Technology and Innovation Management

Prof. Dr. Alexander Kock | Winter Term 2022/23

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 Innovation-supporting culture
Promotion of key actors

Learning objectives:
• Knowledge of an innovation-friendly culture and a climate
conducive to creativity
• Knowledge of the essential informal role models

Innovation Culture
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 Innovation Culture
Innovation-supporting culture
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Innovation-supporting culture

There are many ways in which a company’s culture can promote innovation.

Innovation Culture at G.E. Innovation Culture at Nike

- “A small invention every ten days, a large one every six - Freedom instead of a check clock: Designing sneakers or
months.” accessories at Nike “doesn't mean fighting against the clock, but

- Every business unit manager, for example, is obliged to present allowing you to follow your passion”.

three new ideas for growth to a special committee every year. - “When you sit down and develop ideas, it's a combination of
This requirement results in an almost automatic reflex to everything you've done and seen in your life.”
create the framework conditions for these ideas in their own area
of responsibility.

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Innovation-supporting culture

What is organizational culture?

Culture Climate

“The pattern of basic assumptions that a group has “Perceptions of the events, practices, and procedures
invented, discovered or developed to cope with its and the kinds of behavior that are rewarded,
problems of external adoption or internal integration, supported, and expected in a setting.”
that has worked well and are taught to new members (Schneider, 1990)
as the way to perceive, think, feel and behave.”
(Schein, 1999)
à Aggregation of values, norms, beliefs and
attitudes in a company à Shared perception of the working environment

Climate can be changed much more easily than culture.

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Innovation-supporting culture

Schein defines three different levels of corporate culture.

•Technology
•Art Visible but often not
•Visible and audible behavior patterns Artifacts decipherable
and Creations

•Testable in the physical environment Greater level of

Espoused Values & Norms
•Testable only by social consensus awareness

•Relationship to environment
•Nature of reality, time and space
•Nature of human nature Basic Assumptions Taken for granted,
•Nature of human activity invisible, preconscious
•Nature of human relationship

The deeper rooted, the less visible, and the more difficult to influence.

Schein (1999)
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Innovation-supporting culture

Organizational culture is manifested in different levels.

Artifacts / Symbols / Signs Norms und Standards Basic assumptions = world view of the companies

... about truth and time ... about the environment

Corporate Identity, Formal rules • facts vs. pragmatism • threatening vs. supportive
Technologies, • tradition vs. future • conquerable vs.
Architecture overpowering

… about the nature of … about the nature of human

Behavioral patterns Behavioral mankind relationships
Standards • good-willing vs. malicious • egalitarian vs. hierarchical
• developable vs. not • competition vs. cooperation
changeable

Rituals and stories

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Innovation-supporting culture

Organizational culture can manifest in different ways.

Hierarchy Pay levels Job descriptions

• Number of levels from the head of the • High or low, whether there is • How detailed or restrictive they are and
organization to the lowest level performance-related pay, and what the what aspects they emphasize such as
employee differentials are between people at safety, or productivity, cost saving or
different grades quality

Informal practices such as Espoused values and rituals Stories, jokes, and jargons
norms • An emphasis on cooperation and • Commonly told stories about a particular
support vs. cut-and-thrust competition success or the failings of management;
• Management and non-management humor about the sales department, for
employees sit at separate tables in the between teams; cards, gifts, and parties
example; and jargon or acronyms (most
canteen; dress is strictly formal, there for those leaving the organization or government departments have a lexicon of
are uniforms, or dress is casual such events are not observed acronyms and jargon and the language is
often impenetrable to outsiders)

Physical environment
• Office space, canteens, restrooms; are
all spaces clean, tidy and comfortable,
or is it only the areas on public display?
Are there decorations such as plants
and paintings and good facilities?

West & Richter (2008). Climates and cultures for innovation and creativity at work
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Innovation-supporting culture

Hauschildt et al. define seven elements of an innovation-supporting culture.

