Thursday, November 26, 2009

Meeting notes from Thu 26 Nov 2009

Finalize your subsections ASAP so that Pavan can start editing!

Pauli starts a Google presentation, everyone contributes with their own slides!

Presentation rehersal on Tue 8 Dec 9:00-11:00 at DF

Monday, November 23, 2009

Notes from 19th of November

Hello!
After lectures we had a discussion with our group. Some notes I made:

-Text should be ready 24.11.2009 (tomorrow!!), so everyone could read it before 26.11.2009.

-Thursday 26.11.2009 at 10:00 we will meet at DF to check our text for book.

-Thursday 26.11.2009 book presentation. Pauli makes slides with google docs, everyone can partisipate, and Marja will present these.

-Seminar is 10.12.2009 10:00-14:30 at TU3-hall (Time changed!!) and Pavan is responsible for presentation. Time 25 min+discussion (60 min maximum)

-Ali leaves 27.11.09 for trip to home.

Anything else?

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Tue Nov. 10 Notes from DF: Some brainstorming

Next meeting: Tue next week Tue 9:00-11:00 17 Nov 2009

We talked about the future of the innovation climate from various angles. Ideas from today's meeting:

  • Before, artists went to Paris. Where do the innovative people go in the future?
  • Examples of systems theoretical approach for an innovation climate (New York in 1940's and '50s, Boulder colorado, examples from India and China)
  • Physical infrsatructure influences in two ways: direct and indirect (self-esteem issues)
  • Opening statement: First, second and third industrial revolution
  • How does the process of innovatin change -- main focus of the 'vision 2030'?
  • Distributed innovation into networks, hubs, open spaces (open living labs, http://owela.vtt.fi)
  • Sustainability movements and its relationship to division of labour
  • Decreasing of the scale, increasing of involvement, micro democracies
  • IPR issues (who hold IPR in open spaces? open scientific publishing), changing of the business logic
  • Lifecycle of innovations, different logics in business, science
  • Need for attitute that accepts rapid processing of ideas (open living lab?)
Sorry if you can't follow these notes, you just had to be there :)

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Meeting 3.11.09 Next meeting and Calendar

Next meeting 10.11.2009 9:30 at DF meeting room

Antti, we can´t edit calendar, can you somehow let us to edit it?

Calendar

Todays topics were:
-By the next meeting main texts should be delivered (allready now text is 10 pages long)
-After this text should be restructured to fit "intoro-stateofart-challenges...-visio 2030...
-at editing pahse references are moved at the end of the text.
-work of the group members should be finalised 22.november.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Motivation Management for Innovation

Section Title: Motivation Management for Innovation

Outline

1. What is motivation? Why is it important in innovation?

2. The Link Between Motivation and Innovation

3. Incentive schemes of motivation

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Section Title: Motivation Management for Innovation

There is an old saying you can take a horse to the water, but you cannot force it to drink. It will drink only if it's thirsty. So with different participants in the innovation process, they will do what they want to do or motivated to do. In this motivation management section, we will talk about how to encourage different participants and convince them with motivation. For example, the manager should be able to motivate employees. The leaders should provide powerful incentive to get support from shareholders.

1. What is motivation? Why is it important in innovation?

Motivation is what we call our driving force, our ''get up and go''. It stimulates our senses into the achievement of goals that have been set out for us. Its ability to shape the workforce into its own driving force is what becomes important to the success of work organizations [3].

Motivation and innovation output are positively correlated. The more motivated an individual, the more likely he or she is to engage in the task at various cognitive levels until an outcome is achieved.

Factors that make up motivation can be isolated, motivated and measured using standard quantitative techniques which allow a leader, consultant or manager to measure and improve motivation with a corresponding rise in creative output.

There are broad and specific categories of motivation [1]:

Intrinsic motivation – Intrinsically motivated people include commitment to work, passionate involvement, total absorption and devotion to their work, interest and satisfaction in their work, challenged by their work.

Extrinsic motivation – It is the motivation to engage in an activity primarily in order to meet some goal external to the work itself, such as attaining an expected reward, winning a competition or meeting some requirement.

2. The Link Between Motivation and Innovation

Employees in most organizations would like to feel that their ideas can make a difference in their workplace. For many people, there are few things more motivating than seeing the successful implementation of an idea they suggested. The scarcity of this motivational force may be one of the biggest reasons why so many company employees feel that they are powerless and unable to change the ''system'' [2]. All too often, supervisors overlook the possibility that their employees may be an untapped gold mine of good ideas.

