Girotra, K., Terwiesch, C., & Ulrich, K. T. (2010). Idea generation and the quality of the best idea. Management Science, 56(4), 591-605.
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Executive summary
The purpose of this article is to deal with the generation of ideas within a firm. It helps also to understand the processes that lead to manage the quality of these ideas.
Firstly, successful idea generation in innovation usually depends on the quality of the best idea. In most innovation contexts, an organization would prefer 20 bad ideas and one exceptional idea to 21 just right ideas. In the world of innovation, it is the extremes that count, not the average.
Secondly, we analyze two forms of organization to generate ideas in an innovation process. The first is teamwork at the same time and space. The team approach is widely used in organizations. The second is a hybrid process, also called the nominal group technique. The group works individually for a certain fraction of the time, followed by group work. This is a way of effectively combining the merits of individual and team approaches.
Finally, the best ideas generated by a hybrid process are better than the best ideas generated by a group process. The hybrid process generates about three times as many ideas per unit of time and these ideas have a much higher average quality. The hybrid process is also better at identifying the best ideas, but both processes are weak at selecting the best ideas. On average, ideas that build on previous ideas are not statistically better than any random idea.
These processes involve several managerial implications. Ideas are indeed generated by access to technology and previous experience but also sharing information processes. This creative stimulus depends on access to and use of technology. This leads to to a higher quality of ideas. Then, the guideline consists in creating many ideas, choosing the best ones, testing, and refining them. It is also important to have diversity in the team and not just high-level members dominating the various discussions to select ideas in the best way. Another managerial implication tells that brainstorming is not a good managerial choice because building on other team members’ ideas does not make our ideas better. Moreover, it blocks the creation of ideas. This technique is counterproductive.
This paper does not apply in the manufacturing industry where good quality productions are preferred to exceptional quality ones followed by one scrap production. Furthermore, there are sectors where it is hard to meet (because of move requirements, time conflicts etc.). A solution to that can be a Web-based idea management systems.
Further references
• ZHAO, Z., RENARD, D., ELMOUKHLISS, M. & BALAGUE, C. (2016). WHAT AFFECTS CREATIVE PERFORMANCE IN IDEA CO-CREATION : COMPETITIVE, COOPERATIVE OR COOPETITIVE CLIMATE ? International Journal of Innovation Management, 20(04), 1640002. https://doi.org/10.1142/s1363919616400028
• How to manage for collective creativity. https://www.ted.com/talks/linda_hill_how_to_manage_for_collective_creativity Linda Hill, (2015)
Bessant, J., Von Stamm, B., Moeslein, K. M., & Neyer, A. K. (2010). Backing outsiders: selection strategies for discontinuous innovation. R&D Management, 40(4), 345-356.
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Key insights
• First, they make a quick reminder of what discontinuous innovation is: Discontinuous innovation is a major innovation that creates a new market or significantly transforms an existing one.
• The goal of the paper is to explore innovation practices that enable organizations to select innovation projects, which are outside the box.
• They have identified nine innovation practices for the selection of discontinuous innovation; these can be grouped into three clusters: enable, engage and experience.
Managerial implications
1. Complete reframing
Discontinuous innovation requires a complete reframing of the traditional methods of innovation within the organisation. This is because innovation does not fit into the existing frame of reference in the company. It therefore requires a huge effort on the part of the company to move beyond its existing framework and modify it or abandon it completely for a new one.
2. Analyse
The use of discontinuous innovation needs to be analysed due to its new aspect. That can be done by using the three different clusters of innovation practices, which are enable, engage and experience. It is important to note that these innovation practices can be combined and are complementary; successful discontinuous innovators manage a portfolio of these innovation practices, which enables them to react differently to different contexts.
3. Avoid conflict
Not only is there a need for different innovation practices to deal with the selection challenge of discontinuous innovation, but there also needs to be an awareness that the deployment of both, innovation practices for incremental and discontinuous innovation, is likely to create tensions and conflicts inside the organization. In order to avoid that, it would be effective to operate separate or parallel selection regimes rather than to attempt to run both within the same organisation framework.
4. Right choice
The last implication involves the discussion of choosing the appropriate innovation practice (or set of innovation practices) to reduce the risk of adopting a ‘wrong’ discontinuous innovation, for example, making a false technology choice.
Limitations
1. When you realize that there are too many uncertainties or that the unknown territory you want to explore is too dangerous for the business. It is better sometimes better to cancel the project or at least delay it, before having too large problems without back to the past. We won’t be afraid to drop out a project. If you are not ready to explore this new area it is better to wait or rethink about the strategy.
2. There is a limitation of discontinuous innovation if firms that want to develop a new market or transform an existing one, totally refuse to accept ideas, people, or help from the outside. A company that operates solely in-house could be quickly limited because it is impossible for a firm knowing nothing about a business to well develop something. Help or just information from outside is essential even if there are only few things from the outside.
3. A third limitation could be when a firm or an organization refuses to change these methods of working of innovation. Discontinuous innovation is based on the principle of adaptation. If an organization is not willing to modify its habits, methods, or philosophy, Discontinuous innovations are impossible.
Further references
1. Codini, A. P. (2022). Business Model Innovation and exaptation: A new way of innovating in SMEs. Technovation. doi: 10.1016/j.technovation.2022.102548
2. Chaoji, P., Martinsuo, M. (2022). Managers’ search practices at the front end of radical manufacturing technology innovations. Creativity and Innovation Management. 31(4). doi: 2443/10.1111/caim.12524
Garvin, D. A., Edmondson, A. C., & Gino, F. (2008). Is yours a learning organization?. Harvard business review, 86(3), 109.
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Content: This article presents a new survey instrument from Harvard Business School which allows companies to reflect on the importance of learning within their organization. The paper implicates three “building blocks” of a learning organization. The first building block encourages firms to be an environment that supports learning. To be described as such, it requires the following four character- istics: to be psychologically safe, to appreciate differences, to welcome new ideas, and to dedicate some time to reflection. The second block addresses the concrete learning processes and practices. Knowledge must be shared in systematic and clearly defined ways (among individuals, groups, or whole organizations; horizontally or vertically; internally or externally focused) to ensure that essential infor- mation moves efficiently. The last building block implies that organizational learning is strongly influ- enced by the exemplary behavior of leaders.
Implications: To improve the first building block, the idea is to foster cultural change. An example is the “blameless reporting” policy, where threatening terms such as “errors” and “investigation” are replaced by less emotionally loaded terms like “accidents” and “analysis”. Another idea would be to implement tools to reflect on project processes such as personal time scheduled for rethinking or reg- ular meetings to see if everyone is on the right path. Secondly, the processes of how knowledge is shared can be improved. This can happen internally (e.g. debriefs to identify what went well and what went wrong after a project ends; within the team and with other organizational units) as well as exter- nally (e.g. forums with customers or experts; meetings with suppliers to reflect on project success and improve future collaboration). Lastly, leaders can improve the learning through leading by example (e.g. admitting own mistakes) and creating an open, non-judgmental environment for their employees (e.g. 1-on-1 meetings to talk about success and mistakes).
