INTRODUCTION
Innovation has been defined as the adoption of a new product or process that reflected the application of information technology. Information-technology innovations that required hands-on interaction with a computer-based system through a computer keyboard were examined in this study. Three criteria for selecting these innovations were established in light of the importance of clearly specifying the type of innovation to be sampled, in order to overcome the empirical instability and theoretical confusion arising from research on innovation in complex organizations (Downs and Mohr, 1976; Bigoness and Perreault, 1981). The first criterion was that the technological innovations had to have been designed for use by managers and/or professionals. At management levels, adoption of information technology is typically voluntary rather than mandatory. Consequently, certain persons may be needed to promote the introduction and implementation of these technologies. Moreover, to ensure more accurate recall of the innovation process by participants, the second criterion was that the innovation had to have been implemented within the 18 months prior to the study The third criterion was that the innovation had to have represented a significant financial investment to the company. This criterion ensured that the innovation was visible in the organization and had a potentially important impact on managerial work.
MANAGEMENT OF INNOVATION
Prior research evidence suggests that significant benefits can be reaped by firms that integrate technological and innovation considerations with corporate-wide strategic development (Fusfeld 1989; Erickson et al. 1990; Pavitt 1990; Adler, McDonald, and McDonald 1992; Carrier 1996). Specifically, process improvements can help firms benefit from increased productivity and adaptability (Burgelman and Maidique 1988), and product innovation can increase a firm’s sales by providing unique or higher-performance products (Burgelman and Maidique 1988; Harms 1990; Guimaraes and Liska 1993). Moreover, innovation, is as well viewed as the creation, development, and introduction of new products and services, or product and service components, or a new procedure or process for doing things to benefit one or more of the stakeholders in an organization (Birchall, Chanaron, and Soderquist 1996). According to Drucker (1985), systematic innovation involves the purposeful and organizational search for changes and the systematic analysis of the opportunities such changes might offer for economic or social innovation. He cites seven sources of innovation, among which are innovation based on process needs, changes in industry or market structure, and new knowledge.
Several research studies have pointed out the need for innovation as a key source of competitive advantage for organizations. In today’s competitive environment, the challenge for all businesses is not only to innovate in existing markets to survive and remain profitable, but also to innovate in new markets in order to stay in front of competitors. Similarly, the factor representing structure for managing innovation is significant for both product and process innovation. This factor adds to the management system identified above by encouraging development of new technologies or adaptation of emerging ones to both products and processes of the firm. This factor adds formal structure to the procedures identified in the factor above. The two fit together naturally to create an innovative organization. This is similar to the findings of Sebora, Hartman, and Tower (1994).
Innovation and the Concept of a Champion
An innovation is, by definition, something new. A company can choose to introduce an invention, as the very first in its industry to have the new product or service for sale. It can be the last in its industry to adopt an innovation which all of its competitors already are selling. In either of these extreme cases, or in all those in between, the company must be aware of its industry and know what its competitors are doing with regard to innovation. The increased turbulence, complexity, and competitiveness of organizational environments have made the identification, evaluation, and adoption of technological innovations a critical determinant of organizational productivity, competition, and survival (Zaltman, Duncan, and Holbeck, 1973; Bigoness and Perreault, 1981; Morgan, 1988). As a result, a major research effort has focused on variables that facilitate or hinder the adoption of technological innovations (Kimberly and Evanisko, 1981; Pennings and Buitendam, 1987).
One variable that has been strongly linked to the success of technological innovations is the presence of a champion. This is an individual who informally emerges in an organization (Schon, 1963; Tushman and Nadler, 1986) and makes “a decisive contribution to the innovation by actively and enthusiastically promoting its progress through the critical [organizational] stages” (Achilladelis, Jervis, and Robertson, 1971: 14). Several authors have identified a number of different roles associated with innovation (Roberts, 1968; Achilladelis, Jervis, and Robertson, 1971; Maidique, 1980; Curley and Gremillion, 1983; Katz and Tushman, 1983). For example, gatekeepers acquire, translate, and distribute external technological knowledge and advancements to their colleagues (Allen, 1977; Tushman and Scanlan, 1981; Katz and Tushman, 1983). Project champions, the focus of the present study, distill creative ideas from information sources and then enthusiastically promote them within the organization (Achilladelis, Jervis, and Robertson, 1971). Business innovators provide support, access to resources, and protection from organizational interference as innovations emerge (Achilladelis, Jervis, and Robertson, 1971). Technical innovators design and/or develop the innovation, while user champions implement the innovation by training and providing assistance to the users (Achilladelis, Jervis, and Robertson, 1971; Rothwell et al., 1974; Curley and Gremillion, 1983). In order to identify project champions reliably, different types of innovator roles need to be distinguished. To illustrate, while both project champions and gatekeepers are involved in communication and information-processing activities, gatekeepers gather and disseminate external information to project groups while champions seek out creative ideas from information sources and then enthusiastically sell them. Thus, many studies reportedly investigating champions may not be studying champions at all if they have been inappropriately identified.
