3. Introduction and overview
These resources help practitioners to deliver innovation and emerging technologies components of engineering and manufacturing-related qualifications at levels 2 and 3. They introduce
the topic and stimulate learners to explore and reflect on key concepts and are designed to complement and enhance practitioners’ own lesson materials and schemes of work.
Resources summary
They help learners to review and reinforce their current knowledge of innovation and
explore the factors required for innovation to happen. Level 2 activity sheets, once
completed by the learners, can then be used within other topics for reference. The Level
3 resources help learners to develop a more complex understanding of innovation and
identify situations where innovation can be used and how it has made an impact. The
resources then help learners to identify issues relating to ethics and innovation.
Resource name Level PPT slides + notes -
practitioner
PPT slides -
learner
Activity
sheets
Film Interactive
1. What is innovation? 2 3
Delivery
Delivery suggestions for practitioners are under each slide. The core activity ideas for each
resource provide approximately 60 mins of learning time, though additional suggestions,
including independent learning, can extend this time significantly.
Overarching theme/big questions
What is innovation and what makes innovation possible?
How can innovation make a difference to our lives? Impacts on industry, work and future
lifestyles.
How can innovation change the nature of employment, climate and environment?
Do ethics play a part in innovation?
Overview
The Level 2 resources provide a bridge between Level 2 and Level 3. They help learners to
review and reinforce their current knowledge of innovation and explore the factors required
for innovation to happen.
1. What is innovation? | Practitioner guide
3
4. Learning outcomes and resource links
Level 2 resource
What is innovation?
• Use your own examples to develop a definition
of innovation.
• Explain the different types of innovation and the elements
needed for innovation to happen.
• Explain the difference between market pull and technology
push influences on innovation.
• Apply your understanding of innovation to other topic areas
and highlight reasons for/when innovation takes place in a
product or system.
Full resource list available for the topic of Innovation
and emerging technologies:
1. What is innovation? (Level 2)
2. Innovation and change (Level 3)
Links to other supported topics
Innovation and emerging technologies is included in all
other topics in this series: Battery technologies, CNC
machinery, Electrical machines, Engineering materials,
Microcontroller systems, Renewable energy, Robotics,
Sustainability.
4
1. What is innovation? | Practitioner guide
5. Subject coverage
Innovation
• Understanding innovation
• Factors associated with innovation
• Market pull v technology push
• Types of innovation and the elements involved
• Innovation and collaboration
• Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI),
virtual reality (VR), internet of things (IoT), augmented
reality (AR), cloud/big data, robotics
Including careers
• The effects of market change and innovation on jobs
and career paths
5
1. What is innovation? | Practitioner guide
7. Learning outcomes
You will be able to:
Use your own
examples to
develop a definition
of innovation.
Explain the different
types of innovation
and the elements
needed for innovation
to happen.
Explain the difference
between market
pull and technology
push influences
on innovation.
Apply your
understanding of
innovation to other
topic areas and highlight
reasons for/when
innovation takes
place in a product
or system.
7
1. What is innovation?
8. What is innovation? | 8
What is innovation?
• Identify five modern innovations you think
will shape your future.
• Use your examples to write a definition of innovation.
Humanity has
innovated
throughout
our history.
Our modern
world is the
result of these
innovations.
Today’s
innovations
will shape
our future.
8
1. What is innovation?
9. What is innovation?
Innovation turns ideas into improved products and services
that help a business to differentiate itself from and advance
ahead of competitors. It creates new value.
Innovation is both a process and an outcome.
9
1. What is innovation?
Do all innovations have the
same impact or can we classify
innovations into different types?
10. What is innovation? | 10
Types of innovation
We can classify innovations according to how different the
innovation is from current technology and how much this
changes the business or the market it operates in.
The chart shows four types of innovation:
• disruptive
• incremental
• radical
• sustaining.
Significant
improvements that
retain the business’s
position in an
existing market.
New
technologies
that displace
established
businesses or
products to create
new value and
a new market.
Gradual
improvements to
a business’s
existing products
and services.
Technical
breakthroughs that
transform industries,
sometimes creating
a new market.
Newness of technology
10
Low
Low
High
High
Impact
on
the
market
1. What is innovation?
• Label each type of innovation with the
correct name.
• Suggest one example of each type. Give reasons
for your choices.
11. What is innovation? | 11
Types of innovation
Over time one type of innovation may evolve into another.