Limitations: The first limitation of this tool is the idea of comparing survey scores with benchmark companies that were chosen in advance. But the need and opportunity for organizational learning might differ between sectors and hierarchy/structure. Thus, managers should not always compare their company to the average score, but make the best use of the feasible room for improvement of- fered by their company structure or sector. Furthermore, the paper implies that learning and sharing knowledge should be maximized, internally as well as externally. The authors do not differentiate be- tween types of intellectual capital. In cases of business models that rely on critical intellectual property (e.g. patents, trade secrets), critical information is not supposed to be shared externally, sometimes not even internally (e.g. CocaCola’s recipe). Also, the paper puts a strong focus on positive, open lead- ers that admit their own mistakes. Anyhow, for some employees, learning processes might be more efficient under pressure and hierarchy, and they need leaders as strong role models to gain respect and to improve in their jobs.
Further References:
– Hong, D., Suh, E., & Koo, C. (2011). Developing strategies for overcoming barriers to knowledge sharing based on conversational knowledge management: A case study of a financial company. Ex- pert systems with Applications, 38(12), 14417-14427.
– Newman, A., Donohue, R., & Eva, N. (2017). Psychological safety: A systematic review of the litera- ture. Human resource management review, 27(3), 521-535.
(Article) Bremser, W. G., & Barsky, N. P. (2004). Utilizing the balanced scorecard for R&D performance measurement. R&D Management, 34(3), 229-238.
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The article focuses mainly on two points. For the first one, strategic “integration of performance measurement”. It tells us why it is important to implement a measurement of performance (to have a global strategy in the company) and gives a tool to measure it: the Balanced Scorecard (BS). Regarding the second point, “Strategic importance of R&D activities”, the article gives a tool to implement to manage R&D activities, called the “Stage gate”.
Our first recommendation is the use of a balanced scorecard (BSC) which is a strategy performance management tool, used by managers to keep track of the execution of activities by the staff and to monitor the consequences arising of these actions. Organizations use BSC to communicate what they are trying to achieve but also to measure and monitor progress following the company’s strategy. It includes four different perspectives of the company’s strategy: Customers, Internal Business Processes, Learn & Growth and Financial performance. One way to visualize the BSC is to use the strategy map. This map helps the company to show the cause-and-effect relationship between strategic objectives.
To manage the R&D pipeline, managers can use the Stage-gate approach, which is our second recommendation. Invented in 1993, this approach is a way to define a product in different stages and gates. The principle of this approach is to evaluate (gates) the product at each new step forward (stages). You start at stage 1, I order to arrive at stage 2 you must go through gate 1, where you evaluate what you have done at stage 1 and decide if you should continue or not. The evaluation criteria at the gates are defined before starting the product definition.
The first limitation concerns the stage gate. When a company develop a standard Stage Gate process, it is wrong to assume that every project should go through it. Often, the process in innovation is not linear: it has loopbacks, you have to rework on some earlier steps and not all information is available at each step, which is normal because we’re exploring something new. This means that some projects could find themselves stuck because we don’t have the information needed.
Secondly, in the paper, the main focus was a lot about value creation which is basically how to create profit. But in today’s society we strive towards creating shared value. Creating shared value is the practice of creating value for society by addressing its needs and challenges. In addition, excluding stakeholders might damage the firms in the long term.
We believe that the following two articles are relevant to the analysis of the article:
– Cooper, R. G. (2021). Accelerating innovation : Some lessons from the pandemic. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 38(2), 221‑232. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpim.12565
– Malagueño, R., Lopez-Valeiras, E., & Gomez-Conde, J. (2017). Balanced scorecard in SMEs : effects on innovation and financial performance. Small Business Economics, 51(1), 221‑244. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-017-9921-3 .
(Article) Jiménez-Jiménez, D., & Sanz-Valle, R. (2011). Innovation, organizational learning, and performance. Journal of Business Research, 64(4), 408-417.
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The article “Innovation, organizational learning, and performance” by Daniel Jiménez-Jiménez &Raquel Sanz-Valle attempts to analyze the relationships between organizational learning, innovation and performance separately, that are known for being positive. It’s also making a link between firm size and age, industry and environmental turbulence and seeing if it moderates the effects. We highlight three key points that could be useful to know for a manager as there are some specifications. First, organizational learning’s effect on innovation is higher than its effect on performance. Then, according to the findings, the relationship between innovation and performance is positive but stronger when firms are bigger, older and belong to the manufacturing industry. Finally, the fact that the findings concerning the relationship between organizational learning and performance indicate that this relation is stronger for smaller and younger firms, services and in high turbulent environments.
We recommend managers to focus on organizational learning in a general way. Its effect might be different depending on the size of the company but even for big companies it is a plus to see models that are working efficiently. Another advice we would like to give to managers is to focus particularly on the environmental turbulence of the company. It was seen in the study that high turbulence environment is bad for companies but in some cases, it fosters its innovation processes and performances. The last advice we would like to give is some advice for managers of especially young companies. As we have seen in the key points, organized routines have more effect on innovation and performance for young enterprises than older ones. Older companies have by definition routines that are in place for a long time and young enterprises should take example on those routines to build their own. Our advice for managers of young companies is then to tackle the problem that would prevent them from the development of their innovation program and then to focus on the creation of efficient routines suiting every employee.
Here are some limitations of this article. First, managers must be aware that they will have to invest money; to pay for fairs, training to employees but they will also lose money because when the employee is in training he will not be working. Secondly, it is a good idea to help employees acquire new knowledge, but it is also necessary to succeed in stimulating employees to learn, to make them want to learn. Another limitation is that we cannot predict all environmental disturbances, some may be predictable and others not. Finally, it is not necessarily easy for start-ups to establish routines, it takes a lot of time to find what is suitable for them.
On the basis of the article, we think that some items could be added to have a more representative result.
1) Joan Freixanet, Alex Rialp & Iya Churakova (2020) How do innovation, internationalization, and organizational learning interact and co-evolve in small firms? a complex systems approach, Journal of Small Business Management, 58:5, 1030–1063
2) Liu, Y., Lv, D., Ying, Y., Arndt, F., & Wei, J. (2018). Improvisation for innovation: The contingent role of resource and structural factors in explaining innovation capability. Technovation, 74–75, 32–41.
Argyris, C. (1977). Double loop learning in organizations. Harvard Business Review, 55(5), 115-125.
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Double Loop Learning in organizations was introduced by Chris Argyris in 1977. This article explains the hidden failure of error correction strategies in organizations and introduces a new organizational learning paradigm which can help assess and question the underlying assumptions of the daily and long-term decision making and problem-solving processes.
The article outlines the differences between Single Loop Learning (Model 1) and Double Loop Learning (Model 2). The Single Loop Learning model is very direct and straightforward in the error assessment and rectification. This model only reacts to variables that are relevant to the short-term operation of the organization. The second model is an evolution of the Model 1. It extends upon Single Loop Learning by analysing what the roots in which the decision making is based on are. It encourages to question the organization’s guiding principles.
The article highlights that companies are often successful in daily error detection but avoid questioning the mental model behind decisions. In addition, employees fear retribution for questioning the underlying motives of the decision-making process. The solution developed by the author, is to create a culture that encourages the questioning of mental models by implementing Double Loop Learning.
