Dissertation: Neglecting million dollar ideas? – Offering a diagnostic solution for industries
Asiya Kazmi’s doctoral dissertation in the field of Industrial Management aims to help the companies to strengthen their idea generation potential while the process of new product development.
– While industrial product development process, anyone can come up with a brilliant idea. No wonder if that idea pops up at the lower hierarchical levels, the spot where it is least expected. As a result, there are chances that the ‘would be million dollar idea’ loses its shine or fades away completely while covering the steps of the ladder from bottom to the top, says Kazmi who will defend her doctoral thesis at the University of Vaasa.
– While industrial product development process, anyone can come up with a brilliant idea. No wonder if that idea pops up at the lower hierarchical levels, the spot where it is least expected. As a result, there are chances that the ‘would be million dollar idea’ loses its shine or fades away completely while covering the steps of the ladder from bottom to the top, says Kazmi who will defend her doctoral thesis at the University of Vaasa.
Therefore, to avoid such mishaps, modern intelligent industries seek out such a leadership style that can offer the opportunity to refine and shape the capability of the team members and empower the workforce involved in the new product development.
To help the industries in finding out effective solutions to strengthen their product idea generation potential, she combines and extends the famous theoretical frameworks of transformational leadership and strategic thinking to offer a diagnostic framework with holistic approach.
The extended framework and its diagnostic capabilities are then evaluated through an extended empirical study. The empirical research was conducted at three work locations of a European energy sector multinational company – Finland, Norway and the United Kingdom.
– The research results confirmed the strength of Finland’s work team in building positive new product team climate trends, the UK team’s strength in strategic thinking trends while the team Norway’s strength in new product idea support trend, says Kazmi.
The research outcomes highlighted obvious room for improvement in the areas of current work leadership practices and new product development process upgrade at all the studied locations.
Combining the theoretical frameworks
According to Kazmi’s assessment, “transformation leadership” offers such a leadership solution that can promise support and empowerment to the industrial work force. Numerous research studies reveal that transformational leadership is positively linked to subordinate’s work attitudes, performance, creativity and well-being, as well as financial performance.
Kazmi further says that “leaders are regarded for their strategies”. Hence a complete leadership solution cannot be guaranteed unless the strategic thought aspect of the leadership is not covered in the overall approach. Therefore, in the doctoral research work, Asiya Kazmi, has attempted to connect transformational leadership; a management concept, with strategic thinking; a cognitive process, to support new product idea generation capability, which is a technical industrial process to offer a complete theoretical approach.
Unleashing future prospects
Kazmi’s research highlights the notion that new product development is highly important in the current global industrial scenario for productivity, profitability and sustainability of the sector.
Today’s industries are extremely interested in continuously improving their key processes and offerings.
– The ultimate contribution of this research is to offer an authenticated, investigative and holistic problem-solving approach, to enable today's industrial leaders, to investigate their new product idea generation related industrial operational health, to run gap analysis and to facilitate problem solving, says Asiya.
Public defence
The public examination of M. Sc. (Industrial Management) S. Asiya Z. Kazmi’s doctoral dissertation ” Fusing Strategic Thinking and Transformational Leadership to Harness New Product Development (NPD) Team Dynamics for Innovation” will be held on Wednesday, 16 March at 12 o´clock in lecture room F119 (Fabriikki). Professor Pauli Juuti (Lappeenranta University of Technology) will act as opponent and Adjunct Professor Marja Naaranoja as a custos.
Further information: Asiya Kazmi, tel +358445151510, email: akazm(at)uwasa.fi or asiyakazmi(at)hotmail.com
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