Argumentative

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Creativity, Innovation & Design

Creativity at the Organisational level

=> 3. Eliminating factors that inhibit entrepreneurial behavior (including creativity) in organisations

Prepared by Dr Gerrit de Waal

How can organisations eliminate obstacles to creativity and innovation?

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Destroy the corporate immune system that fights off creativity and innovation

Creativity Innovation

Status-quo Bureaucracy Rules Lack of support Lack of process Difficult to manage

(Birkinshaw & Ridderstråle, 1999)

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Don’t believe this? Be sure to watch this short animation about the corporate innovation immune system: (Week 3)

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15 reasons employees might not be motivated to act entrepreneurial on the job:

1. Employees do not understand what management means by “being entrepreneurial on the job”

2. Believe it is not possible to accomplish entrepreneurial behavior in this company no matter how hard one tries

3. Perceive that they are not personally capable of being entrepreneurial, then he/she is likely to be unmotivated. Alternatively, the employee may believe that it is possible to be entrepreneurial, but they see no linkage between doing so and how they are evaluated

4. There is no formal appraisal or assessment of the employee 5. The performance appraisal criteria are unclear

(Morris, Kuratko, & Covin, 2011)

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15 reasons … (continued)

6. The criteria on which employees are evaluated do not explicitly include innovativeness, risk-taking and proactive efforts

7. Other non-entrepreneurial criteria receive much more emphasis

8. The evaluations are done in an arbitrary or unfair fashion 9. Managers asking for one behavior, but actually rewarding

some quite different behavior 10. The employee believes the reward will be earned regardless

of the evaluation (e.g., everyone around here gets the same reward)

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15 reasons … (continued)

11. There are ways to get a good evaluation without actually doing entrepreneurial things (e.g., politicking).

12. The employee has come to find other ways to earn the reward without putting effort towards entrepreneurship (e.g., currying favor with the boss).

13. Rewards are being offered that are too small given the effort that is required to push an entrepreneurial initiative through in the face of lots of internal resistance

14. The type of reward being offered is not the one to which the employee currently attaches the most importance

15. The reward is considered inequitable or unfair, possible because of what the employee knows other people are receiving, especially when he/she thinks these other employees are performing to a lower standard.

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References • Birkinshaw, J., & Ridderstråle, J. (1999). Fighting the corporate immune system: a process study of subsidiary

initiatives in multinational corporations. International Business Review, 8(2), 149-180. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0969-5931(98)00043-2

• Morris, M. H., Kuratko, D. F., & Covin, J. G. (2011). Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation 3e. South Western: Cengage Learning.