Recruitment
Competence
System Degree of Information Cooperation Conflict mode and
and
openness organization style promotion awareness personnel
responsibility
development

Ready for Conscious Informal Willingness to Positive Uncon- More flexible

innovation dosage of the information cooperate and attitude ventional, understanding
dialogue, degree of relationships actively towards conflict-prone of
open-minded organization: promote conflict people responsibility
organization à mutual
as free space appreciation
for action and
not as a
restriction of
freedom to act

Hauschildt et al. (2016), S. 108 ff.

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Innovation-supporting culture
Artefacts demonstrate the underlying values that influence the innovation
behavior of employees.

Cemetery of ideas Random lunch partners Garbage time & Yoga Fuck-Up Nights

Warby Parkers Twitter fosters

Zotter’s During Fuck-
organizes a team-
cemetery of regular oriented Up Nights,
ideas helps to ideators at
dinners, environment,
integrate a random lunch open air Merck KGaA
culture of report on their
partners and reunions and
failure fun events yoga classes. failed projects

Hackathons Flop Family Trees Bring-your-own-pet Reading corner

Many
Bosch Knowledge of companies
conducts past Pets are a big introduce
regular innovations part of Mars’s retreats with
hackathons to becomes company reading
promote new transparent culture corners in
ideas and usable order to think
differently.

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Innovation-supporting culture

Amabile et al. defined a work environment (climate) that affects creativity.

Conceptual categories of Assessed outcome

work environment factors
KEYS environment scales of the work

Organizational Encouragement
Encouragement of
Supervisory Encouragement
Creativity
Work Group Support

Resources Sufficient Resources

CREATIVITY
Autonomy or Freedom Freedom

Challenging Work
Pressures
Workload Pressure
Organizational
Organizational Impediments
Impediments to Creativity

Amabile, Lazenby & Herron (1996)

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Innovation-supporting culture

The organizational climate scale by Amabile comprises eight dimensions.

KEYS scale: Questionnaire scale to assess work environment factors that are beneficial for (or detrimental to) creativity
1.-6.: Stimulant scales / 7.-8. Obstacle scales

Scale name Description

1. Organizational An organizational culture that encourages creativity through the fair, constructive
encouragement judgment of ideas, reward and recognition for creative work, mechanisms for developing
new ideas, an active flow of ideas and a shared vision of what the organization is trying
to do

2. Supervisory A supervisor who serves as a good work model, sets goals appropriately, supports the
encouragement work group, values individual contributions, and shows confidence in the work group.

3. Work group supports A diversely skilled work group in which people communicate well, are open to new ideas,
constructively challenge each other‘s work, trust and help each other, and feel committed
to the work they do
4. Sufficient resources Access to appropriate resources, including funds, materials, facilities, and information

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Innovation-supporting culture

The organizational climate scale by Amabile comprises eight dimensions.

KEYS scale: Questionnaire scale to assess work environment factors that are beneficial for (or detrimental to) creativity
1.-6.: Stimulant scales / 7.-8. Obstacle scales

Scale name Description

5. Challenging work A sense of having to work hard on challenging tasks and important projects

6. Freedom Freedom in deciding what work to do or how to do it; a sense of control over one‘s work

7. Organizational An organizational culture that impedes creativity through internal political problems,
impediments harsh criticism of new ideas, destructive internal competition, an avoidance of risk, and
an overemphasis on the status quo
8. Workload pressure Extreme time pressures, unrealistic expectations for productivity, and distractions from
creative work

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Innovation-supporting culture

Innovation climate can also be understood as a set of balanced factors.

Openness & flexibility Reflexivity

(reactive mindset) (proactive mindset)

Supervisory support Participation

(supporting employees’ innovativeness) (empowering employees)

Communication Collaboration
(exchanging explicit knowledge) (exchanging implicit knowledge)

Psychological safety
(encouraging employees to trust and to speak up without being rejected)

A strong innovation climate requires a comprehensive set of balanced, innovation-promoting factors.

