Lack of Internal Cooperation

Internal cooperation is crucial in the product development process. It includes members of the project team as well as organizational members outside the team with whom team members work. For example, an innovation constraint symptom may be too little communication within the project team or the fact that essential information is not made available to the team by individuals outside of the team. Similarly, a detectable symptom might be the insufficient level of support provided by colleagues within and outside the team. Finally, another visible symptom is that project members must expend a very high level of effort in their immediate work environment. In other words, team members express perceptions that they cannot work satisfactorily with their colleagues.

Lack of External Cooperation

The lack of external cooperation symptom describes problems in the organization's collaboration with suppliers and customers, thus explicitly focusing on the interface of the innovation project with the company's external environment. A detectable symptom can be missing, incomplete, or not shared information or insufficient communication from the external partner. Furthermore, team members express the feeling that involved employees from the supplier's or customer's organization do not support the cooperation or recognize its value.

Shortcomings in Goal Setting

The symptom of shortcomings in goal setting is expressed by uncertainty and disagreement about the project's goals from the involved parties, i.e. management, partners, and project members. It includes uncertainties about the actual problem structure as well as future goals. Often project goals are changed over the course of a project and are not adequately reflected in a change project structure or alignment of the project with its environment. The project might be stopped for an undefined period of time and/or important decisions for continuing the project may not be made. Another frequent problem is caused by changing project objectives that also entail a change in the task within the project framework. Furthermore, unclear responsibilities contribute to a lack of a clear definition of involved internal partners tasks,' responsibilities, and timelines.

Lack of Adequate Infrastructure

The term “lack of adequate infrastructure” for an innovation project refers exclusively to tangible resources, such as personnel, financial resources, and operational resources. A personnel shortage is characterized by inadequate staffing with professional staff. A financial shortage prevents, for example, the purchase of materials or machines. In regard to operational resources, unsuitability of existing equipment and software slows down the development work. Another crucial point is the support of project members through deliverables from outside of the project, such as construction and prototypes. This deficiency is outside the project team's area of responsibility and inhibits the progress of the project due to exceeding time limits or insufficient quality.

Restriction of Innovative Action

The restriction of innovative action symptom describes the lack of individual capacities identified by the innovators themselves. This means that innovators within the project do not have enough time to get involved in their innovation project. The symptom is visible in the fact that employees cannot fulfill their project tasks due to insufficient capacities or cannot develop new ideas freely. Hence the creative potential of the innovators cannot be fully exploited, which ultimately has a negative impact on the innovative nature of the project. Again, this symptom is the individual-perceived deficit of his or her own resources.

Lack of Skills

Lack of skills means that the existing knowledge at the company is not sufficient to solve the tasks at hand. This is due to the fact that either the individual and/or the organization lacks the knowledge to carry out the tasks of the innovation project. Organizational knowledge is missing if individual knowledge is not available and/or successfully transformed into organizational knowledge. The know-how and experience required for the innovation can also be missing in the company if projects are outside the core competencies of a particular department or if the innovation concept has been developed outside the company and the necessary skills are not available in the organization are not available. Furthermore, often innovation projects are associated with very high technical requirements and, depending on the state of knowledge, high to very high decision-making risks. While a lack of skills can be associated with a not-well-planned human resources policy or shortcomings in the hiring process, this is a rather long-term aspect of human resource planning that we have not been addressing with this research.

Lack of Motivation

Lack of motivation describes the individual rejection of the innovation project. To be innovative, individuals need to be willing to spend time on and be dedicated to the innovation project and have a certain risk tolerance for it. A lack of motivation leads to an insufficient willingness to support the innovation; in its enhanced form, lack of motivation can even lead to active action and conscious decisions against the innovation. Furthermore, risk-averse behavior – i.e. the lack of willingness to take an increased risk and an adherence to known experiences – is particularly restrictive, since it is associated with the lack of motivation to learn new and to change habitual behaviors. Individuals need an intrinsic drive for change to become innovative and to actively support innovation. However, if they have had prior bad experiences with innovation, their motivation for engaging in innovative behavior will be rather low.

Strategic Restrictions

Strategic restrictions occur when the strategic direction of the company or a department is not consistent with the objectives of the innovation project. This can lead to conflicts if departments are overloaded or if overlapping areas of responsibilities lead to competency disputes. Furthermore, unclear task guidelines and poor project support delay the development progress. Often an innovation is desired but will be accepted only if innovators prefinance the project out of their own departmental budgets. Unclear decision-making powers are manifested by restricted access to external information, either because a third party is intervening or due to restrictive guidelines of the company. Furthermore, if project managers have a low degree of autonomy, they will also not be able to make decisions needed for the project. This is particularly evident if the relationship between the line and the project is not clearly defined or if the matrix organization is not correctly set up.

