I’m becoming curious about how the motivation behind the desire for innovation affects the outcome.
To this end I’ve begun to contemplate how different organisations have approached the task of innovation, and how the organisational context and agenda have been reflected in the kind of observable results.
Here are three real examples [no names] of divergent organisational scenarios, each with equally divergent products I have had experience with:
1. Innovation for the Community
An information technology training centre partly funded by government bodies.
-Management/Operational Style:
flat hierarchy, staff encouraged to develop own projects and to “own their own process”, open-plan configuration of work space, rapid embrace of new technologies.
-Product / outcomes:
Training for participants in hardware/software, office technologies, basic design, DTP and multimedia
-Innovations:
Free/subsidised open-learning for disadvantaged in the community, Think tank style support for entrepeneurial but unemployed/under-employed people.
* This environment is very conducive to innovation that directly assists people. the management style fosters and encourages workers to take risk and to experiment/fail in order to push the envelope.
2. Innovation for Profit
An international design and business college focussing on the Asia region.
-Management/Operational Style:
Hierarchical/Autocratic, staff are viewed as cost centres, fiercely entrepeneurial, aggressive, highly visible marketing approach, educational as business approach.
-Product / outcomes:
Accelerated learning, diploma & degree level qualifications, links to industry through internship programs, validation through western universities [UK, Australia]
-Innovations:
Design and business education in developing countries [e.g. China, India], supply of “qualified” design graduates to emerging local industries, prestigious, glamorous image in local market.
*The innovation here is “the vision”. A unique product that has little/no competition in the marketplace.
Innovation from staff is possible within the strict confines of the management processes and sometimes occurs despite management, in secret.
3. Innovation in reponse to government/state agenda:
Vocational education provider primarily funded by government sources.
-Management/Operational Style:
Hierarchical, highly beauracratic, systems orientated, governed by awards, government policy, unionised labour, structured along lines of command, agenda driven by government policy and economic needs, increased pressure to deregulate and develop commercial products.
-Product / outcomes:
nation-wide accredited training and qualification framework, targeted programs [e.g. disadvantaged, disabled, indigenous, community]
-Innovations
Programs funded via alternative funding sources, more commercial [user-pays] products
*Innovation in this environment is very difficult and often frustrating to those with ideas that don’t fit within the governemt guidelines. Staff often innovate by finding ways around “the system”.
In all three scenarios the motivation behind any innovation is related fundamentally to the nature of the organisation. The kind of innovation possible is dictated by the structure and culture of the organisation. The motivations of staff may not be/are often not aligned with management…
What motivates your organisation’s innovation?
5 comments so far
I came across this link today http://accelerating.org/articles/huebnerinnovation.html which is a “Review of “A Possible Declining Trend for Worldwide Innovation,” Jonathan Huebner, Technological Forecasting & Social Change, September 2005 (forthcoming) © 2005 by John Smart”
In context of your post, what are your thoughts on this trend and it’s implication on motivation?
On another note, you wrote:
*The innovation here is “the vision”. A unique product that has little/no competition in the marketplace.
Innovation from staff is possible within the strict confines of the management processes and sometimes occurs despite management, in secret.
I can attest to the veracity of your comment that innovation within these confines can occur and often, is in secret 
It’s a very interesting link Niti. A lot to digest…Well, my first reaction is to think of Marshall Mcluhan’s assertion in his influential book “Understanding Media” that human beings are as it were ” the sex organs of technology”. He links technology and biology very closely…here are some useful references to these ideas…
http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=70
http://web.mit.edu/21l.015/classes/mcluhan.html
In terms of motivation to innovate in the light of this knowledge I am less sure but intuit that the innate survival instinct humans possess may be a factor in the sense that we appear to have reached a point in our evolution where it is a case of innovate or bear the consequences.
This links quite effectively to what I’ve been saying elsewhere about the importance of rapid and advanced development in China, India et al where the population densities, and expodential growth in demand for products, services and more importantly resources, are such that slow uptake of current technologies is the perfect receipe for big problems globally.
I know these are simplistic, wide brush, big picture statements. The overall issues / problems are very much “unframed”…
Co-incidentally, I have just stumbled across this link, which I think has some relevance as an example relating to the issues in the above posts. It is heartening to see stuff like this. It is the kind of “leapfrog” I am referring to.
http://ontalent.typepad.com/ontalent/2005/04/leapfrog_1.html
In spending time reading and reflecting on the article referred to above, the following extract/paragraph seems of significance in further exploring the motivation to innovate…
“Such trends make it seem obvious to me, though it might not be so to others, that as technological progress increasingly satisfies current human needs, individuals become less concerned with technological development and turn more toward personal growth, unique experiences, and other activities which, while equally creative on an individual level, are less obvious examples of innovation in a technological sense. The sociologist Ronald Inglehart [7] (The Silent Revolution, 1977; Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society, 1989; Modernization and Postmodernization, 1997) has extensively documented this predictable value shift in industrializing countries. As I interpret Inglehart’s work, in addition to more tolerant ideologies and other predictable developments, the more industrialization we experience the more we become ready to take a long-deserved break from generations of toiling, including much of the traditional work of innovation, and the more we become willing to let our machines take over the task of supplying our very finite human needs.”
…The well documented shifts in emphasis in the values of denizens of “developed” areas of the planet suggest that our perceptions regarding the nature of innovation and the categories of innovation we recognise and accept as “valid” may in fact be limited.
This is complex, but in part response - if we acccept the above perhaps our motivations will shift in terms of the kinds of innovations we aspire to.
For example, it is common to see categories of innovation defined in ways such as you’ll see at: http://www.business-opportunities.biz/archives/2004/05/18/5489.php
The emphasis appears to me to focus on innovation in purely economic or industrial terms.
We see other models of definition like:
http://www.thecis.ca/new/info/primer/typesof.htm
Can we evolve more diverse definitions/categories of innovation motivated by and reflecting shifts in values corresponding to “higher order and abstract” human needs?
Ian – very interesting thoughts. I’ve been reading “Innovation in the Making” by a Danish author Lotte Darsoe. She made a Phd. about the cultural aspects of innovation.
She argues that the most literature is about Company, system or group behaviour in innovation processes while she is concentrating on individual behaviour.
http://www.lld.dk/portal_memberdata/LDA
According to the last link you reefer to she ads 2 other types of innovation – as I see it 2 very important ones:
1. Social innovation – springs from social needs, rather than technology, and are related to new ways of social interaction, behaviour or function. According to Drucker – “Innovation and Entrepreneurship”, social innovations may have an even higher impact then scientific or technological innovation.
2. Quantum Innovation – refers to the emergence of qualitatively new system states about by small incremental changes.