Zoom Innovation: Presentation and Skills Reflection

Assignment task
The word limit is 2400 words.
Using concepts and theories from Block 1, explain why Zoom places high importance on innovation. You should consider how the various business functions within Zoom integrate to facilitate innovation. (20 marks)
Using appropriate concepts and theories from Block 2, identify and discuss the main threats and opportunities that should be considered by Zoom as it is pushed to undertake rapid expansion. Your answer should seek to integrate evidence from the different business functions. (20 marks)
Applying concepts from Block 3, explain how Zoom seeks to nurture long-term value creation.(20 marks)
Part B: Presentation
Drawing on your work with the Zoom case study, create a presentation to:
Analyse the power and level of interest of the relevant stakeholders in Zoom. You should use stakeholder analysis that you encountered in Block 3, session 2.
Analyse the future of the work environment, in particular what opportunities this presents for Zoom over the next 5 years.
Your presentation should use no more than 6 slides and 300 words. Your first slide should be a title page for your presentation.
Part C: Skills reflection
This part of the EMA will be marked out of 20 marks.
You were introduced to mind mapping in Block 1 Session 2, and at various stages throughout B207 you have been encouraged to make use of it as a technique to support your learning. Building on your work with mind mapping, reflect on how your approach to mind mapping has changed as you have progressed through the module.
Your answer to this question should be no more than 300 words.
General guidance
In tackling the EMA, you are expected to use appropriate concepts from B207 and choose those which support the argument you are making. In addition:
Relate your answers to the questions in Part A about the case study given rather than write everything you know about a particular area – i.e. answer the question(s) you are asked.
Note the word limits: do not try to write about all you have learnt while studying B207.
Read the guidance notes accompanying each of the EMA questions carefully before you start drafting your answers.
Plan ahead to allow plenty of time for drafting an answer you will feel happy about. You have the time to work on several drafts if you wish.
To ensure that you submit your EMA in a format that can be read by the markers, you must make sure that your file is in a format readable by all versions of Microsoft Word. This means that it must have a file extension of .doc, .docx or .rtf. If your word processing software creates a file with a different extension (e.g. .odt) you should use ‘Save as’ to save as either .doc, .docx or .rtf.
Make sure you reference ideas or phrases/sentences taken from elsewhere, including the case study and the module materials. Referencing should be in the Cite Them Right style, about which you have learnt in several activities throughout B207.
Finally, if there is anything about completing the EMA or if there are questions within it that you do not understand, ask your tutor.
Your answers to the EMA questions will be marked on how well you apply ideas and concepts from B207. You must therefore make sure that you understand the relevant concepts and ideas thoroughly and that you read the case study carefully before attempting to answer the questions. Also, be careful not to copy and paste any material from the internet or published sources into your answers. What you find published elsewhere is very unlikely to address the questions, so copying any material from elsewhere will not result in a good mark (and may lead to potential charges of plagiarism).
Part A
All three questions in Part A ask you to explore the integrative nature of B207. Much of the work that you undertook in the Session 1 of the Module conclusion, ‘Thinking holistically about business opportunities’, was designed to prepare you for tackling this part of the EMA. The session discussed approaches to working with, and analysing, case studies. You also explored integrative thinking and had the opportunity to practice working with a variety of case studies. The aim of this was to further develop your abilities to apply concepts and theories from throughout the module to real world scenarios.
The questions ask you to closely analyse the Zoom case study. By this stage of your studies you will have a lot of experience working with case studies, but it is worth repeating the basic steps:
Read the case study through fairly quickly to get a feel for the sort of situation involved.
Make sure you understand what you are required to do (in this case, by reading the EMA questions). Go through the case study materials again looking for potentially important points and check that you are clear about what is required of you – if you are really unsure, check with your tutor.
Then re-read the case study again, this time very carefully. Make brief notes (and/or sketch a few diagrams) about the key issues that seem to be relevant to the questions. Identify anything that may be relevant.
Start organising your observations, for example, by identifying any underlying issues or events.
Use concepts and theories from the module to help you expand on and support your diagnosis.
Remind yourself again of the questions you have been asked to address and organise your ideas appropriately.
Remember you are working to a word limit, so concentrate on what is clearly relevant. Support your argument with evidence from the case study, stating any assumptions you have made.
For all three questions in Part A you might want to revisit the various mind maps you have made throughout the module to remind yourself of the overall ideas within each block.
If you need to cite the case study in your answer, you can use within the text: Hinton (2021); (Hinton, 2021)
and in the reference list:
Hinton, M (2021) "EMA Case Study: Zoom", Open University, Milton Keynes
Part B
You were introduced to presentation skills in Session 2 of the Module conclusion. In particular, Section 2.5, which covered presenting ideas using slides. This section offered step-by-step instructions on creating slides, from selecting and condensing relevant information, right through to formatting your slides using presentation software, such as PowerPoint. It is worth revisiting Session 2 to remind yourself of this advice. You have a limited number of slides to produce so think carefully about what you consider to be the most important information you want to convey.
Part C
In Session 2 of the Module conclusion you were introduced to reflection as a key skill. Part C encourages you to use reflective techniques to look back at how your use of mind mapping has developed. You were introduced to a range of key skills in week 1 of the module. Mind mapping was introduced as a technique to support your learning. The benefits of mind mapping include:
summarising information so that you make associations easily
consolidating information from different research sources
thinking through complex problems
presenting information in a format that shows the overall structure of your subject.
A suitable approach to tackling this task might be to:
think about the ways you have developed mind mapping as a particular skill
give examples showing how your mind mapping skill has developed and how it could be transferred to your ongoing studies or professional life
identify any remaining barriers or limitations
What advice would you give to yourself if you were just starting out using mind mapping techniques?