Sustaining
Apple A15 phone
chip: sustains
Apple’s dominant
position.
Disruptive
Netflix introduced
streaming,
transforming how
people consume
film and
TV content.
Incremental
OLED TVs improve
an existing product
but don’t grow the
market for TVs.
Radical
Personal computers:
a new technology
but at first had a
limited uptake.
Newness of technology
11
Low
Low
High
High
Impact
on
the
market
1. What is innovation?
• Draw arrows on your diagram to show
how some innovations my evolve over time
into another type.
• Use your answer to explain why one form of
innovation could be considered most important
for a company.
• Innovation should form part of a company’s
working culture. What processes do you think
need to take place for innovation to happen?
12. Elements of innovation
Collaboration Ideation
Implementation Value creation
These four elements are essential for innovation to happen. They are a critical part of a business’s
innovation strategy: its roadmap for how it will turn ideas into new products and new value for its customers.
Work well together
Teamwork
Cross-disciplinary work
Shared vision
Deliver great products
Design
Quality and consistency
Price
Generate lots of good ideas
Creativity
Prototyping
Testing
Deliver real benefits and
improvements
For customers
For the company (including profit)
12
1. What is innovation?
• Do you think these elements happen sequentially,
simultaneously or a combination?
• How might different engineering careers contribute to innovation?
13. Elements of innovation
Collaboration
Sales
Design
Production
Ideation
Sales
Design
Implementation
Production design
Production management
Quality control
Value creation
Customers
Company
Customer feedback is essential
Ideation relies on strong collaboration both within the business and with its
external customers or partners.
13
1. What is innovation?
How might a company’s R&D staff influence innovation in a different way to
how customers might influence the process, playing different roles in how new
technology makes it to the market?
14. What is innovation? | 14
Market pull versus technology push
Innovation is a dynamic process.
It can be driven by opportunities or existing capabilities.
Market pull
Innovations happen due
to customer demand.
Customer opportunities
drive innovation.
14
1. What is innovation?
Technology push
Innovations happen when
applications are found for
existing technologies.
R&D capabilities
drive innovation.
Identify two advantages and two disadvantages
of market-pull and technology-push innovation.
15. Market pull versus technology push
Market pull
Customer opportunities
drive innovation.
Technology push
R&D capabilities
drive innovation.
Advantages Disadvantages
• Known demand, making a
successful product more likely.
• Development may be cheaper.
• Open to competitors
who will have the same
market information.
• Risk of ‘me too’ products.
• More likely to lead to radical
or disruptive innovation.
• IP protection can stop
competitors entering the market.
• Higher risk as success is
harder to predict.
• Development may be
more expensive.
15
1. What is innovation?
16. Innovations that will shape your future
At the start you were asked to name five examples
of modern innovations that may shape your future.
How many of these did you mention?
• Generate ideas for
how each example may
shape your personal life and
your future as an engineer.
• Which are the most
innovative companies today,
and why? Discuss and justify
your ideas.
Artificial intelligence (AI) Virtual reality (VR)
Internet of things (IoT) Augmented reality (AR) Robotics
16
1. What is innovation?
Editor's Notes
Practitioner delivery suggestions
The Level 2 resources provide a bridge between Level 2 and Level 3. This activity will help learners to review and reinforce their current knowledge of innovation and then introduce or recap the factors required for innovation to take place.
Practitioner delivery suggestions
This introduction identifies learners’ baseline understanding and allows learners to define innovation in their own words.
Starter activity
Ask learners to identify five examples of modern innovations that they think are most likely to shape their futures (this can include both their personal and working lives).
Learners could work in groups to generate ideas about what ‘innovation’ means, recording their ideas on sticky notes, a concept map or an online tool such as Google Jamboard.
Once learners have written their definitions, share ideas. A whole-group discussion can establish a shared definition.
Learners could consider what they believe have been the most important or helpful innovations from the past.
Activity sheet
Using Innovation and emerging technologies - Activity sheet 1, learners can:
Write examples of five innovations they think might shape their future.
Using their examples, develop their own definition of innovation.
Example answers
Please see the next slide.
Learners can discuss how this relates to an engineering or design-related setting.
Assessment
Examples of innovation.
Definitions of innovation.
Learners could identify some personal positive and negative impacts of innovation and identify opportunities for further innovation. There will be further opportunity for this in the 2. Innovation and change resource in the second activity.
Extension
To extend their learning, learners could review and report back on a product/company that they see as being innovative, giving reasons why.