Leadership and influence are also important, since innovation adoption is largely a process of influence (Burgelman, 1983; Dean, 1987), both with subordinates, as indicated by leadership behavior, and with peers and superiors, as indicated by influence tactics.
Innovation Managers as Champions
Intense competition in the marketplace is forcing organizations to examine the different ways by which they could enhance or retain their competitive advantage. Several organizations have generated sustained competitive advantage through a continuous stream of incremental, overarching, and discontinuous innovation. There is a burgeoning literature on the competitive importance of innovation and the linkage between innovation and organization renewal across industries and countries (Schoonhoven, Eisenhardt, and Lyman 1990; Morone 1993; Hamel and Prahalad 1994; Utterback 1994). Central to the notion of technology as a competitive advantage for nations, firms, and industries is the significant role of companies as a source of innovation during the early stages of new and emerging technologies (Abernathy and Utterback 1978).
Making broad strategy for a company is one of the major tasks of innovation managers. This involves setting long-term directions and goals, and allocating resources so that the directions can be pursued and the goals can be reached. (Chandler, 1963) Innovation managers, in their role as strategists, must also deal with unforeseen events which emerge in the course of implementing their chosen strategies. (Mintzberg and Waters, 1985) One key element, which must be dealt with in pursuing strategy, is the set of companies with which a firm competes – its industry.
Innovation managers are responsible for all parts of a division or a company. To the extent that they can strengthen or change cultural elements, which favor innovation, they can make the whole division or firm more accepting and supportive of innovation. Managers can play various roles with regard to forming and executing their company’s strategy. These roles can vary from commander, giving orders and expecting obedience, to sponsor, encouraging ideas from below and nurturing their development. (Hart, 1992) In terms of fostering a culture of innovation, the role of sponsor is clearly more appropriate than that of commander.
If innovation is to be part of a company’s or division’s core competence, then it requires the coordinating effort of the innovation manager. As we will see in the following section, attempts to be an inventor and gain first mover advantages require certain kinds of coordination, while attempts to innovate by being an early adopter of the innovations of others require somewhat different coordinative efforts. However, in both cases speed to market is an important factor, and needs to be managed by the manager. Furthermore, several writers have conceptually linked transformational leadership to the innovation process (Oberg, 1972; House, 1977; Bass, 1985). Oberg (1972) discussed the change-agent function of the transformational leader. He contended that the transformational leader brings about radical change by espousing beliefs and values that are different from the established order. According to Bass (1985), who offered a consistent profile of the transformational leader as active innovator, transformational leaders use intellectual stimulation to enhance followers’ capacities to think on their own, to develop new ideas, and to question the operating rules and systems that no longer serve the organization’s purpose or mission. By using individualized consideration and intellectual stimulation, transformational leaders enhance followers’ confidence and skills to devise and implement innovative responses to current problems facing their organization.
Organizational Culture and Innovation Management
While it is important for the innovation manager to know what is going on in his or her industry, the basic job of the innovation manager is to run his or her company or division. Managers direct and coordinate the work of other managers; they do not, by and large, produce widgets. Yet, according to current theory, they are directly responsible for two key areas, which affect a company’s success or failure in innovation. Organizational culture, the first of these areas, involves shared values and beliefs which provide unstated guidance and direction for choices and actions of members of the organization at all levels. The core competence of the firm, the second key area of responsibility of innovation managers, is the central set of abilities or resources that sets a company apart from its competitors and from which spring its success in selling products or services to its customers at a price which allows for profit. We will now examine these two concepts, and how they can be managed for innovation.
