Leading inovation and changes

Case studies of companies that have bench marked the best practices on the topic of organizational culture characteristics that supports innovation and changes. These companies focus on different things to maintain and improve their environment for both staff and clients. The CEO’s believes that, if business faces severe challenges, they can look for opportunities to change and grow stronger. Facing the challenges in today’s environment has made it hard for employers to find good employees so they have to do what they can to keep them happy and secure in their jobs.

Leading ethical companies and innovative companies are not as easy as it seems. Innovative companies tend to be companies that people admire and want to work for. As a leader it is important to make sure that the rules and policies as followed, compliance is a must. Best ethical companies don’t have ethics officials so this is enforced by the leaders. An indicator as to whether a company is ethical may be linked more to the happiness of the people who work there than it is to the state of the company’s official ethics strategy.

Case Study Introduction Professor Nikolai Petrovsky founded Vaxine Pty Ltd in 2002. Petrovsky is a medical specialist with a head for administration and business. Along with his specialist medical degree, he has a doctorate in science and currently a professor of medicine at Flinders University, head of the Endocrinology Department at Flinders Medical Centre and research director of Vaxine Pty Ltd. His 3 hats are juggled through long working weeks in which the patients always come first.

Vaxine is a small company in Australia with 15 staff members. They have a great track record for vaccine research and business achievements. Vaxine owes their success to break through vaccine research and development technology, an efficient business model and the passion and determination of Professor Nikolai, who do not give up that, easy. Characteristics of Innovation and Change in an Organization Vaxine’s proprietary technology enables it to do 2 things exceptionally well.

First, it can produce very pure and safe vaccines from a synthetic replica of the original disease organism. Next, it has reinvented another key element of vaccines – the adjuvant, or trigger substances that causes the body’s immune system to recognize and respond to the vaccine. Vaxine was the first medical research company in the world to announce a successful Swine Flu (H1N1) vaccine and Petrovsky believes that success should have immediately placed the company of the medical map, but it didn’t.

Petrovsky says (2002): “ Pandemics such as Swine Flu not create a window of opportunity in terms of getting a vaccine to market quickly, but also offer a level playing field and a great way to prove your credentials as long as you are not based in Australia”. The company came to the United States and started to attract government funding. They took a long shot in the USA and fortunately they loved everything we were doing.

The greatest thing is they are getting 10 times more money from the US Government than they would get from Australian National Health and Medical Research Council. In spite of its success with US government funding of US$8. 5 million assured, four new vaccines in clinical and another nine in the laboratory pipeline. Vaxine is in hurry to go public until it has commercial products in the market. With the value of the sale of a clinically proven to an international drug company estimated by Petrovsky at anywhere from $200 million to $1 billion, listing would have obvious tractions. As of today Vaxine have won three major Australian business awards in 2009”.

Consulting with engineers to build a greener factory to protect the environment. Recycling the heat to come from the factory instead of wasting money on a heating company. The system for Case Study The greener system is the best for me. With today economy it help the environment and it is a lot cheaper to go green when it comes to a bakery factory. Using the heat that comes off the factor oven that runs all day is best. Even in my own kitchen when cooking it gets hot when I open it and it warms up the kitchen, so can you imagine what happens in a place that have a lot of ovens.

In the winter it will be warm enough to work and in the summer they might have to open a few windows. Either way it works great. Application of the system This company is a bake house and they carry Hugh machinery that lets out plenty of smoke. Ferguson Plarre Bake houses have been around since 1965, this mean it has a big strain on the environment and land around it. Even though they were not required to plant trees and maintain rainwater tanks they had to do it for a peace of mind and to protect their employees and communities were the factories are located.

Going green was not one of the goals for this company but because they care about their workers, customer and community entirely too much not to have made this decision. This is the main reason they started to look into approaching the going green area. They gave the employees classes on recycling and hired consultants to manage what was being done wrong and was advised on how to resolve those issues. Challenges to innovation and Their Solutions

The challenges for this company was, when they first started out Ralph Plarre stated that, “ it was like a pressure cooker, people were crashing into each other and there was just not enough product to have a steady stream going out to the stores” (Thomson, 2007). Also, within that time potential franchises opportunities were coming from all over, it was clear that much larger factories were needed. At first they were only serving five stores but by 2005 they were serving 30 and in 2013 they are serving 50.

Role of Ethics and Responsibility According to CEO Ralph Plarre, “ despite the quadrupling the floor and refrigeration space of the factories, energy usage has increased by 50%, with a 60% decline in energy usage per square meter” (Thomson, 2007). “ Gas usage has fallen by 13%, wastewater output has fallen by half and overall water usage is the same despite a massive increase in floor size and production output” (Thomson 2007). The cost of investing in hybrid delivery trucks has been prohibitive but the company sites its facilities and outlets on efficient distribution link to save diesel consumption” (Thomson 2007). This business has really proved that a business can get anywhere they want to, as long as there is a plan or goal. They can be found on face book, LinkedIn and twitter if anyone wants to know more about them. Ralph Plarre decided to plant trees around all factories and maintains the plan he had before with the rainwater tanks.

Plarre states “ I worry about having to spend extra on environmental requirements and am warped into anger about the lack of such standards, creating a desire to differentiate the company by investing for the ecological long-term” (Thomson, 2007). The company now harvests its rainwater for irrigation, flushing toilets and truck washing, which this actually saves money on water and irrigation bills. The company learnt to keep it simple when designing their factories. Plarre spent months with consulting engineers and technocrats but often found themselves mired jargon and conventional ways of thinking.

At one point they told him that heating the factory with recycled heat would not work so he came up with his own designs and used his own technical staff. They created a system that funnels the waste heat from the ovens and warms the entire factory with one switch. It’s been successful and according to Plarre it smells great. As Steve Plarre, Ferguson Plarre’s CEO Operations now in 2013 says: “ Who would have thought energy intensive business like a bakery could find a way to be green? ”(Waters, 2012).