Kruft, T., M. Gamber, and A. Kock. 2018. Substitutes or Complements? The Role of
Winter 22/23 | Technology and Innovation Management | Prof. Dr. Alexander Kock | 14 Corporate Incubator Support and Innovation Climate for Innovative Behavior in
the Hosting Firm. International Journal of Innovation Management 22 (5): 1–29.
Innovation-supporting culture
A failure-tolerant culture means that different types of failure have different
consequences.
A Lack of Task Uncertainty Exploratory
Deviance Ability Challenge Testing
A lack of clarity
An individual Individual doesn‘t An individual about future An experiment
chooses to have the skills, faces a task too events causes conducted to
violate a conditions, or difficult to be people to take expand
prescribed training to executed reliably seemingly knowledge and
process or execute a job. every time. reasonable investigate a
practice. actions that possibility leads to
produce an undesired
undesired results. result.

BLAMEWORTHY PRAISEWORTHY

Process Process Hypothesis

Inattention Complexity Testing
Inadequacy
An individual A competent A process An experiment
unintentionally individual adheres composed of conducted to
deviates from to a prescribed many elements prove that an idea
but faulty or breaks down or a design will
specifications. when it
incomplete succeed fails.
process. encounters novel
interactions.

Edmondson (2011): Strategies for Learning from Failure

Winter 22/23 | Technology and Innovation Management | Prof. Dr. Alexander Kock | 15 https://hbr.org/2011/04/strategies-for-learning-from-failure
Innovation-supporting culture

Correctly dealing with failure helps to establish a learning-oriented culture.

Detecting Failure Analyzing Failure Promoting Experimentation

• Goal: surface failure early, before • Goal: go beyond the obvious reasons to • Goal: strategically produce failure
it has mushroomed into disaster understand the root causes through systematic experimentation
• Problem: Although many • Why often shortchanged? • Every failure conveys valuable
methods of surfacing current and • examining failures is emotionally information
pending failures exist, they are unpleasant and can chip away at our
grossly underutilized • Too often, pilots are conducted under
self-esteem
optimal conditions rather than
• Challenge: teaching people in an • analyzing failures requires inquiry and representative ones. Thus they can’t
organization when to declare openness, patience, and a tolerance for show what won’t work.
defeat in an experimental course causal ambiguity
of action à Produce intelligent failures as quickly
• we tend to downplay our responsibility
• One solution: “failure parties” as possible
and place undue blame on external or
situational factors
• One solution: interdisciplinary teams

“Those that catch, correct, and learn from failure before others do will succeed”

Edmondson (2011): Strategies for Learning from Failure

Winter 22/23 | Technology and Innovation Management | Prof. Dr. Alexander Kock | 16 https://hbr.org/2011/04/strategies-for-learning-from-failure
Innovation-supporting culture

There are many ways in which a culture of innovation can promote innovation.

Innovation Culture at Google X Verily Gcam Google Brain

- “The fear of mistakes paralyses, and the claim to control everything not only
costs an incredible amount of energy, but also makes operationally blind.”
Focused on building Computational AI that “understands”
- "I'd rather ask for forgiveness afterwards than always ask for permission smart contact lenses photography to create images, audio and
for better diabetes and enhanced depth-of- text in a way that
before.” algorithms to more field, 3D images and more closely
effectively diagnose photos that more approximates how the
and treat diseases like accurately reflect real human brain interprets
- “Try to kill every project you have, then successful ones will emerge.” multiple sclerosis. life. those kinds of data.

Project Loon Project Wing Waymo

Balloons that beam Similar to what Waymo continues

Internet signals to Amazon announced the work of Google's
the ground ideal for for its own delivery Driverless Car and
emerging markets service, Project was founded in
where people have Wing uses drones, December 2016 as a
little or no Internet to deliver packages. subsidiary of
https://www.ted.com/talks/astro_teller_the_unexpected_benefit_of_celebrating_failure access. Alphabet.