To solve the problems raised in the article, an open criticism and questioning culture should be encouraged. It is crucial that the employees are also taught how to criticise precisely. Secondly, the questioning culture must embrace the basis of the mental model in place so that it is possible not only to understand but also to improve it. Finally, the model implementation must start at the highest ranked managers and trickle down to the employees because they must lead from the forefront.
However, the model also has a few limitations. The article only mentions straight forward situations in which there is an obvious correct decision based on the perceived information. This is not always the case. One of the key limitations is that the gathered information can cause different decisions based on the decision maker. For these situations, guiding principles are useful.
Apart from that, rapidly changing mental models can be detrimental to a business’ success. They can derail long-term planning. Furthermore, customers might be scared off if they cannot assess the values which the company stands for. A company that has pledged adherence to green initiatives should not start making decisions that counteract their vision statement. The customer base which has likely been drawn in because of the company’s guiding principles would disapprove and dissolve.
Another important limitation are cultural aspects. Countries with other traditions often have different mental models. Criticism on these decision parameters can come off ill-willed.
However, the most important aspect is speed. Questioning guiding principles should always be encouraged but in situations where quick decisions are essential, it is useful to have a guiding principle that the decision maker follows.
Further readings:
(Video) R. Yapp – Double-loop learning: a case study from the front-line – TEDxWandsworth (2016)
(Article) Boal, K.B. and Schultz, P.L., 2007. Storytelling, time, and evolution: The role of strategic leadership in complex adaptive systems. The Leadership Quarterly, 18(4), pp.411-428.
(Article) Dong, J., Liu, R., Qiu, Y. and Crossan, M., 2020. Should knowledge be distorted? Managers’ knowledge distortion strategies and organizational learning in different environments. The Leadership Quarterly, p.101477.
(Article) F. Gino, 2019. Cracking the Code of Sustained Collaboration. Harvard Business Review.
(Article) Baron, R. A. (2006). Opportunity recognition as pattern recognition: How entrepreneurs “connect the dots” to identify new business opportunities. Academy of Management Perspectives, 20(1), 104-119.
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Key insights
The article focuses on opportunity recognition through the pattern recognition process and underlines the importance of that process made up of 3 interrelated factors. The first factor is “engaging in an active search for opportunities” which means having access to more unique and appropriate sources of information, than the most common ones, provided by newspapers. The second factor is, “alertness to opportunities”. It underlines the fact that some people recognize opportunities as they emerge without being actively looking for them. The last factor, “having a prior knowledge of the market, industry or customers”, means being aware of what’s going on in the market. The Pattern recognition is the process through which seemingly unrelated events, for instance from different industries, are perceived by specific people as constituting identifiable patterns. The perceived patterns then become the source for identifying new business opportunities.
Managerial implications
First of all, it is important to find the persons capable of defining and recognizing the opportunities. Indeed, the capacity to recognize opportunities depends on inner characteristics possessed by the individual. Moreover, while not everyone is capable of opportunity recognition, the recognition process can actually be learned and improved. Therefore, it is important to invest in the learning process of the entrepreneurs so they may learn to search in the best places and in the best ways to identify changes and how those are interconnected. However, the training must vary and not be too focused on restricted factors because at a certain degree, we can note the reverse effect with a decreasing performance. Finally, it is important for managers to realize that the pattern recognition process is a never ending and constantly evolving process wherein not all aspects of an opportunity are directly identified. The concrete vision of a business is not entirely built at once and it is crucial to proceed step by step. Thus, managers must take into account new information, changes and experiences but they should also be prepared that the business project may change and evolve in unforeseen ways.
Limitations
We have identified 3 situations in which the pattern recognition process and theses managerial implications would be difficult to apply. Firstly, an opportunity may arise without the company having to carry out all the steps described in the article. Indeed, in a competitive sector, when one of the players finds a new market opportunity, the other players present on the market will discover this new opportunity through their competitors. In this type of situation, the other companies in the sector will use and convert in their own way the opportunity freshly found by their competitor without having to use the pattern recognition process. Secondly, in some situations, young people with almost no experience can recognize opportunities that more experienced people would not have found. For example, Boyan Slat, an inexperienced minor, has the idea of doing a more in-depth investigation into plastic pollution of the oceans. Today, he is the CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. Indeed, young people have a tendency to think that everything is possible while experienced people tend to think in a single-loop way. That is why managers should not only base their hopes on experienced people, but also give everyone the opportunity to express their ideas. Not only experienced people can see opportunities but also the people who use the double-loop learning process. Finally, the last limitation regards the definition of an opportunity: “opportunity can be created from a change”. However, not every change should be seen as an opportunity. People are resistant to change, routines are valuable and changing them can be risky.
Further references
Adomako, S., Danso, A., Boso, N., & Bedman, N. (2018). Entrepreneurial alertness and new venture performance : Facilitating roles of networking capability. International Small Business Journal, 36(5), 453 472. https://doi.org/10.1177/0266242617747667
This article aims to deepen the concept of vigilance and mentions the link between increased levels of Entrepreneurial alertness and increased performance of new businesses.
Chang, Y.Y., & Chen, M.H. (2020). Creative entrepreneurs’ creativity, opportunity recognition, and career success: Is resource availability a double-edged sword? European Management Journal, 38(5), 750-762.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2020.03.004
This article explains what to do after finding an opportunity to achieve success.
Liao, Y.c., & Phan, P.H. (2016). Internal capabilities, external structural holes network positions, and knowledge creation. Journal of Technology Transfer, 41(5),1148-1167.
This article gives information about the importance of external network and of the trust and reciprocity between partners.
Paulus, P. B., & Yang, H. C. (2000). Idea generation in groups: A basis for creativity in organizations. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 82(1), 76-87
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KEY INSIGHTS
The authors start off with the hypothesis that brainstorming groups are inherently flawed. These groups have 3 limitations : attention, incubation, and production blocking. In a few words, people can’t generate ideas and react to the ones being advanced by their colleagues in an optimized way. So, the authors suggest two alternatives: individual writing, and brainwriting groups. The first option is not good enough, as the collective dimension is missing. However, the second alternative combines the qualities of both of the options. Indeed, in brainwriting groups, people can express their ideas without restraint, and they do not have to wait for their turn to voice their insight.
IMPLICATIONS
We read in our article that not knowing each other well and not working together for a long time did not encourage the sharing of ideas, creativity and innovation. A first implication and therefore a first advice that could be given to managers is to increase team cohesion in order to set up an atmosphere of trust within the working group and therefore a favourable atmosphere for sharing.
LIMITATIONS
The first limitation that we have noticed is that in the study, they take only small groups of four students. However, the size of the group can vary and can often be bigger than four. The process to share ideas during a meeting can be adapted according to the group and its size.
We can also establish a second limitation, related to the mix of approaches that the manager chooses to apply in order to optimise the creativity and productivity of his team: the personality type of the members of the group. An intraverted person will prefer to express her ideas in writing through brainwashing, whereas a more extroverted person will say her ideas orally. Indeed, if the leader doesn’t pay attention to it, some ideas may not be taken into account, which can have a significant impact on innovation into the company.
FURTHER INSIGHTS
Robinson, S., & Stubberud, H. A. (2015). A COMAPRISON OF METHODS OF CREATIVITY IN SMALL AND LARGE EUROPEAN BUSINESSES. International Journal of Entrepreneurship, 19, 140-151. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.proxy.bib.ucl.ac.be:2443/docview/1701804789?accountid=12156
Wei-Tsong, W., Yi-Shun, W., & Wan-Ting, C. (2019). Investigating the effects of psychological empowerment and interpersonal conflicts on employees’ knowledge sharing intentions. Journal of Knowledge Management, 23(6), 1039-1076. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy.bib.ucl.ac.be/10.1108/JKM-07-2018-0423
Javadi, E., Gebauer, J., & Mahoney, J. (2013). The impact of user interface design on idea integration in electronic brainstorming: An attention-based view. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 14(1), 1-21. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.proxy.bib.ucl.ac.be:2443/docview/1418398526?accountid=12156
Cross, R., Parker, A., Prusak, L., & Borgatti, S. P. (2001). Knowing what we know:-supporting knowledge creation and sharing in social networks. Organizational Dynamics, 30(2), 100-120.
Fairbank, J. F., & Williams, S. D. (2001). Motivating creativity and enhancing innovation through employee suggestion system technology. Creativity and Innovation Management, 10(2), 68-74.
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The article aims to describe an employee suggestion system technology that increases employees’ motivation to think creatively and participate in the system. Employee suggestion systems (ESS) refer to strategies companies create, in order to facilitate the employees to share their ideas and converting those into possible valuable innovations. achieving for example cost savings. In addition, employees’ suggestion systems also encourage entrepreneurship by demonstrating employer interest in creative ideas, enabling businesses to retain employees who might otherwise be motivated to leave and launch their own business.
Key insights:
As key points within the article we highlight the idea that the employee suggestion system is more efficient when employees’ ideas are aligned with their organizations’ priorities. Further, rewards for employees who submit their recommendations will only motivate behaviour if the rewards are valued, fundamentally, if they are associated with successful performance of the recommendation submitted.
Managerial implications:
We have here listed 3 concretes axes on which managers should focus on and should enhance: the expectancy, the perceived instrumentality of good suggestions and the attractiveness. First, the main key of success of an ESS is that the people feel involve in the process. We don’t have to be a brilliant psychologist to understand that employee will be motivated to engage in activities for which they believe they are competent (Fairbank, William, 2001) or “think they are”. Managers should consequently ensure that their employee feel involved in the process by enhancing employees’ expectancy.
Secondly, the paper shows that motivation is highest when individuals believe that their performance, if successful, will be instrumental in obtaining positive personal outcomes. The stronger the perceived association between performing a certain task and the outcomes, the stronger the motivation. Therefore, ESS that maximize the perceived linkage between submitting a good suggestion and getting a desired response will tend to motivate the highest levels of participation.
Then, the rewards will only motivate behaviour if the rewards are valued, specially, if they are linked to successful performance. Managers should care about the attractiveness of the reward for participating.
Limitations:
Firstly, this article supposes that employees have already ideas to suggest some innovations for the company. But not how to really improve the creativity of the employees. While, the capacity to propose new ideas is also important because without it, the system will be useless. Furthermore, the expectancy theory supposes that employee’s motivation is linked with the reward. But employees are not all the time in search of concrete reward. We don’t know if it’s just an oral recognition or a real gift. Sometimes, it’s just a challenge for the employees to give new ideas and help in its own way the company. Finally, we do not know how to motivate employees’ when they don’t get on with their managers. How to motivate them to propose ideas if their relationship stops their will to propose them, even if those ideas are very good.
Further references:
Amundsen, Oscar; Aasen, Tone Merethe; Gressgård, Leif Jarle; Hansen, Kåre. (2014) Preparing organisations for employee-driven open innovation. International Journal of Business Science and Applied Management. vol. 9 (1).
Jarle Gressgård, L., Amundsen, O., Merethe Aasen, T. and Hansen, K. (2014), “Use of information and communication technology to support employee-driven innovation in organizations: a knowledge management perspective”, Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 18 No. 4, pp. 633-650. https://doi.org/10.1108/JKM-01-2014-0013
Kesting, P. & Ulhøi, J. P. (2010). Employee-driven innovation: extending the license to foster innovation. Management Decision, 48 (1) 65-84
Show less(Article) Gassmann, O., & Zeschky, M. (2008). Opening up the solution space: the role of analogical thinking for breakthrough product innovation. Creativity and Innovation Management, 17(2), 97-106.
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The article is about analogical thinking; which can be defined as a creative method to solve problem that needs a solution. Analogical thinking happens when a familiar problem is used to solve a novel problem of the same type (Reeves & Weisberg, 1994).
We highlighted three key insights. Firstly, the firms must understand the problem and its context. It allows them to have the “bigger picture”. Secondly, they need to explore domains outside of their industry’s field to find analogies that could solve the problem at hand. And the last one: they have to figure out what knowledge is valuable and what knowledge does not help as to not retain any useless information.
These insights lead us to develop three managerial implications. Indeed, firms must look outside to find concrete analogies that can be applied. They also need to diversify the profiles of their managers. It allows them to have a panel of experiences and expertise. Finally, they should listen to their employees. Looking outside is just as important as looking inside to get ideas from the firm’s employees.
Of course, these implications have some limitations. The first limitation is that by looking outside and applying what you see to your own problem might not always lead to innovation but, in some cases, to a simple copy. Another limitation is that having a diverse set of profiles is good, but firms should pay attention to the position of everyone in the hierarchy: putting a person with global leading skills in a very specialised position might be a waste of resources. As a last limitation, we figured out that sometimes finding analogies is not possible because the problem simply has no solution; which could lead to a waste of time and money trying to find the solution.
To go further on the subject, we advise you to check two complementary articles. The first one is an application of analogical thinking in a case study, the second one shows that analogical thinking is nothing new and has been around for centuries.
(Article) Eunyoung, K., Hideyuki, H. (2015). A Study on an Assessment Framework for The Novelty of Ideas Generated by Analogical Thinking. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 195, 1396 – 1406.
(Article) Gingras, Y., Guay, A. (2011). The Uses of Analogies in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Science. Perspectives on Science, Vol. 19, no.2, p. 154-19.
Oldham, G. R., & Da Silva, N. (2015). The impact of digital technology on the generation and implementation of creative ideas in the workplace. Computers in Human Behavior, 42, 5-11
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The paper by Oldham and Da Silva (2015) aims to find out how digital technologies like communication and conferencing tools, digital platforms as well as social networks foster innovation by enhancing idea generation and implementation.
Their key findings are that digital technologies enhance creative idea generation by employees in mainly three ways. (1) They provide an easy, diverse and immediate access to new and diverse information that further allow to be accessed permanently. (2) They provoke full engagement of employees by enhancing their autonomy and interaction with others as well as enlarge opportunity for positive feedback. (3) They simplify innovators access to emotional and instrumental support. Idea implementation is mainly boosted by a facilitation of easier and faster access to credible supporters of the innovation that help the innovator to overcome scepticism and resistance to change within the company.
Let’s talk about the implications and ways that various computing devices and tools might facilitate each of the conditions described earlier.
