Case Study Rio Tinto

Innovation strategies in the mining industry are different from traditional business strategies due to the need to accommodate uncertainty. Without any innovation strategy, the effort to innovate becomes a publicised best practice. Without a clear consensus in the senior team about the strategy and vision, there will be less information exchange, more conflicts and less ability to respond to external change (Hambrick, 1994).
Rio Tinto idea conversion is the weakest link or the bottleneck for the selection and development of ideas. Rio Tinto needs to build an energy around ideas to inspire teamwork and enable rapid prototyping. According to Bryant (2015), open innovation is the key to deliver safer and more profitable operating model. Open innovation assumes that firms should use internal as well as external ideas and internal and external paths to market as they look to advance their technology (Chesbrough, 2006). Open innovation through collaboration can help Rio Tinto to develop and implement new production, knowledge and planning platform. As shown in figure 6, open innovation should be encouraged within the existing stage gate. Figure 6 Innovation within value chain

Rio Tinto should have a platform where all employees can share their innovative
Rio Tinto needs to exploit the present by commercializing ideas and embrace standardization across all product groups while exploring future opportunities to drive more radical changes. Rio Tinto needs to set up a new exploratory group separating from the traditional product exploitative group. The new exploratory group should manage the organizational separation between the current, high-performing group and the disruptive innovation group, through a tightly integrated senior team, while recognizing the need to nurture what are essentially different types of