How to Sparkle Innovation
Innovation is rarely built up on individual performance but primarily on team performance.
Individuals matter and teams consist of individuals but all humans (and thereby individuals) have their core competences but in the other hand then all individuals got their limitations and their weaknesses. Teams consist of individuals who collaborate to create a product.
Never the less not all groups contribute to the end result in positive way and some groups don’t work well together or contribute with any positive results for the host organization.
There are several issues with how to sparkle innovation in the teams in the organization; however the sparkling process starts earlier than with the group combinations.
First of all the organization has to be able to find the right employees who are able to contribute to the group and the organization and secondly that employee is able to feel that he or she contributes to the team and fights for the team.
It is therefore a necessity to utilize the Human Resource department to head hunt the future employees, investigate possibilities of joint ventures with other companies that have an explorative organization culture that is compatible with the host organization.
The organization has to focus on networked innovation and by networked then the organization has to enable the organization culture to accept and work with members from outside the organization.
When the system is working with several new ideas, products or services at one time then the organization’s leadership has to prioritize and invest in those ideas that might lead to a competitive advantage and thereby enable the organization to enable the visions and missions of the organization.
According to Tom Kelley (Kelley, T. 2001) the process of combining the right teams are to select the proper team profiles:
- The Visionary is the type of person who is able to identify future possibilities (visions) and he is able to recruit the project team.
- The Troubleshooter is a person who in way or the other who are able to identify problems internally in the organization and is able to handle all situations that might occur in the project organization while the project is being executed.
- The Iconoclast is a person who is able to challenge the current believes of what is right inside the project organization and is able to see possibilities in other paradigms.
- The Pulse Taker is a person who is able to work like a hearth does in a human. The person has to be versatile in his or her way of thinking and is able to channelize the “life blood” of the project on to other individuals in the project organization.
- The Craftsman is that kind of person who is able to construct prototypes and work around with them to make innovative designs. These competences are vital for any kind of radical innovation.
- The Technologist is what many people would call a geek. A person who is dedicated to work with technology and is able to handle complex tasks, uncover and create deeper meaning.
- The Entrepreneur is a person who is able to work out with brainstorms, innovation, prototypes and communicate these to other persons.
- The Cross-Dresser these kinds of persons who have studied or worked with a totally different form of field then he or she works with today. These individuals make use of their skills to envision new solutions.
It is necessary to find the proper profiles to make the groups perform optimally which according to Tom Kelley (Kelley, T. 2001) claims that there are two kinds of teams: teams and HOT teams.
HOT teams are those teams that contribute with the best ideas and contribute to the host company with new products and services and that is therefore a need for the organization to motivate the groups and create the right conditions for knowledge creation.
Radical Innovation
When we talk about radical innovation then it deals with game changing innovation e.g., the establishment of the of a new business models which enables organization to gain a competitive advantage.
Today the radical innovations deals with how organizations can gain market shares by applying new technologies such as the Internet or ubiquitous computing to sell products or services to customers any where anytime.
The ideas of radical innovation is as before mentioned related to innovations that can change the foundations of an industry but most innovation occurs as evolutionary innovation where e.g., business processes are updated and made smarter by those who work with them and have a first hand impression. Never the less the evolutionary innovation rarely works in favor of short run profits and short run benefits. For this radical innovation is preferable.
What causes radical innovation? The first issue on radical innovation is that the organization has to have access to the right persons. This means that the Human Resource department has to work with a lot of different ideas on how to attract the employees who can generate the right synergy.
Never the less are there also other constraints that might limit the ideas and innovations to grow. One of the dominating barriers is bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy is a tool for standardization and routines and not for developing new ideas in fact the worst enemy of bureaucracy is innovation and visa versa.
For the purpose of combating bureaucracy in the organization is based on the paradigm of empowerment of the members of the organization; however empowerment and in some cases decentralization is not leading to any good results. If a company or any other organization has to reach some of the goals it has defined by its top leadership or owners. If there is a great degree of empowerment and decentralization then it leads to that the members might work to gain their personal goals that are not aligned with the goals of the organization.
Organizations have to focus on how to enable a suitable balance between governance (bureaucracy) and innovation (ideas that can be crystalized on).
Innovation in relation to the free market is illustrated in the mind map below.
Radical Innovation