(1) Access to new and diverse information: Managers should therefore invest time and money in finding effective and appropriate tools for the disclosure of a large amount of information. They must ensure that their employees have access to all the information they want. They can hire IT specialists who will be able to set up high-performance platforms. In this way, employees can find more potential creative combinations that can be derived from a large amount of information. (2) Engagement in the work role: Telecommuting fosters autonomy which is a way to improve employees engagement and thereby creative idea generation. Therefore, managers should apply concrete tools in order to allow the employees to work at home. For example, they can set up online platforms and document sharing devices that contain all the data that employees may need while working from home. In addition, managers should create platforms that allow all employees to obtain contacts from other stakeholders in the entity. This kind of computing devices provide more opportunities for employees to engage formal and informal collaboration with others but also to request feedback from others at any time and that enhance employee engagement and satisfaction. (3) Support: Support received from supervisors is positively correlated with the implementation of creative ideas of employees (Frese et al.(1999)). That’s why managers need to think about ways to allow employees to receive support from their supervisor regularly. For example, they could decide that employees should propose new ideas on a certain platform at a certain frequency. Supervisors should evaluate these new ideas by giving feedback to employees.
Limitations can be highlighted for each point of the implication part. Concerning accessing to new and diverse information, the use of digital technologies produces an overload of diverse information that could actually result in lowered creative idea generation. Some employees can also feel overwhelmed during the information selection process that can lead to conscientious individuals may have little time available to develop creative ideas after having reviewed all the information. Concerning the engagement in the work role, another possible side effect is an increase in the amount of stress by users, and so lowered creativity, due to the uninterrupted connection to work. Telecommuting seems to give some flexibility in work and so higher engagement and creativity, but in fact employees could have some trouble to make a split between professional and personal requirements, and make overtime hours that generate stress. Finally, concerning the support, presenting ideas via an electronic way can open the door to judgmental evaluation instead of receiving feedback and encouragement for ideas. As a result, if individuals anticipate criticism or expect negative evaluation, they produce a less creative work or censor their ideas. Computing device use could also reduce the face-to-face conversations which facilitates exchange and support of ideas.
Further references:
• Watanabe, K., Fukuda, K., & Nishimura, T. (2015). A technology-assisted design methodology for employee-driven innovation in services. Technology Innovation Management Review, 5(2), 6-14. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.proxy.bib.ucl.ac.be:2443/docview/1676101786?accountid=12156
• Bäckström, I., & Lindberg, M. (2019). Varying involvement in digitally enhanced employee-driven innovation. European Journal of Innovation Management, 22(3), 524-540. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy.bib.ucl.ac.be/10.1108/EJIM-01-2018-0008
• Gressgård, L. J., Amundsen, O., Aasen, T. M., & Hansen, K. (2014). Use of information and communication technology to support employee-driven innovation in organizations: A knowledge management perspective. Journal of Knowledge Management, 18(4), 633-650. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy.bib.ucl.ac.be/10.1108/JKM-01-2014-0013
Show lessCapozzi, M. M., Dye, R., & Howe, A. (2011). Sparking creativity in teams: An executive’s guide. McKinsey Quarterly, 2.
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The environment in which organizations operate is constantly changing. This is reason why if a company wants to be competitive, it often needs to innovate. Therefore, a company must ensure that each of its members is as creative as possible. Indeed, there is a direct link between companies’ innovative performances and its people’s creativity.
It has been proven that creativity is something everyone can develop by being in an appropriate environment, pleasant work climate and by changing its personal perceptions. This article focuses more precisely on that last factor. As a matter of fact, perception is intrinsically linked to creativity in the human brain. To perceive things differently, Berns maintains that « we must bombard our brains with things it has never encountered ». To do so, different managerial practices developed in this article can be useful to the development of employees’ creativity.
The first one is the immersion in a different environment. The employee is brought out of his office to see and experience different ways of working than the ones he is used to. The aim is on one hand to compare his experience with his implicit or explicit assumptions in order to relax his strong views on the operations of his own company, and on the other hand to lead to the identification of new work concepts.
The second one consists of exploring the deep-rooted company orthodoxies in order to identify and then challenge it. This practice can improve the ability to embrace new ideas, identifying new opportunities but also get a jump on the competition.
The following one uses analogies, that is to say comparing several companies, questions, problems or ideas seemingly unrelated. This can result in creativity progresses, particularly in situations requiring greenfield ideas.
Finally, the last one consists of imposing artificial constraints on the traditional business model. Despite imposing constraints seems to restrict creativity, it can actually allow the employees of the company to leave their intellectual comfort zone and enhance their creative ideas
But these methods are not enough to boost the creativity of people and thereby the innovation performances of organizations. Indeed, it is necessary to take into account the culture of organizations and the environment in which they operate, but also the environment they offer to their collaborators. Two points seem to be relevant with regard to the culture. First, companies must share a clear mission with their employees and translate it into specific objectives. Then, companies should not punish if their employees make mistakes. On the contrary, they should encourage them to try new ways of doing things. Regarding the environment, it has been proven that companies which invest in a creative-work environment can improve their innovation performances. Without taking the culture and environment aspects into account, it seems to be complicated to considerably increase the creativity of people.
Moreover, managers need to pay attention to the impact of the environment on the success of the four management techniques presented earlier. They also need to acknowledge that the idea of creativity itself is a very challenging concept for the human brain. As a matter of fact, creativity is linked to perception, and the perception of the reality depends on deep assumptions. Identifying and reconsidering these assumptions is incredibly hard to do because its goes against the one thing that our brain is trained to avoid: uncertainty.
Concerning further references, the TedTalk of Corazza Giovani about creative thinking could help to understand more deeply the concept of the “box” and how people could manage to get out of it. It is crucial to be comfortable with these basic notions if anyone wants to be able to understand the creativity concept. Also, we have talked briefly about the link between creativity and perception. However, this topic is a really complex one and there is much more to it than what was presented in this workshop. Therefore, the book “Creativity and Perception in Management” written by J. Henry offers a thorough insight on the matter by studying creativity and perception respectively and concluding on some managerial implications.
Show lessArgote, L., & Miron-Spektor, E. (2011). Organizational learning: From experience to knowledge. Organization Science, 22(5), 1123-1137.
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Key insights:
This article analyses how companies manage organizational learning, the different externalities that must be taken into account in this analysis and relationships between them. The aim of this article is to identify where progress has been made and where additional research is needed. In order to study organizational learning a theoretical framework has been proposed. It depicts organizational learning as a cycle through each task performance experience is converted into knowledge, and then that influences the context as well as future experience. This cycle can be applied at several levels : from individual to interorganizational. Among the main elements of the model are to remember the organizational experience, the context and the organizational learning processes. Concerning the knowledge, three steps were identified : the creation, the retention and the transfer. If this model is understood and integrated into the company, the article suggests that organizational learning will be effective.
– Knowledge creation is influenced by creativity which is affected by people characteristics.
– Knowledge retention makes the link between the stock and flow of knowledge. It is also the effect of organizational memory on organizational performance and how organizations reuse the knowledge. Research also examines whether organizations “forget” the knowledge they learn.
– Knowledge transfer is observed when organizations learn indirectly from the experience of other units. This transfer can be “congenital” and occur at the organization’s birth (Huber 1991) or after the organization has been established.
