NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY

INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT AND ECONOMICS

HIGHER NATIONALS
BTEC HIGHER NATIONAL DIPLOMA IN BUSINESS (RQF)
Unit Code, Number and Title D/618/5042: Innovation and Commercialisation

Semester and Academic Year Semester 1, Academic year 2022-2023

Pham Quang Ngoc / Nguyen Quang Huy/ Bui Thu Van/

Unit Assessor(s)
Nguyen Duc Trong/ Tran Lan Huong

Assignment Number and Title IC A1.1: Invention, Innovation, Diffusion (Assessment 1 of 2)

Issue Date ………….., 2022

Submission Date 10:00 am, 31/10/2022

IV Name

IV Date ………….., 2022

Student name Lê Hoàng Vy

NEU Student ID 10210714 Pearson ID

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break the rules, however innocently, may be penalised. It is your responsibility to ensure that you
understand correct referencing practices. As a university level student, you are expected to use
appropriate references throughout and keep carefully detailed notes of all your sources of materials for
material you have used in your work, including any material downloaded from the Internet. Please
consult the relevant unit lecturer or your course tutor if you need any further advice.

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Date:
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Submission format and Instructions:

This assignment (Assessment 1 of 2) covers Learning Outcome 1&2 (LO1, LO2).

 This is an individual assignment.
 The submission format is in the form of an E-report.
 The file on Turnitin must be in Word format and include the first page of this cover sheet. The
first page of the cover sheet should be in the picture format in order to ensure the accepted
similarity of Turnitin.
 The similarity allowed is up to 25% after excluding references.
 Name of the file includes Student ID_Unit name_Assessment no. (E.g. “1010001_IC_A1.1”)
 Ensure that authenticity declaration has been signed electronically.
 Plagiarism is unacceptable. Students must cite all sources and input the information by
paraphrasing, summarising or using direct quotes. A Referral Grade is given when Plagiarism is
identified in your work. There are no exceptions.

 Your evidence/findings must be cited using Harvard Referencing Style. Please refer to Reference
guiding posted on Moodle. The Reference page is compulsory to upload on Turnitin.

 This assignment should be written in a concise, formal business style using Arial 11 or Times
New Roman 13 font size and 1.5 spacing.

 The word limit is 3,500 words (+/- 10%).

 You MUST complete and submit softcopy of your work on the due dates stated on Assignment
brief. All late work is not allowed to submit. This rule is not waived under any circumstances.
 Read ALL Instructions on this Page and review the Pass, Merit and Distinction criteria carefully.
To pass the assignment, you must achieve ALL the Pass Criteria outlined in the marking sheet.
To achieve a Merit, you must achieve ALL the Merit criteria (and therefore the Pass criteria). To
achieve a Distinction, you must achieve ALL the Distinction criteria (and therefore the Pass and
Merit criteria).

Unit Learning Outcomes:

LO1: Investigate how innovation is sourced and supported within different types of organisations
LO2: Explore the processing of different types of innovation within organisations

Assessment Brief and Guidance:

Case 1: A brief history of the digital camera

Search and study the history of the digital camera in some sources such as:
1. Richard Trenholm (2007), Photos: The history of the digital camera,
https://www.cnet.com/news/photos-the-history-of-the-digital-camera/
2. Richard Trenholm (2007), Hasselblad H3D II: Megapixel madness,

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 https://www.cnet.com/news/hasselblad-h3d-ii-megapixel-madness/

Study the case of Digital Camera and answer question 1 - 4 as follows:

Question 1: The history of technological change in the digital camera industry is bound with initial
radical breakthroughs (inventions) followed by incremental improvements (innovations).
a) Highlight inventions and innovations in the digital camera industry (KODAK, CANON)
b) Among the listed innovations, students must point out what are disruptive innovations and
incremental innovations; and what are product innovation and process innovations; and
determine the difference between them.

Question 2: Analyse different sources of innovations related to the Kodak digital cameras:
a) Using the theory of von Hippel (1988), describe different functional sources of innovations
related to the Kodak digital camera product-line (students should describe sources
associated with each product innovation).
b) Evaluate how these sources of innovation help Kodak to generate new-product innovations.

Question 3: Using the models of demand-pull and technological-push to explain the interaction of
technology and the business performance of the Kodak digital cameras. Did these innovative firms
(Kodak, Canon) get the ideas for innovations from the market (demand full) or it was the firms’
engineers who recognized that a specific piece of new technological knowledge would result in the
firms’ new products (technological push)? Explain.

Question 4: Analyse the case of Canon - the dominating firm from the Digital Camera industry.
a) Explain how Canon’s organisational vision, leadership, culture shaped the company innovations
and commercialisations toward Digital Camera.
b) Making analysis of “innovation dilemma” to see why Kodak missed a trick by not developing this
technological breakthrough, as it chose to continue to focus on photographic film.

Case 2: BlackBerry mobile device and iPhone product-line

Search and study the BlackBerry mobile device and iPhone product-line in some sources such as:
a. https://sciencenode.org/feature/How%20did%20smartphones%20evolve.php
b. https://www.textrequest.com/blog/history-evolution-smartphone/

Answer questions 5-6 as follows:

Question 5: Analyzes the competition between BlackBerry mobile device and iPhone product-line:

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  Build the S-cure for the evolution of BlackBerry mobile devices and iPhones.
 How was the performance of BlackBerry mobile devices and iPhone improved over time?
 When BlackBerry mobile devices were, at first, challenged by iPhone, describe the rival
technology (of iPhone) and explain how was the rival technology introduced at time T1 in the
S-curve?
 How was the performance of the iPhone by the time T1 when it, at first, entered the market?
 Did BlackBerry still enjoy performance or cost advantage? Explain the 4Ps of innovation of
BlackBerry and apply the innovation funnel to understand how it shapes innovative ideas of
BlackBerry. Why was BlackBerry not able to stay as the leader in the market?

Question 6: What matters for success of iPhone? What did Apple do to take the position of market
leader and to maintain their advantage? Explain the 4Ps of innovation of Apple. Evaluate the role of
frugal innovation in an organisational context of Apple.

Note: Students could enrich their analyses by searching on the Internet for further
evidence and data, do remember to cite the source of information.

Pass Merit Distinction

LO1 Investigate how innovation is sourced and supported

within different types of organisations

P1 Discuss the ways in which
different organisations source
and foster innovation, using
specific examples.
M1 Analyse the ways in which
innovation is sourced and
supported within different
organisation environments and
cultures.
LO1 and LO2
D1 Critically analyse how
innovation is successfully
developed and embedded in
different organisational contexts.

LO2 Explore the processing of different types of innovation

within organisations

P2 Differentiate between M2 Analyse how different types

different types of innovation and of innovation are successfully
how they are processed within processed within different
organisations. organisation settings.

* Please note that grades are provisional. They are only confirmed once internal and external verifiers
have taken place, and the final decisions have been agreed by the assessment board.
* This grade only reflects the result of this assignment, not for the whole Unit.