Organizational culture is the “deeper level of basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of an organization, that operate unconsciously, and that define in a basic ‘taken for granted’ fashion an organization’s view of itself and its environment.” (Schein, 1985) A less precise definition is that culture is the way we do things around here.
An organization’s culture is embodied in such things as degree of formality (titles or first names), style of buildings and furniture, and stories and legends. Jelinek and Schoonhoven tell of a story they heard repeatedly while doing research at Texas Instruments. (Jelinek and Schoonhoven, 1993) The story, told in various forms, involves an engineer who persisted in working on an invention even when ordered not to and threatened with firing. His invention turned out to be a commercial success. Stories such as this become legends. They typically make a clear point about a company’s culture, and are often told to almost every newcomer to the company, thus passing on the culture. One important characteristic of culture is its breadth. It is generally assumed to transcend functional or regional boundaries within a firm.
Several authors have indicated that time is one of the shared values that characterize an organization’s culture. (Davis, 1984; Deal and Kennedy, 1982) These shared values are thought to be especially strong when they address matters that pertain to a company’s survival and success. Successful companies in such high-velocity industries as microelectronics and personal computers are permeated by a sense of urgency and the importance of speed. A service industry where leading competitors share similar values is the overnight package delivery business. Time truly is of the essence for the success and survival of these companies.
Bureaucracy is sometimes thought of as a characteristic of public agencies. However, examples of large bureaucratic companies are plentiful, and also involve shared values. Formal structure, clear division of tasks and lines of authority, and numerous written rules and procedures characterize bureaucratic organizations. Bureaucratic companies are better suited to incremental than to radical innovation and to slow and deliberate decision-making. (Draft, 1982; Thompson, 1969) An organization with a bureaucratic culture shares some values, which make it poorly, adapted to a high velocity industry.
Organizational culture involves symbolic actions and physical settings. The innovation manager can emphasize some values and de-emphasize others by the things he or she does personally, the meetings attended, and the physical organization. If he or she attends all major sales meetings, personally gives out sales awards, and tells stories about major sales successes, but has not visited the R&D department in the last two years, it is clear to all that this company has a sales culture, and places less value on its engineers.
CONCLUSION
At the level of the company, managing innovation means managing culture and core competence. Both are within the responsibility of the manager. Indeed, he or she may be the only one well situated to manage them. Elements of a culture can be changed over time, or reinforced. A core competence can be fostered and strengthened, or focused toward somewhat different skills and strengths. Managing innovation at this level means knowing what the company’s culture and core competence are, and attempting to match them with the kind of innovative products and services they favor. It also involves supporting and reaffirming them, or trying to gradually modify them in a chosen direction.
At the level of the individual innovation, managing innovation deals with choice of and support for projects, efforts to streamline the research and development procedures to the extent possible, and coordination of all the elements that make up speed to market. Here the innovation manager’s role is to oversee and coordinate the work of various functional managers, with a clear eye to expediting the overall process. Moreover, organizations must learn to modify their characteristics quickly as external environments change or compete at a disadvantage against more nimble rivals. Organizational structure is also likely to be related to innovation simply because it provides the formal, internal context within which the process of innovation must proceed. Formal structure determines who has the authority to make innovation-related decisions and the degree of autonomy and flexibility that individual managers have to initiate new ideas. Structure also affects the direction and amount of information, which is exchanged between participants in the innovations process.
While formal organizational characteristics such as complexity and decentralization, have been captured elsewhere in models of innovation, informal, culturally derived characteristics have not. The informal characteristics examined here reflect the degree to which organizational norms support and direct behaviors associated with the innovation process. It is important to consider informal controls on behavior in innovation research, since innovation is an unstructured problem. This means that neither the outcome nor the means of accomplishing any specific attempt to innovate can be predicted with certainty. Therefore, innovation-related problems are not amenable to solutions using formal organizational techniques, such as rules and procedures or appeals through the hierarchy.
Nevertheless, organizations that expect to be successful in innovating must somehow direct and control the process. Informal, inner directed controls, such as norms, can be an effective method of motivating and directing the solution of unstructured problems. Norms have also been shown to be a means of directing organizational behaviors in accordance with the values and expectations of an organization’s culture. These norms, if they are shown to influence innovation outcomes, should be incorporated within existing models in order to move in the direction of providing a more comprehensive, integrated model of organizational innovation.
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