Implications:
The most important thing to know is that a good knowledge management will enable firms to gain in efficiency and quality. To do so, managers have some implications.
First, the firm should take risk, to go out of the routine. They have to experience new things so that employees acquire new knowledge. Then, managers should encourage their employees to work together and not everyone on his side.To do this, they could develop some platforms that would work such as social networks and it would be the place where every employee share his knowledge. This would facilitate the sharing and the transmission of knowledge and it would optimize the work. Finally, firms have to pay attention to knowledge retention when employees are leaving the company. To capture this knowledge, managers should encourage sharing thanks to rewards. These reward package can include salary, allowances, bonuses, share plans, health provision…
To go further, companies could set themselves the objective to reach some ISO standards so that employees agree on a common goal and visualize more the purpose of sharing knowledge.
Limitations:
As we said before, the most important thing for companies is to break the routine. If a firm is stuck to his initial goal and doesn’t evolve, doesn’t meet any new experience, there won’t be any knowledge to manage and to share.
Furthermore, the paper doesn’t take into account the cases where there is a lack of community and how to remedy it. Lots of companies put tools in place to improve their management. Nevertheless, there are many cases of failed implementation because the conditions were not met for the tool to be favorably received. Change management is the foundation of the implementation process and must begin well before the tool arrives – this is the key to success.
Further references:
– Zheng, W., Yang, B., & McLean, G. N. (2010). Linking organizational culture, structure, strategy, and organizational effectiveness: Mediating role of knowledge management. Journal of Business research, 63(7), 763-771.
– Shujahat, M., Sousa, M. J., Hussain, S., Nawaz, F., Wang, M., & Umer, M. (2017). Translating the impact of knowledge management processes into knowledge-based innovation: The neglected and mediating role of knowledge-worker productivity. Journal of Business Research.
– Vidéo: Knowledge Management and Innovation, Dr Kondal Reddy Kandadi, TEDxUniversityofBolton, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNUwZctwwhw
LECLERC Olivier & MOLDOVEAUNU Mihnea, « 5 routes to more innovative problem solving », April 2013
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Introduction
This executive summary deals with a new way to generate more innovative ideas. It is based on the article of Olivier Leclerc and Mihnea Moldoveanu published on the McKinsey website called “Five routes to more innovative problem solving”. This paper mentions the importance of adopting different approaches (which called flexons) in the same time to solve complex problems.
Key points
The first way to solve problems is to mix the team members in order to have a heterogeneous group to work together. It allows to have different experiences, different skills and, therefore, to provide different points of view to address the situation.
The second way to innovate is the flexon approach. This approach presents five models and is appropriated to all situations, to all groups, to every person etc. The first flexon is the networks flexon. This model maps all the actors and factors around the thing on which you want to act and it analyzes their impact to compare them. This flexon decomposes the “big problem” into small situations, well defined and easier to view. The second one, the evolutionary flexon, implies the use of evolutionary algorithms that will be launched again and again to generate different results. It requires the intervention of hazard because it is used when you have less control on your variables. The third one is the decision-agent flexon. With this latter, all departments, teams etc. are in competition and try to allocate their resources in the best way, to reach an equilibrium. Then, there is the system-dynamic flexon. It focuses on the cause-and-effect relationships to have a better comprehension of their impact in the time. The last one is the information-processing flexon which considers all parts of the company as information processing units. It aims to bring out the costs of computations, the data and the efficiency of the resolutions.
The last key point concerns the possibility to mix these flexons together (by two or more) to really improve the ideas and the solutions. Indeed, these flexons are not a five-steps process that has to be strictly respected. These models are real tools to help in problem solving situations.
Implications
The first implication for managers in order to become innovative is about the building of heterogeneous and dynamic team. To make it, it is sometimes needed to totally rethink the structure of the company so as to implement teams in perpetual movement – reactive to change and ready to create this change. One concrete implication for a company is to become agile company which allows being more innovative by more intense, more fluid and more collective exchanges though using the perpetual change and the innovation in order to build a competitive advantage. The case of RTBF is a concrete situation of a company which decided to rebuild the structure of the company to become agile and to follow and create the changes and the innovations more easily.
Secondly, these flexons helps the company to have a clear view of its work in general but also of its projects which are a key factor for innovation. Therefore, tools are required and a similar model has been chosen to better plan a project, the Ishikawa model (or the fishbone model). It is based on probability analysis. This model and the flexons approach are quite similar for example with their implication of the cause-and-effect relationship but especially because they help to predict the future and facilitate innovation. Concrete applications are given in the article with case studies of McKinsey.
Limitations
The first limitation is that, in the common life, people are scared of change. There are many companies which are currently changing and, thus, where this is harder for older people to take with (ex: RTBF). It can be a real barrier to innovation.
Another thing that should be mention is that flexons can be very useful but actually rather difficult to implement. In the real life, you don’t always have the time to implement your flexon, it can be very expensive to buy a certain type of software etc. Other factors also limit the use of these flexons: the accessibility of data, the complexity of the real situation regarding to the simplicity of the theoretical model…
Further Ref
Ilie, G., & Ciocoiu, C. N. (2010). Application of fishbone diagram to determine the risk of an event with multiple causes. Management Research and Practice, 2(1), 1-20.
Kozlowski, S.W.J., Watola, D.J., et al. Developing adaptive teams: a theory of dynamic team leadership. In Team Effectiveness In Complex Organizations : Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives and Approaches. Routledge, 2008, 113-154
(Article) Edmondson, A.C. (2007). The competitive imperative of learning. Harvard Business Review. 86(7-8), 60-7
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Key Insights
A. The first concept on which this article focuses is execution. And more particularly the difference between execution-as-efficiency and execution-as-learning. On the one hand, execution-as-efficiency is considered as the “old-fashioned” way of working. It consists in dividing the work in repetitive tasks to increase efficiency, as Ford’s production vision. But some drawbacks have recently been spotted in this approach like the difficulty to evaluate individual performance or the loss of information. On the other hand, execution-as-learning is based on a four steps model applied in day-to-day work. Those steps consist in defining clear process guidelines, providing tools to enable employees to collaborate in real time, collecting process data and institutionalizing disciplined reflection.
B. The second crucial notion is related to the importance to ensure a safe organizational climate as a way foster the learning process. Such a climate incentivizes employees to propose ideas and participate to new projects.
Implications
A. To reach optimal performances, managers firstly need to ensure equality at the workplace. That means prohibiting favoritism and ensuring a fair and uniform working environment. Moreover, it is obvious that this equality must be present between genders, ethnicities, religious beliefs and so on.
B. It is then important to acknowledge the lack of answers to tough problems the organization could be facing. While it could be seen as a weakness, it has been shown that managers display humility by admitting their mistakes or ignorance. This encourages the employees to follow the same behavior.
C. Another crucial point is to maintain an open discussion within the company. Letting the door open to show the availability to listen and discuss is a starting point. Many startups in the Silicon Valley try to achieve this by working in open spaces.
D. It is also essential to have a shared vision of the organization’s objectives between the management and the employees. This implies that the employees’ opinions must be taken into account.
