Unit 2 Discussion: Leadership and Sources of Innovation

Student Resource

Chapter 5: Building the innovative organization

Chapter 5: Building the innovative organization

• In the following PowerPoint slides you will find the key headings from CHAPTER 5 together with the main illustrations, tables, etc.

• There are also slides summarizing the key messages in bullet-point fashion, and a wide range of activities which you can use to help students explore around these themes.

• Finally there are some reflection questions which can be used as the basis for discussion or assignments.

Learning objectives

• By the end of this chapter you will understand:

• how leadership and organization of innovation is much more than a set of processes, tools and techniques,

• how different leadership and creative styles influence the ability to identify, assess and develop new ideas and concepts.

• how teams, groups and processes each contribute to successful innovation behaviours and outcomes.

• how different environmental factors can support or hinder innovation and entrepreneurship.

Core themes and material

from the book

The innovative organization

Research shows these factors are associated with good performance:

The innovative organization (continued)

Innovation leadership

Reviews of research on leadership and performance suggest leadership directly influences:

• Around 15% of the differences found in performance of businesses;

• Contributes around an additional 35% through the choice of business strategy;

• So directly and indirectly leadership can account for half of the variance in performance observed across organizations.

Characteristic traits of good leaders

• bright, alert and intelligent; • seek responsibility and take charge; • skillful in their task domain; • administratively and socially competent; • energetic, active and resilient; • good communicators.

BUT

There is no brief and universal list of enduring traits that all good leaders must possess under all conditions.

Key factors for leaders to focus on

A review of twenty-seven empirical studies of the relationships between leadership and innovation investigated when and how leadership influences innovation, identified six factors leaders should focus on:

1. Upper management should establish an innovation policy that is promoted throughout the organization. It is necessary that the organization through its leaders communicate to employees that innovative behavior will be rewarded.

Key factors for leaders to focus on (continued)

2. When forming teams, some heterogeneity is necessary to promote innovation. However, if the team is too heterogeneous, tensions may arise, when heterogeneity is too low, more directive leadership is required to promote team reflection, for example, by encouraging discussion and disagreement.

3. Leaders should promote a team climate of emotional safety, respect, and joy through emotional support and shared decision-making.

Key factors for leaders to focus on (continued)

4. Individuals and teams have autonomy and space for idea generation and creative problem solving.

5. Time limits for idea creation and problem solutions should be set, particularly in the implementation phases

6. Finally, team leaders, who have the expertise, should engage closely in the evaluation of innovative activities.

Creative style

Kirton’s ‘adaptors and innovators’ spectrum:

• Adaptors characteristically produce a sufficiency of ideas

based closely on existing agreed definitions of a problem and its likely solutions, but stretching the solutions. These ideas help to improve and 'do better'.

• Innovators are more likely to reconstruct the problem, challenge the assumptions and to emerge with a much less expected solution which very probably is also at first less acceptable. Innovators are less concerned with doing things better than with doing things differently.

Collective and social aspects of innovation

• ‘It takes five years to develop a new car in this country. Heck, we won World War 2 in four years...’

• Ross Perot’s critical comment on the state of the US car industry in the late 1980s captured some of the frustration with existing ways of designing and building cars.

Collective and social aspects of innovation (continued)

• The power of team working

• Lew Varaldi, project manager of Ford’s Team Taurus project put it, ‘... it’s amazing the dedication and commitment you get from people...we will never go back to the old ways because we know so much about what they can bring to the party...’

• Groups are not necessarily teams….

High involvement innovation

Key factors in high performance teams

Key elements in effective high-performance team working include:

• clearly defined tasks and objectives; • effective team leadership; • good balance of team roles and match to individual behavioural style; • effective conflict resolution mechanisms within the group; • continuing liaison with external organization.

Tuckman’s model of team development

Teams typically go through four stages of development:

•‘forming,

•storming,

•norming,

•performing’.

Advantages and disadvantages of groups

Advantages and disadvantages of groups

Source: S. Isaksen and J. Tidd (2006) Meeting the Innovation Challenge, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester

High performing teams

Based on Tidd and Isaksen research, high performing characteristics are:

• a clear, common and elevating goal; • results-driven structure; • competent team members; • unified commitment.

Collaborative climate: • standards of excellence; • external support and recognition; • principled leadership.

High performing teams (continued)

Based on Tidd and Isaksen research, appropriate use of the team:

• participation in decision making;

• team spirit;

• embracing appropriate change.

‘Tripwires’ undermining team effectiveness

• group versus team;

• ends versus means;

• structured freedom;

• support structures and systems;

• assumed competence.

• Climate is defined as the recurring patterns of behaviour, attitudes and feelings that characterize life in the organization.

• Objectively shared perceptions that characterize life within a defined work unit or in the larger organization.

• Climate is distinct from culture in that it is more observable at a surface level within the organization and more amenable to change and improvement efforts.

• Culture refers to the deeper and more enduring values, norms and beliefs within the organization.

Context and climate

Climate factors influencing innovation

Source: Derived for Scott Isaksen and Joe Tidd (2006) Meeting the Innovation Challenge (Wiley).

Summary

Leadership and organization of innovation is much more than a set of processes, tools and techniques, and the successful practice of innovation demands the interaction and integration of three different levels of management, individual, collective and climate.

Summary

At the personal or individual level, the key is to match the leadership styles with the task requirement and type of teams. General leadership requirements for innovative projects include expertise and experience relevant to the project, articulating a vision and inspirational communication, intellectual stimulation, and quality of leader-member exchange (LMX).

Summary

At the collective or social level, there is no universal best- practice but successful teams require clear, common and elevating goals, unified commitment, cross-functional expertise, collaborative climate, external support and recognition and participation in decision making.

Summary

At the context or climate level, there is no “best innovation culture”, but innovation is promoted or hindered by a number of factors, including trust and openness, challenge and involvement, support and space for ideas, conflict and debate, risk-taking and freedom.

Videos

• There are several videos which can help explore and present the key themes of the chapter:

• Building the innovative organization part 1

• Building the innovative organization part 2

• Piers Ibbotson talking about leadership

• Patrick McLoughlin on leadership • Victor Cui on organizing a startup • Tidewave as a start-up organization • Melissa Clark-Reynolds on her start-

up

Videos

• Hugh Chapman, Managing Director of Veeder Root on innovation leadership

• Emma Taylor of Denso Systems on employee involvement

• Armin Rau, Strategy Partner of Sicap.

Videos

• Douglas Merril of Google who explains a little about how the organization supports innovation

• Linda Hill’s TED Talk on collective creativity

• https://www.ted.com/talks/ linda_hill_how_to_manage _for_collective_creativity

• Four cases of employee involvement in innovation

On the Portal there is a case study of Nokia Networks together with a media interview with Fabian Schlage, Innovation Manager, which illustrates some of these themes:

http://www.innovation-portal.info/resources/fabian- schlage-nokia/

http://ispim.org/video-and-articles/#mg_ld_1706

Case study and video: Nokia Solutions and Networks

Blogs and podcasts

• There are several podcasts picking up key themes around managing innovation as a process and some of the key variables: