in which everything proceeds is not being tested rigorously.

Customer validation. Examining a stage specific to business-to-business manufacturing, the product must be qualified by the customer’s own approval process, which for automotive applications took eleven months and was entirely outside Ashcombe’s control. Examining the planning implication, a development timeline that ignores customer qualification will be wrong by a year.

Industrialisation and implementation. Scaling from trial to routine production: process settings, quality control, supply arrangements, training and costing. Examining the frequent failure, a fabric that runs successfully in a trial with the technical director present frequently fails in routine production, and the difference is usually documentation and operator training rather than technology.

Commercialisation and value capture. Pricing, positioning and launch to market.

Review and learn. Examining the stage most often omitted, Ashcombe learned more from a failed antimicrobial coating project than from this successful one, and only because a structured review was required before the next gate submission.

Examining the process overall, it is iterative rather than linear. Development returned to selection twice when testing revealed the original specification was unachievable, and Maylor and Turner (2022) observe that treating such processes as sequential is a principal cause of poor decisions at the front end.

AC 2.3 Discuss the role of the manager in leading innovation in an organisation

Establishing the conditions. Discussing the manager’s foundational contribution, it is creating an environment where ideas are voiced. Buchanan and Huczynski (2023) note that innovative behaviour responds to what people perceive as safe rather than to what is formally invited, which means the manager’s handling of the first failed trial matters more than any stated policy.

Protecting resources against operational pressure. Discussing a practical role, the development shift is the first thing a plant manager under delivery pressure wants to reclaim, and it is always defensible to reclaim it. Holding it is a managerial act performed against short-term interest.

Framing problems rather than issuing solutions. Discussing where managers commonly err, presenting a specified solution foreclose better options. The framing that produced this project was a question about what the business could make from waste, not an instruction to develop a recycled fabric.

Making the case and securing investment. Discussing the boundary-spanning role, the manager converts a technical proposal into a business case a board will fund, which requires translating between two languages.

Deciding to stop. Discussing an underrated responsibility, the manager must be willing to close a project they have sponsored. Northouse (2025) treats willingness to act on unwelcome evidence as central to credible leadership, and a manager who cannot stop a failing project will not be believed when they defend a promising one.

Balancing exploitation and exploration. Discussing a tension specific to established manufacturers, the same management team must run today’s production efficiently and develop tomorrow’s products, and the first reliably crowds out the second because its results are immediate and measurable.

Developing others. Discussing a long-horizon role, most managers arrive without preparation for leading development work (Chartered Management Institute, 2023), which makes building that capability in the next layer part of the role rather than an addition.

AC 2.4 Analyse the role of stakeholders in the innovation process

Customers. Analysing their role, automotive customers defined the recycled-content requirement that made the project commercially necessary, then controlled the qualification process that determined when it could be sold. Their role was both originating and gatekeeping, and the second was the larger constraint.

Production operators. Analysing this group, operators identified processing problems that laboratory work had not predicted, particularly around fibre handling at speed. Analysing what determined their engagement, those involved in trials became advocates while those who encountered the fabric as a new instruction resisted it, which mirrors the general finding that participation predicts adoption.

External research and supply partners. Analysing their role, the university supplied polymer characterisation and the waste processor supplied both feedstock and market knowledge. Analysing the associated risk, both introduced dependency, and a change of academic lead partway through cost three months.

Senior management and the board. Analysing their role, they authorised capital and carried the risk through the period when the project consumed money and produced nothing. Their sustained attention was the difference between this project and two earlier ones abandoned mid-development.

Regulators and certification bodies. Analysing an often-overlooked group, filtration products require testing and certification against defined standards, and the certification timeline is outside the organisation’s control and must be planned around rather than managed.

Employee representatives. Analysing a stakeholder group routinely omitted from innovation accounts, the new process altered working patterns on the finishing line, and engaging representatives during development rather than at implementation converted a potential dispute into a negotiated change.

Investors and lenders. Analysing their influence, development spending affects reported results before it affects revenue, which shapes how much can be committed and when.