Operational Restrictions

Operational restrictions occur when strongly formalized or inflexible processes hinder the project. These routines are mostly set up to facilitate day-to-day operations and to perform standard tasks effectively and efficiently. They can make innovation easier if they leave room for flexibility and change but can hinder projects if they are too formalized. However, the other extreme is also possible: that there are no defined processes or only internal information flows. Spatial separation of project teams or inadequate organizational knowledge management leads to undefined internal information paths. In terms of personnel policy, high employee fluctuation and the distribution of employees on too many different projects poses problems for the progress of innovation.

No Freedom for Innovative Thinking (“I Have a Dream”)

In many organizations, there is no time or freedom to think outside the box or to try things out. Often employees feel that, although they are required to be creative and innovative, this is neither enabled nor rewarded. In particular, the goal-oriented achievement of project goals is rated higher than the elaboration of truly novel solutions. When project members are working to the limit of their ability in fulfilling day-to-day tasks, they no longer have the intellectual capacity to develop new ideas for innovative solutions. Furthermore, the lack of temporal freedom leads to incremental improvement and suboptimal solutions in current and future projects due to constant time pressure. Besides the operational restrictions, we also observe that a lack of motivation leads to a restriction of innovative action, as some employees told us that they tried to propose new ideas or improvements in the past and were either laughed at or were in other ways negatively associated with their “dream.” And last but not least, a lack of skills and methods with respect to how to think creatively, how to take different perspectives, or how to communicate these often fuzzy ideas adequately were also identified as causes of a lack of innovative action.

Adaptation. In order to enable employees to develop innovative solutions with sufficient time and intensity, they have to be given freedom outside their day-to-day work. This freedom can be promoted by a temporary spatial separation from their workplace and/or by a methodological support of the employees. From the very beginning of the innovation project, freedom for creativity needs to be encouraged and integrated in the project plan. This means less formalism in the early stages of the innovation and a basic understanding of all participants for the innovation process and its implications. Project management must be designed based on the size of the project; i.e. reporting procedures should be reduced to a basic level where true value is created and the procedures should be considered in project planning and controlling. Furthermore, a fixed percentage of working hours could be assigned to scouting or project-relevant studies. Working in a designated space – e.g. an Innovation Think Tank – also helps project members to get in a “thinking and doing mode” that fosters creativity and innovation. Some organizations train their project teams in using creativity methods and provide external support for literature and patent research. Overall, we have found that providing designated time-outs from the operational project work and offering team members dedicated freedom for innovative thinking outside of their regular work environment helps to overcome the constraint of not enough innovative thinking. This can be done through, for example, one- to two-day Design Thinking or creativity workshops led by experts in creativity, Design Thinking, or other innovation methods. Scheduling dedicated innovation project days where experts from other departments or units are invited can also help companies look for solutions outside of the box. In later project stages, freedom for innovation can be supported by providing venture capital to develop these ideas further or providing sabbaticals for employees to pursue their ideas for a designated period of time.

Ideas Are Rejected (Being Don Quixote)

Once employees take the initiative to think outside of the box and develop a new idea, often the idea is turned down. Innovative, unfamiliar, or seemingly crazy ideas are rejected or do not get any attention. They are not included in the idea selection or prescreening process as nobody feels responsible for them. As a result, the initiator feels like Don Quixote jousting at windmills and being the only one taking a stand for the idea in order to secure the support of the department or unit on his or her own. Especially for employees who have not been with the department, unit, or organization for long, this is a major innovation constraint. The symptom for this constraint is a shortcoming in goal setting, caused by operational restrictions. While formalities and criteria for the decision-making process play an important role at product development process gates to ensure the comparability and transparency of the innovation process, they are a major obstacle for conceptual ideas as they are not suitable for evaluating them. This is particularly serious in the case of radical innovations. On one hand, such innovations are desired by the company; on the other hand, they do not find a place in the innovation process because they are so novel that they cannot be assessed with standardized criteria and thus fail at the gates.

Adaptation. If the organization is looking for ideas outside the existing business area, it has to create a way to overcome the filter “Fit to existing business or process.” Already in the phase of idea generation, it should be possible to get “homeless” ideas into an idea pool and to enable an initial assessment by experts from different disciplines. In order to develop these ideas further, resources need to be provided centrally, e.g. by a central or cross-divisional research department. Depending on the size of the organization, this might be done through one designated idea scout/promotor or a team. This person/team serves as the “idea police” for radical or crazy ideas and is equipped with its own designated fund to conduct a first assessment of these ideas (involving different experts and/or external stakeholders). In their target agreement, this person/team is responsible for scouting a specific number of radical ideas per year. Furthermore, the organization might want to rethink its product development process and adjust it based on the degree of innovation; thus, shorter, more iterative, flexible, and open process might be used for radical ideas while incremental ideas follow the standard innovation process.