E. Finally, management has to keep in mind that motivating the employees is a key to effectiveness. It can be done by implementing programs to improve well-being within the organization so that they feel appreciated and cared about. Let’s think about the example of many firms adopting “team building” seminars.
Limitations
A. The first limitation concerns execution-as-learning. This notion is very conceptual and still difficult to implement. Some reasons for those difficulties are that the prescriptions given are not precise enough so that managers do not really understand how to implement them in their organization. Furthermore, this concept was created for CEOs without thinking about middle managers who might be better placed to implement it. Finally, tools to help the implementation are lacking.
B. The second one is that there remains quite a lot of domains, like fast food restoration or mass manufacturing, where the concept of execution-as-learning does not apply efficiently. Let’s keep in mind that the main objective of these companies is to be competitive on prices and create competitive advantages, they should then focus on this aspect.
Further references
A. (Article) Garvin, D. A., Edmondson. A.C., Gino, F. (2008). Is Yours a Learning Organization? Harvard Business Review. 86(3), 109-116.
B. (Article) Jamaledine, R. (2017). Employee relationship management – 5 Tips on how to do it right! Retrieved from https://www.potential.com/articles/5-ways-manage-employee-relations/
C. (Video) TedTalk by Luc de Brabandere: Reinventive creative thinking (2015).
Self, D. R., Bandow, D., & Schraeder, M. (2010). Fostering employee innovation: leveraging your “ground level” creative capital.
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Faced with a highly competitive environment more and more organizations must innovate if
they wish to survive . This article relates the relationship between the top and the bottom of a
company or an organization and enlighten the fact that , even if it could be common sense,
the most innovative frameworks and ideas doesn’t always come from the top management
(the decision makers) . That’s why the enhancing of a healthy top/bottom relationship is
primordial to settle in every organization . How the article propose to resolve this issue?
First, by leveraging the creative capital of the employees (by giving them more resources
and independence). Secondly by bettering the Organizational Innovation , knowing that the
top managers doesn’t always receive all the informations in time to tackle a problem at the
right moment and thus are not aware of the multiplicities of issues regarding the final product
(quality, consumer satisfaction ,…) which is a real issue for a decision maker .
For the implication, The article separated them in two themes general.
The relation between employees and leader: we have three points: share accurate
information, active listening and foster mutual trust. The active listening and the share
accurate information are connected. The information sharing in the company is important but
there is a problem in the quality of the information. For example, we receive every day a
great deal of e-mail with the information but most of the time this information is not us
necessary. The company has to improve the way of sharing of the precise information.She
can create for example one dated base. For the third points, the purpose is to improve the
trust between the employees and the leaders. But the employees learnt not to trust in leader
because the wage-freezes and decreases of staff. The leaders have several manners to
improve the trust of the employees to them. For example: decrease the means of control,
improve the safety, implement their ideas,…..
The other main implication for the manager is to support his employees into
innovation and encourage an innovation culture within its company.
To help the employees to take initiatives, the management team can for example implement
a system of rewards, that can be for individuals or even teams or for the whole workforce –
the important thing is that employees see that you appreciate their efforts to improve the
business. Another way to valorize employees is to communicate via corporate media for
publically acknowledging the employee’s contribution. It will not only show the organization’s
appreciation for the employee’s efforts, but sends a strong signal of what the organization
values.
The other point is to use failure as a learning tool. While mistakes from negligence should
never be rewarded, the failure resulting from an attempt to create new products or services,
or to resolve problems in existing ones should never be treated punitively. Conversely, these
incidents should be used as an opportunity to learn. An organizational culture that
acknowledges the freedom to fail without fear of punishment will yield an open and truly
empowered environment.
Concerning limitations, the paper gives 5 big rules for a successful innovation. It’s very well
but how it should be concretely implemented in the field. There may be problems that could
be encountered and we have to think about how it should be solved.
A study conducted by Innov’Acteurs in Paris about participatory innovation show risks
associated by employee innovation. The problem concerns that this innovation can lead to
work overload and internal disappointment. In fact, particularly in big companies, ideas are
not always well exploited or take time to set up on the ground. All of this lead to ideas that
are difficult to materialize on the field.
Moreover, it’s very difficult to build trust when the employees have a bad image of the
company and learned not to believe the management.
Indeed, when employees sense an incoherence between what their bosses say and do, then
they don’t feel trust and bad things happen. For instance, employees may be less engaged
in their work, less receptive to new ideas, less motivated to innovate.
However, to build trust on the managers, you can for example:
· Deliver what you say you will deliver. The key lesson is not to promise anything that you
are not sure you can deliver.
· Be honest when explaining the reasons for breaking promises.
further reference:
● Shin, S. J. , Yuan, F. , & Zhou, J. (2017). When perceived innovation job
requirement increases employee innovative behavior: A sensemaking
perspective . Journal of Organizational Behavior , 38 (1), 68-86. DOI:
10.1002/job.2111
● Brown S.,Gray D.,McHardy J. and Taylor K.(2015) Employee trust and
workplace performance. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.
Volume 116,Pages 361-378.
Cooper, R.G., & Edgett, S. (2008). Ideation for product innovation: What are the best methods?
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The first place to begin crafting an effective ideation system is by identifying potential
sources of ideas: Where do the good ideas come from? And more important, where should
they be coming from and which valuable sources are you missing?
The objective of this paper is to determine to which extend each ideation method is used by
companies, in other words to measure the popularity of each method as well as to get an
idea of management’s perception of the effectiveness of the method in generating excellent,
high-value new product ideas
The study looks at 18 different sources of new product ideas in business and tries to classify
them in function of their popularity and effectiveness according to the surveyed companies.
The author groups these methods into 3 groups: Voice of Customer, Open innovation and
Others.
If we follow the results of the survey, a manager trying to innovate should focus on VOC
methods such as customer visit teams, focus groups and lead user analysis. The expected
result is a creativity influx coming from the customers who might have very different
backgrounds and experience the products in various ways, which leads to a big diversity in
ideas. On the other hand, the results given in the article would lead to advise a manager
trying to achieve a great ideation process to avoid open innovation as much as possible,
especially external idea contests.
Once a manager found what method suits his company according to the paper, he should
keep in mind that every method has its own limits. Indeed no method can be used in every
situation but some can be very effective when well used.
But the paper doesn’t explain the situation and the kind of company in which each method
works the best. So a manager reading this paper should read it carefully and with an
objective mind because the results shown in the paper can be biased due to several things
like the industry, the size of the company, a B2B vs. a B2C environment and the quality of
the method implementation. Furthermore, we don’t know how the companies evaluated each
method. It is very likely that these companies all have different criteria about what is a
successful method or not.
The companies selected for the study are mainly big B2B firms, so it is interesting to keep
this in mind when reading the results of this study to check if the information of the study is
relevant for your company.
Finally, we can wonder how these 18 methods have been selected? Are there other ideation
methods that the paper didn’t mention?
Appendix: Further references
Ukko, J. (2016). Effectiveness of innovation capability development methods.
Innovation: Management, Policy & Practice: the international journal for innovation research,
commercialization, policy analysis and best practice. Vol. 18 , no. 4 , p. 513 (1447-9338)
Spanjol. J, Qualls. W. & Rosa. A. (2011). How Many and What Kind? The Role of
Strategic Orientation in New Product Ideation. The Journal of Product Innovation
Management. Vol.28, Issue 2, p.236–250.