[2] outlines five practices which represent an integrated approach to innovation and employee motivation that has proven to be very effective.

Get to know every employee
It is virtually impossible for a mid-level manager to motivate his/her employees without getting to know them.
Challenge them to improve the operation
Managers should give each employee a clear mandate in their work requirements to take a hard look at the whole operation and make recommendations for improvements.
''Customer for a day''
Have each employee be ''customer for a day'' to took at the operation from the client's point of view.
The great idea award
Find a way to reward or recognize employees whose suggestions help improve the operation.
Don't forget the implementation
The actual implementation of the great ideas generated by employees.

3. Incentive schemes of motivation

Standard pay-for-performance schemes that punish failures with low wages and termination may have adverse effects on innovation [4].

[4] shows that incentive schemes that motivate innovation are fundamentally different from standard pay-for-performance schemes.


[1] http://ezinearticles.com/?Creativity-and-Innovation-Management---Motivation&id=21417
[2] http://govleaders.org/motivation.htm
[3] http://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/7485.html
[4] 2009, motivation innovation book

Organizational culture

Section Title: Organizational culture

Outline

1. Definition of culture

What is culture concerned with?
Why does culture matter in a company?
How do cultures differ?
What level of culture does this chapter focus on?

2. Build the Innovation Culture

Organizational Innovation Structures
Participation as a function of hierarchy

3. 24/7 innovation

Perpetual Innovation

4. Innovation Culture Evaluation

5. Innovation culture case analysis

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Section Title: Organizational culture

Today's organization depend upon innovations for their survival. Only innovators will survive in the global market. ''Innovate or die'' is a genuine proposition as well as a worn cliche. Are companies organized to innovate? In fact, it seems that the majority are organized to not innovate. In this section, we will explore the innovation culture in a corporation to figure out how does it impact the management, strategy, development & research and so on.

1. Definition of Culture

''Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.''

- Albert Camus

Culture is an integral part of every society. It is a term used by social scientists to depict a people's whole way of life in groups (e.g., a family, tribe, region, nation, company and profession). To social scientists, a culture is any way of life, simple or complex, consisting of learned ways of acting, feeling and thinking, and can be learned from his/her family and surrounding environment, rather than biologically determined ways.

According to British anthropologist Edward B Tylor, culture is defined as ''That complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, moral, lay, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.'' Tylor's definition includes three of the most important characteristics of culture:

Culture is acquired by people. Because it consists of learned patterns of behavior rather than the biologically determined ones that are sometimes called instinctive;

A person acquires culture as a member of society

Culture is a complex whole so that it can be broken down into simple units called ''cultural traits.'' A trait may be a custom, such as burial of the dead; a device, such as chopsticks; a gesture, such as a handshake; and arts, such as abstract expressionism.

However, as Norihiko Shimizu said: ''Today's Taboos may be gone tomorrow''. A culture may be static within a short term but it can also change in the long run.

1.1 What does culture concern with?

According to Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck, cultures vary in solutions to common problems. Cultures have dominant or preferred value orientations. The 5 basic problems that cultures concern with are:

1.Relational orientation: the relationship between individuals
2.Time orientation: temporal focus of human life
3.Activity orientation: modality of human activity
4.Man-nature orientation: relationship between human and nature
5.Human nature orientation: character of innate human nature

1.2 Why does culture matter in a company?

''If I were again facing the challenge to integrate Europe, I would probably start with culture.''

- Jean Monnet

Culture has explicit and implicit impact on decisions, which lies in: meeting interacting and conducting, negotiating and compromising, and leading and motivating. In addition, culture also has significant impact on performance, assessment and reward systems, marketing and advertising blunders, problems with cross-border alliances, integration of acquisitions, and frustration.
[...give some examples to this abstracted items in the following writing...]

1.3 How do cultures differ?

Culture differences distinguish groups from one another. All cultures are known to have a set of beliefs that define the code of conduct and values fro that particular culture. People within a same group share the same culture. Culture differs from each other in several ways, such as various greeting customs, moods and opinions shaped by the history events, business concepts, and stereotypes in different regions or countries.

1.4 What level of culture does this chapter focus on?

Culture is meaningful only if it is within a group. A culture group can be organized in various levels, such as national, corporate, professional, sub-groups level, and so on. In this chapter, we mainly focus on corporate culture.