No Support for Innovation Projects (the Nonstarter or “We Don't Do That”)

Even if the idea is evaluated positively and the innovation project is (often with a lot of expectations) kicked off, many projects become nonstarters as they are not sufficiently supported through adequate resources. For example, there is a lack of specialists for specific tasks and development steps in the project or there is a lack of technical support because there is not enough staff (e.g. technicians and designers) available for the project. The lack of financial resources for an innovation project is particularly noticeable in technological innovations. It is often very difficult to get long-term, reliable financing for these types of innovation. The causes for these symptoms can be lack of skills or strategic restrictions. If a company starts too many projects at once because of the fear of missing out on something, in most cases there are not enough available resources. If several innovation projects are running in parallel, experts need to spend their time on various projects, which leads to work overload and conflicts. Here, we often find a lack of coordination of innovation projects across the whole organization (missing innovation portfolio management). In addition, employees are often withdrawn from projects at short notice if a problem occurs in their regular field of work, resulting in a lack of personnel resources for the innovation project. The reason for insufficient long-term financial support for technological innovations is often that such projects are associated with high risks and unknown ends. When a company decides to invest in technological innovation, the commitment has to come from top management. If this is not the case, or if the commitment is only on paper, often the research and development (R&D) department has to cover the necessary expenses from its own budget and cannot sustain the innovation project in the long term, which often leads to abandoning the project on short notice.

Adaptation. It is mandatory to establish overall portfolio management and assign resources accordingly. The company needs to have central innovation portfolio planning to know exactly which projects are planned (in the early stage), which are currently running, in which stage of the innovation process they are, who is assigned on what basis to which project, and what the status of the project is. The innovation portfolio could also include those ideas they have identified with potential but that are currently in the evaluation stage. Furthermore, the planning has to ensure that experts are not allocated to too many projects at once. Personnel fluctuation and skill development need to be considered. And last but not least, the company needs to let all project team members know what comes after the current project so they don't spend time looking for the next project while the project is still running, which would lead to a lack of commitment and motivation.

If promising ideas are identified and the exact amount of resources needed is not known up front, sufficient funds and resources need to be assigned for longer than the expected project duration and permanently allocated to the project so that they cannot be withdrawn on a short-term basis. A written contract at the beginning of the innovation project confirms the organizational commitment to the project and increases the hurdles to shift resources. With respect to technological innovations, the company needs to be aware that these innovations are usually not one- to two-year commitments but rather long-term ones that need different criteria for evaluation and management of the innovation process than, for example, incremental product innovations. Providing a shared space where experts can gather to give feedback to several projects at specific times (as e.g. in the Innovation Think Tank; see Section 4.2) allows for better exploitation of scare resources.

In summary, these three examples have shown the structure of innovation challenges, consisting of observable symptom(s) and their underlying cause(s), as depicted in Figure 4.1. If the organization or the employee feels that there is an innovation constraint, the diagnostic instruments described in this chapter can help to separate the symptom from the cause. Our examples show how the constraint manifests itself and can be overcome using one or more of the described adaptations. In the next section, we present a best practice that we have developed, prototyped, tested, and evaluated together with one of our corporate partners. Many of the individual adaptation options are combined in the concept of the Innovation Think Tank.

Space Design

The design of the Innovation Think Tank aims to provide an alternative working environment that is creativity-enhancing. Vitally important is the physical separation from the daily workplace. To meet the special requirements of early-stage tasks, it is important to create a calm and undisturbed workplace (positive isolation effect). Single-user workstations allow for independent and individual research and work. A physically separate room for intensive discussions or conference calls is available. A coffee area, a place for expert group discussions, and an information area (with access to scientific literature) are also included in the think tank.

Structure of Work and Time

The structure of work and time is flexible. The attendance at the Innovation Think Tank is voluntary. Participants are, however, requested to work on a specific and already planned task. The Innovation Think Tank was open for four weeks (starting at 8 a.m.) and employees could freely choose their time slot, though they were asked to use the Innovation Think Tank for several days with a minimum of four hours per day. The flexible structuring of work and time led to different group compositions and fostered creativity-enhancing exchange of information. A joint kick-off session every day (10–10:30) was the only compulsory interruption of the workday. Participation at expert discussions that usually took place at one o'clock was voluntary. In order to keep day-to-day business away from the Innovation Think Tank, participants were asked not to be accessible via mail and telephone to the greatest possible extent while they were using the think tank.

Effective Learning

Effective learning is reached through the systematic finishing of innovation activities and a support program. Participants experience how they can successfully handle tasks in the early phase of innovation projects. The support program is made up of speeches and expert discussions as well as methodical support concerning literature and patent searches. The methodological support is provided by the corporate information center that delegated one staff member for the term of the Innovation Think Tank (four weeks). Over the course of the four weeks, 15 expert discussions were hosted by nine corporate experts in the field of creativity techniques, technology trends, business segment strategies, and marketing.

Networking

Networking, facilitated by a moderator, is an important element of the Innovation Think Tank as it fosters communication and exchange. Finding a balance between a calm working atmosphere and an active exchange among the R&D employees is a major challenge for running the Innovation Think Tank. To solve this conflict, interpersonal exchanges were particularly promoted during expert discussions and kick-off sessions (where participants were directed to introduce themselves and their topic to the group in five minutes). Next to these directed networking offerings, participants also bonded at the coffee area – in many cases cross-departmental.