Further discussions could explore:
What happens when innovation is absent from a company and/or society?
What happens if innovation moves too quickly, for example when a new technology is unexpectedly disruptive and people or systems do not have sufficient time to adapt?
Practitioner delivery suggestions
This introduction identifies learners’ baseline understanding and allows learners to define innovation in their own words.
Activity
Review the definition of innovation on the slide. Highlight that there are many acceptable definitions.
Ask learners to suggest what ‘new value’ means for customers and for the business behind the innovation.
Example answers
New value can mean:
For customers: the benefits or improvements created by the new technology, which could include being able to do something new, reduced costs, simplification, improved performance, less time or labour needed.
For the company: increased income and profit, increased market share, a stronger brand, greater customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Film
After completing the activities learners can watch the Innovation and emerging technologies film, which introduces the concepts they will explore in the later activities in this resource.
Assessment
Discussion of meaning of ‘new value’.
Extension
Learners can identify examples of ‘new value’ created by the innovations they listed in the first activity.
Practitioner delivery suggestions
Activity
Explain that innovation can occur unintentionally or is deliberately planned and can have both positive and negative results. This slide introduces four different types of innovation.
Review the descriptions of the four types and how they relate to the two axes on the chart.
Learners identify the correct name for each type of innovation and choose one example to illustrate each type, giving a reason for their choice.
Example answers
Please see the next slide.
Activity sheet
Using Innovation and emerging technologies - Activity sheet 2, learners can:
Complete the chart by adding the correct label to each quadrant and then naming and justifying one example of each.
Assessment
Completed chart on Innovation and emerging technologies - Activity sheet 2.
Extension
To extend their learning, learners could create a timeline of an innovation of their choice, (a new smart material, component, process, product etc), researching how it developed, was introduced/received by users, and used, and predict ‘what next’ for the innovation.
Practitioner delivery suggestions
Activity
Review the correct names and examples.
Add arrows to show how some types of innovation may evolve into another type over time.
Activity sheet
Using Innovation and emerging technologies - Activity sheet 2, learners can:
Add arrows to show how some types of innovation may evolve into another type over time.
Example answers
It is important that learners are aware that the four types of innovation are interlinked and that businesses embed all four types into their companies, allowing them to stay successful.
Some forms of innovation, especially disruptive innovation, can evolve into sustaining innovation over time. Sustaining innovation is vital for a company to reach and maintain a strong or leading competitive position in its markets.
Sustaining innovation – sustaining innovation is the best way to protect a company’s position in their market. Sustaining innovation focuses on larger changes than incremental innovation to gain or maintain a market-leader position. It focuses on creating new features or services that differentiate a product from all of its competitors. Without sustaining innovation, a company has to work harder to reach market leader status and gain a majority market share.
Incremental innovation – a gradual and continuous focus on improving existing products/services. All companies will incorporate this type based on market research and internal quality control. By continuously improving products and operations, companies can constantly move forward and look to build market share. Without incremental innovation, products and services can fall behind, resulting in customer experience and retention both suffering.
Disruptive innovation – this is the one that often makes the headlines due to breakthrough results. It tends to be very expensive and is associated with new technologies. At first, they can have a high impact on the market but in time disruptive innovations can become the norm and therefore become sustaining innovations. The concern with disruptive innovations is that they may/may not have a negative impact on other technologies, outdating them, or even on society.
Radical innovation – typically uses a technological breakthrough that transforms industries and creates new markets. This type of innovation completely changes how a company interacts with the marketplace. The success of the underlying technological shift to drive this type of innovation is often related to the firm’s organisational behaviours and capabilities that create the right conditions for new ideas to be successfully commercialised in the first place.
Learners need to be aware that an innovation may start in one domain but move, over time, into another. For example, a radical innovation (touch screen technology) can over time become sustainable or incremental.
For processes that need to take place for innovation to happen, see answers on next slide.
Assessment
Completed arrows on Innovation and emerging technologies - Activity sheet 2.
Discussions on how the types of innovation can be linked.
Extension
Learners can find more at www.freshconsulting.com/insights/blog/the-4-types-of-innovation/
Practitioner delivery suggestions
Activity
Introduce the four elements of innovation: practices that are identified as being essential for innovation to flourish and lead to successful value creation.
Learners discuss with a partner or group whether these elements work sequentially, simultaneously or a combination.