Cooper. R. & Edgett. J. (2007). Generating Breakthrough New Product Ideas:
Feeding the Innovation Funnel. Product Development Institute.
Leoncini, R. (2016). Learning-by failing. An empirical exercise on CIS data
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The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of a failure in innovative projects on a firm innovative activity. First of all, it can be useful to precise that this paper concentrates on innovative activities and defines operating experience in terms of R&D. Furthermore, it’s based on four hypothesis that has been tested and validated through different statistical tests using Heckman regressions on the data provided by the Community Innovation Survey, which involves more than 100,000 European companies.
1. a) Firms with more operating experience are less likely to experience failures in their innovative projects
b) Firms with more operating experience are more likely to have ongoing innovative projects. In other words, if a firm possesses more experience, the probability that new information coming to light is higher and these new elements will require further investigations and analyses, and will probably delay the ongoing innovative project.
2. Firms faced with failures can benefit from outside knowledge. Firms can also learn directly from the experience of others. Other failures have a stronger positive influence than their successes.
3. A firm that has faced an experience of organizational failure is less likely to fail again. Here is an example for airline companies: if an airline company experiences an accident, it will induce the firm to conduct more careful investigations in the future, which lead to learning processes. The consequence is that these airlines subsequently have fewer accidents than those experiencing less complex failures. We can notice the same trend for gas and railroad industries.
4. As ongoing innovative projects show a poor capacity to deal with innovation, they carry a lower likelihood of being innovative. In other words, a project still ongoing is likely to subtract resources from new innovative activity and so, reduce the probability of producing another innovation.
As a conclusion of this paper, failure in innovative projects can have a positive impact on the firm’s innovative activity, even if most of the firms tend to see failure in a negative way.
There are many managerial implication possibilities. First, the managers must implement a work environment that encourages the employees to take some risks in their day-to-day operations. Secondly, managers must encourage the employees to have a large and open vision of their economic environment; not only focus on the organization but also on the external actors (competitors, …) because their failures can be a source of learning. For example, they can ask employees to present a failure of another company (causes and consequences) or a failure that they have experienced themselves. Thirdly, managers must know when to “quit”. Whether the results are acceptable or not. If they realize that a project is not successful, they must stop spending time and resources to implement this project. They can try to modify it by implementing some incremental innovations or try something totally new.
Although the paper has reached its aims, it has some limitations. First, it mentions that higher levels of R&D decrease the probability of failure. Therefore, we conclude that this paper better fits companies, that have the financial means to invest in R&D. Moreover, we also learned during the courses that R&D may be efficient for some firms’ innovative activity but that it is never sufficient, which is not mentioned in this paper. Also, this article does not define the size of the failure. However, sometimes, a failure is so big that you don’t even consider its potential positive aspect (example: big failure in a startup that has required a lot of time and resources). Finally, one of its conclusion is, that companies can learn from external knowledge, especially if they are geographically or industrially close. Yet, companies tend to hide their failures, because, it gives a bad image to their customers and then, as point out in this paper, it will help their competitors.
To learn more about failure, we suggest 4 new sources:
• Tushman, M., Nadler, D., 1986. Organising for innovation. Calif. Manage. Rev. 28 (3), 74–88.
• van der Panne, G., van Beers, C., Kleiknecht, A., 2003. Success and failure of innovation: a literature review. Int. J. Innov. Manage. 7 (3), 309–338.
• Harvard Business Review, (2011). Learn from failure [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGT7X5R1bpw
• Pisano, G. (2015). You need an innovation strategy. Online on the Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2015/06/you-need-an-innovation-strategy
Roth, S., Schneckenberg, D., & Tsai, C. W. (2015). The ludic drive as innovation driver: Introduction to the gamification of innovation. Creativity and Innovation Management, 24(2), 300-306
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Roth, S., Schneckenberg, D., & Tsai, C. W. (2015). The ludic drive as innovation driver: Introduction to the gamification of innovation. Creativity and Innovation Management, 24(2), 300-306
Show lessThis article describes the use of gamification in the business world as a tool that can be used to achieve certain objectives. We have identified three different ways in which gamification can be used to stimulate the business and its employees. Firstly, we learn that by setting up game-oriented workshops for employees, it could lead to them discovering new business ideas, stimulating their creativity, and creating a group dynamic. Secondly, we learn that gamification can be used by turning innovation challenges in the company into games, to discover the employees’ proposals to overcome these challenges. Finally, the article also suggests using growdsourcing in a playful way by transforming company problems into a game for the public. The resulting solutions would then be richer and more varied than simply asking the company’s employees. However, the article reminds us of an important point to bear in mind: gamification can be bullshit. It is only a “tool” that is presented here to do things differently, it is not a fundamental theory. Then in terms of managerial implications, we have deduced that it is important for the manager to find the right place to implement gamification. It is a playful tool that can be used in certain areas such as researching a new product or service, developing products or services, marketing or recruitment. You have to think about where in the company it could actually add value. Furthermore, the manager should also keep in mind that gamification can have certain side effects, such as the fact that competition between employees could lead to employees feeling competitive instead of helping each other. The manager must therefore establish the gamification atmosphere well, to get only the best out of it. Finally, introducing gamification throughout the company will tend to create a culture of creativity within the company. Nevertheless, gamification has some limitations. Firstly, it can lead to the perception that employees are being manipulated. Trust is fundamental to a collaborative atmosphere and being “used” to find solutions in all sorts of games could make employees suspicious. Secondly, by saying above that the manager should set up gamification in a collaborative atmosphere, the drift of gamification, which could be competition between employees or between consumers, is highlighted here. And finally, gamification is a tool that would be interesting for companies to use to stimulate creativity, but it costs money and time to develop and maintain. It is therefore only relevant for larger companies, as smaller ones do not have sufficient human and economic resources. To finish this summary, we have found three sources for further reading. The first article “Gamification approaches for open innovation implementation: A conceptual framework.” explains how to use gamification to overcome complex business innovation problems. The second, “Gamification of mobile wallet as an unconventional innovation for promoting Fintech: An fsQCA approach” sheds light on how gamification can be used to facilitate online financial processes and transactions. And the third one, “Gamification of production and logistics operations: Status quo and future directions.” informs us about the use of gamification in the production and logistic operations context.
Furthers Sources: 1) Gimenez-Fernandez, E, Abril, C, Breuer, H, Gudiksen, S. Gamification approaches for open innovation implementation: A conceptual framework. Creativity and Innovation Management. 2021; 30: 455– 474. https://doi.org/10.1111/caim.12452
2) Xiaoping, Y, Jingshan, Y, Yilin, H, Shuyang, L, Shiwei, S,. Gamification of mobile wallet as an unconventional innovation for promoting Fintech: An fsQCA approach. Journal of Business Research. Volume 155, Part A, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113406
3) Warmelink, H, Koivisto, J, Mayer, I, Vesa, M, Hamari, J,. Gamification of production and logistics operations: Status quo and future directions. Journal of Business Research. Volume 106. 2020. Pages 331-340. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.09.011.