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 Innovation Culture
Promotion of key actors
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Promotion of key actors

Innovation is eventually driven by people.

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Promotion of key actors

Two basic causes of resistance exist: barriers of will and capability.

Barriers of Will

Investment Acceptance
initial state final state

Barriers of Capability

Development Implementation

Witte (1973), Hauschild et al. (2016), p. 39ff.

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Promotion of key actors
Promotors have different power bases and contribute towards overcoming
specific barriers.

Promotors (in general) Power Promotor Expert Promotor

• are persons, who actively and • has hierarchical power • knows critical details
intensively support an innovation • has access to material resources • develops alternatives
• start an innovation process • acts as an investor • evaluates external solution
• sustain a high activity level • legitimizes projects • proposals
• terminate the decision process • influences personnel decisions • implements concepts
• blocks opposition • tests prototypes
• protects expert promotors • solves problems
• influences priorities and schedules

à surmount barriers of will à surmount barriers of capability

through their hierarchical through their expert knowledge
potential

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Promotion of key actors

Promotors do not always meet, especially in large organizations.

Power Promotor does not

know the Expert Promotors

Power Promotor

Expert Promotor
Internal organizational and
administrative barriers

Hauschildt & Chakrabarti (1988)

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Promotion of key actors

Process promotors connect other promotors.

Power Promotor

Knows the power promotors

and has access to them
Process Promotor
Knows the expert promotors
and has access to them

Expert Promotor

Hauschildt & Chakrabarti (1988)

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Promotion of key actors
Success is highest if all three promotor roles are played,
ideally by different people.
Without Expert Tandem
Troika
Promotors Promotor Structur

6 Technical success

Degree of
5.5 Innovation
Economic
success
5

4.5

Hauschildt & Kirchmann (2001)

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Promotion of key actors

The Relationship Promotor connects internal promotors to the environment.

Power Promotor
• Customer
• Suppliers
• Research &
Education
• Competitors
Process Relationship • Consultants
Promotor Promotor • Public
Administration
• Investors
• Trader, Distributor
• ...

Expert Promotor

Walter & Gemünden (1995)

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Promotion of key actors

Ideally, there is a relationship promotor on both sides of a relationship.

61.3 %
60
Sales growth in the last two years

50 50.6 %

41.8 %
40

30

20
16.5 %
10

Without RP only on the RP only on the RP on

Promotors Buyer Side Seller Side Both Sides
92 Cases 24 Cases 33 Cases 46 Cases
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Promotion of key actors

Process and Relationship Promotors are important boundary spanners.

Process Promotor Relationship Promotor

• has some hierarchical influence • has market-based influence

• knows processes, rules, values • knows players and rules of a
• has social competence, and good market
internal networks • has social competence, and good
• searches and promotes people external networks
with ideas and initiative • hinds adequate cooperation-
• gives contacts to senior partners and promotes them
management • gives contact to internal promotors
• plans, controls, moderates change • plans, controls, moderates
processes, supports flow of exchange processes , supports
information flow of information
• builds trust, solves conflicts, • builds trust, solves conflicts,
supports common goals within the supports common goals between
firm firms

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The promotor model has some implications for improving the innovation
culture

Summary Recommendations

• Promotors are informal roles that are defined by

- the barrier they overcome, Find Promotors
- the power base they have, and
Identify promotors in current and past innovation
- the contributions they make
projects
• Promotors are beneficial for innovation processes
Support Promotors
• Promotor roles can change over the course of the
process; several people can play the same role; Give promotors more autonomy and provide them
individuals can play multiple roles with sufficient resources

• Ideally, promotor roles are played by different people

Retain Promotors
• Promotors cannot be formally appointed,
they act out of their own motivation Do not sanction promotor behavior and reward
successful promotors

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