Discuss with learners how different engineering careers might all contribute to the process of innovation, through collaboration, ideation and implementation. This can include design engineers, production engineers, machine operators, maintenance and repair staff, as well as sales engineers and research and development (R&D) staff.
Example answers
Please see the next slide.
Assessment
Verbal answers.
Extension
Learners could sketch a diagram or flowchart to illustrate their ideas about the four elements of innovation.
Practitioner delivery suggestions
Activity
Explore the chart, which shows that the four elements work both sequentially and also simultaneously, in that collaboration is essential at all stages. Collaboration enables better ideation and implementation, leading to better value creation. Collaboration extends to including customers in the process. The chart also includes feedback - an external, but essential, form of collaboration.
At the top of the chart learners will see examples of engineering careers - what more detailed career roles can they suggest?
Example answers
Please see the next slide.
Assessment
Verbal answers.
Practitioner delivery suggestions
This slide brings together previous slides and makes connections with the types of innovation and market pull v technology push.
Activity
Introduce the two factors of market pull (how customers can influence innovation) v technology push (how R&D can influence innovation).
To illustrate each type, ask learners to categorise sticky notes and smartphone cameras.
Activity sheet
Using Innovation and emerging technologies - Activity sheet 3, learners can:
Identify advantages and disadvantages of market push and technology pull.
Example answers
Sticky notes are an example of technology push: 3M researchers developed an adhesive that was interestingly weak and later invented the sticky note as a useful application for it.
Smartphone cameras are an example of market pull, where social media has driven demand for high-quality cameras on board the smartphones people use to post to their social apps.
Market pull is linked to incremental and sustaining innovation.
Technology push is linked to disruptive and radical innovation.
Please also see the next slide.
Assessment
Written answers.
Extension
Learners can identify examples of innovations that have improved health and safety in manufacturing, such as safety features on machinery or PPE designs and materials. Are these due to market pull or technology push?
Practitioner delivery suggestions
Activity
Review the suggested advantages and disadvantages of technology push v market pull.
Practitioner delivery suggestions
Activity
Use these stimulus images and questions to support an open-ended discussion to help learners develop their ideas. This could lead to an optional research and presentation task. Learners will explore the impacts of the innovations and emerging technologies shown here in more detail in the 2. Innovation and change Level 3 resource.
Talk about each emerging technology and ask learners to describe what they see in the image/what they know about each one.
Learners could discuss where the emerging technologies fit into the classifications of innovations.
Learners discuss as a class, group or in pairs to generate ideas for how each example may shape their personal life and their future as an engineer.
Ask learners to suggest which are the most innovative companies today, and why? Learners discuss and justify their ideas. (Suitable companies could include Dyson, SpaceX, Tesla, Google, Apple.)
Example answers
Description of each technology (these emerging technologies will be covered in more detail in the 2. Innovation and change Level 3 resource):
Artificial intelligence (AI) – the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. AI research has been defined as the field of study of intelligent agents, which refers to any system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximise its chance of achieving its goals.
Virtual reality (VR) – the computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image or environment that can be interacted with in a seemingly real or physical way by a person using special electronic equipment, such as a helmet with a screen inside or gloves fitted with sensors.
Internet of things (IoT) – describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software, and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the internet or other communications networks.
Augmented reality (AR) – a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user's view of the real world, providing a composite view.
Robotics - an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrates fields of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, information engineering, mechatronics, electronics, bioengineering, computer engineering, control engineering, software engineering, mathematics, etc.
Which type of innovation:
AI – sustaining and radical – could become disruptive if not contained.
VR – radical but as it becomes more widely used then sustaining, possibly even incremental if everyone uses it.
IoT – sustaining and/or incremental.
AR – radical, possibly disruptive as it could change the way companies communicate with client/employees, test ideas etc. In time this technology may become the norm and therefore would be used in a sustaining way.
Robotics – within manufacturing, incremental, as they can be used to make production more efficient. Although new uses of robotics could lead to radical transformations within companies that currently do not use automative machines.
Assessment
Discussion.
Understanding of current examples of innovation, ie VR, AR, AI, IoT etc.
Ability to justify why a company is innovative, including what type of innovation it has created.
Extension
Break down the technology into subsystems, components such as materials, processes, systems etc
What fields of innovations may have taken place to create a drone, an IoT smart home device, a robot?
Learners should consider how each of these emerging technologies can/has impacted on current engineering methods, ie designing stage, data processing, manufacturing processes, client interface etc.
