This chapter covered the fifth and final element of the Pentathlon Framework – people, culture, organizational, and leadership issues. It stressed the strategic importance of human resources. Overall, the chapter explained how to create a ‘culture of innovation’ and discussed the people management practices such as reward and recognition that underlie this. Most innovation work is conducted by teams and five types of teams can be used for innovation projects. Selecting the most appropriate team was shown to be best based on considering the characteristics of the project – for example if it is radical or incremental – planned. The central role of top managers in creating a culture of innovation was shown to be based on their demonstration and stamina for innovation and dependent on their leadership style. Illustrating the above points, this chapter’s main case study is about time:matters, a company that has revolutionized ‘sameday’ shipments. It focused on creating the right culture to generate a constant stream of service innovation.
This and the previous four chapters have proposed a wide range of tools and techniques for innovation management, relating to each of the elements of the Pentathlon Framework. The management challenge is to boost innovation performance by coordinating the improvements across the elements of the Pentathlon Framework and this is the subject of Chapter 9.
Interview with Xinming Wan
Interview with Spyros Sakellariou
Management Recommendations
Use the cultural web as a diagnosis tool and apply ideas from best practice to create a real ‘culture of innovation’.
Choose the most appropriate team structure for each and every project.
Manage innovation project teams not only to obtain the maximum returns from projects but also to develop sufficient talent for driving challenging radical projects.
Link innovation strategy to the development of employees and support this with appropriate reward systems.
