For this assignment, write a three to four-page paper that addresses the following points:

• Evaluation of the Firm – McGrath’s and MacMillion’s Twelve Factors of Evaluating Firm
  • Evaluate your organization, being sure to address six of the twelve McGrath’s and MacMillion’s Twelve Factors:
    • Demand for the Product
    • Factors that could speed adoption
    • Factors that could block success of an Innovation
    • Likelihood of Strong Competitive Response
    • Likelihood that the Potential Competitive Advantage is Sustainable
    • Ability to Create Standards
    • Cost Factors in Commercialization
    • Resources Available for Commercialization
    • Level of novelty of the innovation
    • Cost considerations in development
    • Other opportunities that could be leveraged
    • Potential area where damage might occur

Remember, in addition to technicalfactors, other factors that could block success of an innovation includelegal, ethical, security, diversity, and social responsibility issuesof the organization.

• Apply the McFarlan & McKenney Strategic Grid Planning Process
  • The McFarlan & McKenney Strategic Grid Planning Process analyzesthe organization’s readiness to implement innovation strategy. McFarlanand McKenney, in 1983, devised a very useful grid for assessing acompany’s strategic use of IT (Carboy, 2007).
  • The grid has four quadrants built around two straight forward questions:
    • How important does management feel the current IT systems are to the company?
    • How important does the company think future developments in IT willbe required to sustain and enhance its way of doing business (Carboy,2007)?

***************see Attached file for Quadrants*******************

Definitions of each quadrant are:

• Quadrant 1 – Support: Low Current: Low Future Impact. IT has little relevance and simply supports existing processes.
• Quadrant 2 – Turnaround: Low Current: High FutureImpact. IT will feature more on the business agenda in the future. Thecompany believes that IT will have a major impact on their businessmodel in the future and IT is in a turnaround role i.e. IT will be a keyfeature of future strategic planning.
• Quadrant 3 – Factory: High Current: Low Future Impact.IT is important in terms of day-to-day operations but it is not feltthat there are any major IT developments on the horizon that willfundamentally alter the nature of the business. Here, the key issue isthe maintenance of existing systems (Factory Role).
• Quadrant 4 – Strategic: High Current: High FutureImpact. In this quadrant, IT plays a crucial role both in terms of itscurrent role and in terms of how future IT developments are viewed asimpacting on the organization. IT is mission critical.

Use your chosen organization for this exercise. Based on yourresearch of the organization’s use of technology and moving forwardtechnology plans, identify which quadrant most appropriately applies toyour organization’s readiness to implement innovation strategy (Carboy,2007).

• Identify the McFarlan & McKenney Strategic Grid quadrant that applies best to your organization:Low Current: Low, Future Impact; Low Current: High Future Impact; HighCurrent: Low Future Impact; and High Current: High Future Impact.
• Gen-ED > Provide supporting research to justify your analysis conclusion.
• Identify 3 examples of your organization’s innovation directions to substantiate your points.

The Planning Process for Innovation assignment

• Must be four double-spaced pages in length (not including title andreferences pages) and formatted according to APA style
• Must include a separate title page with the following:
  • Title of paper
  • Student’s name
  • Course name and number
  • Instructor’s name
  • Date submitted
• Must use at least three scholarly sources in addition to the course text.
• Must document all sources in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.
• Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.