2. Building the Innovation Culture

Innovation is not equal to creativity which is about coming up with clever ideas, but is about the ability to turn knowledge into values or bring creative new ideas to life.

Companies around the world are keen to innovate because innovative companies can benefit from it, such as enhancing brand and image, increasing shareholder wealth as return on investment support, and market share. But innovation is not a commodity that can be purchased or installed like a computer software. Rather it is mainly a culture which must be adopted and nurtured.

Our work on this section focuses on analyzing different types of organization innovation culture which contributes to the innovation work in a company.

2.1 Structure Your Company to Support Innovation

The style of organizational innovation structure is a key factor which can inhibit or foster creativity and innovation. It results from several sub factors including history, strategy, operational design, product diversity, logistics, marking, client base and supplier base. For leaders in a company, there is no recipe for complete structural change, but insights into the properties of nurturing structures are needed to update the existing structures.

There are two basic innovation structure in a corporation: bottom-up innovation structure and top-down innovation structure.

Bottom-up innovation involves decentralized authority, loosely defined tasks, horizontal communications, greater individual authority and flexibility.

[...Innovation is about how to turn ideas into value. While where do ideas come from? Often ideas come from insights... continue]

In contrast with bottom-up innovation, top-down innovation structure includes centralized command and control, clearly defined tasks, vertical communication links and obedience to supervisors usually with rigidity and inflexibility. Top-down innovation structure is usually not preferred. But experience shows that the above can be misleading. For example, flat organizations like bottom-up structure are generally preferred and hierarchical ones like top-down structure are not preferred. However, even flat organizations are in reality hierarchical. Because, there is no innovation without leadership[1] . Leaders are able to inspire innovation. This happens with the attitude they bring as manifested in their willingness and ability to listen, to encourage and to appreciate intelligent failure.

A.G. Lafley and Ram Charan, in their book ''The Game Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation'', point out that structuring for innovation is not a one-size-fits-all exercise. You need to design and install the right organization structures to suit the business strategy and innovation model… many companies make innovation happen through enabling structures of one form or another. Where they often fall short, surprisingly, is that most people in the company don't understand what, in fact, the structures are and how they actually work [4].


2.2 Participation as a Function of Hierarchy

Insights often come about as the result of individual effort; ideas are generally developed and improved in groups. Innovation is generally an organizational outcome [1]. The sheer complexity of today's technologies, and markets means that many people with multidisciplinary background must be engaged in transforming ideas into marketable products and services.

Innovation is not a one-off event nor even a series of one-off events, though such events are an integral part of innovation [3]. Innovation should be a sustainable process in which employees are always encouraged and inspired to think creatively and invited to take calculated risks with new ideas and concepts. Only if innovation becomes a way of life in a company, it becomes perpetual innovation.

3. 24/7 innovation

Innovation is not a one-off event nor even a series of one-off events, though such events are an integral part of innovation [3]. Innovation should be a sustainable process in which employees are always encouraged and inspired to think creatively and invited to take calculated risks with new ideas and concepts. Only if innovation becomes a way of life in a company, it becomes perpetual innovation, which is the key to long-term, sustainable success in these rapidly changing circumstances.

As said in the book ''24/7 innovation'' [5], innovation 24 hours a day 7days a week is no mystery: it is the ability of an organization and the people in it to come up with new ideas to satisfy the changing whims of ever-fickle customers without any special stimulation and without interruption. Innovation throughout the organization, everywhere, everyday, by everyone - 24/7 - to the point where innovation is as natural as breathing.

4. Innovation Culture Evaluation

It is relatively easy to generate ideas, most corporations lack processes to evaluate ideas and move them on to new product or service development.

We will evaluate the innovation culture in a company from several aspects as follows:

Communication distance: normal employees can knock the door of managers or leaders if they wish to talk with them about their ideas.
Long-term VS. short-term orientation: leaders should resist the temptation to look for immediate results
Buffer zones: the most innovative people should have enough buffer zones and innovation room for their ideas.
Commit: leaders should commit to driving the best ideas through to implementation.


5. Innovation culture case analysis


[1] http://www.realinnovation.com/content/c070528a.asp
[2] http://www.realinnovation.com/content/c070430a.asp
[3] http://www.jpb.com/report103/archive.php?issue_no=20090901
[4] http://www.innovationtools.com/Weblog/innovationblog-detail.asp?ArticleID=1149
[5] Book: 24/7 innovation