Local community and environmental regulators. Analysing a stakeholder set particular to manufacturing, the reclaimed feedstock required a change to the site’s waste handling arrangements and therefore engagement with the environmental regulator. Analysing the timing lesson, this was raised at industrialisation rather than at development and added seven weeks that earlier engagement would have avoided entirely.

Analysing stakeholder roles collectively. They hold different kinds of influence. Some can stop the innovation, some determine whether it works in practice, and some can only comment on it. Whittington et al. (2023) note that treating these as equivalent wastes effort on parties who cannot affect the outcome while under-engaging those who can, and Ashcombe’s earlier failures reflected exactly that misallocation.

AC 2.5 Evaluate THREE methods used to measure the impact of innovation

Method one: financial performance against the business case. Comparing actual revenue, margin and cost against the projections that justified the investment, alongside payback and return on investment.

Evaluating this method, its strength is credibility with a board and its directness: the project was funded on a stated case and this tests whether that case held. Its weaknesses are timing and attribution. Revenue from a product qualified after eleven months appears in a later financial year than the development cost, so early reporting shows only cost. And sales respond to customer volumes and pricing, so a favourable outcome cannot be attributed to the innovation alone.

Method two: operational and technical performance measurement. Tracking production yield, first-pass quality, energy per metre, waste rate and machine efficiency for the new product against established products.

Evaluating this method, its particular value in manufacturing is that it moves early, well before financial results, and it distinguishes a product problem from a market problem. It identified that yields on the recycled fabric ran eight points below the standard product, which was invisible in the sales figures and material to the margin. Evaluating its limitation, operational measures say nothing about whether the market wants the product.

A note on measuring before results exist. Evaluating the timing problem, the measures that justify a development project are the slowest to appear, which leaves a period of eighteen months or more during which the project consumes cost and shows nothing. Evaluating what sustains a project through that window, leading indicators such as trial yield, sample approval rate and customer qualification milestones moved within weeks and were what allowed the board to distinguish slow progress from no progress.

Method three: strategic and market position measurement. Assessing effects that do not appear directly in a profit and loss account: tenders now eligible for that were previously closed, customer relationships deepened, share of a customer’s spend, and capability acquired that enables subsequent products.

Evaluating this method, it captures what the other two miss and is what actually justified the investment. The recycled fabric restored eligibility for tenders representing several million pounds of annual customer spend, most of which is for other products entirely. Evaluating its weakness honestly, these measures are difficult to quantify and easy to overstate, and a claim that a project unlocked a tender cannot be proved.

Comparative evaluation. Each has a blind spot the others cover: financial measurement is authoritative and lagging, operational measurement is early and narrow, and strategic measurement captures the real justification while resisting proof. Used together they support a defensible account. The position Ashcombe now takes in board reporting is to claim contribution rather than causation, and to publish leading operational indicators during the period when financial results cannot yet exist, since that is when development projects are most often cancelled.

References

Barends, E., Rousseau, D. and Janssen, B. (2023) People managers: an evidence review. Scientific summary. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Buchanan, D.A. and Huczynski, A.A. (2023) Organizational behaviour. 11th edn. Harlow: Pearson.

Capezio, A., Barends, E., Rousseau, D. and Wietrak, E. (2023) Psychological safety: an evidence review. Scientific summary. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Chartered Management Institute (2023) Taking responsibility: why UK plc needs better managers. London: CMI.

Jin, H. and Peng, Y. (2024) ‘The impact of team psychological safety on employee innovative performance: a study with communication behavior as a mediator variable’, PLOS ONE, 19(10), e0306629. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0306629.

Maylor, H. and Turner, N. (2022) Project management. 5th edn. Harlow: Pearson.

Northouse, P.G. (2025) Leadership: theory and practice. 10th edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Wax, A., Asencio, R., Bentley, J.R. and Warren, C. (2024) ‘Safety first! Psychological safety as a driver of learning in functionally diverse, self-assembled teams’, Team Performance Management, 30(7/8), pp. 173-194. doi: 10.1108/TPM-02-2024-0017.

Whittington, R., Regnér, P., Angwin, D., Johnson, G. and Scholes, K. (2023) Exploring strategy: text and cases. 13th edn. Harlow: Pearson.

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