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This article analyzes how senior managers' transformational leadership and the climate for creativity associate with employees' perceptions regarding a culture of innovation in the context of public management reform in local government. Based on a survey of 1,576 employees in the Seoul Metropolitan Government, this study finds that the degree to which an employee perceives senior managers' transformational leadership is positively related to the degree to which the employee perceives a culture of innovation. The findings of the study also indicate that the climate for creativity--through enhancing the recognition of employee creativity, the flexibility to change, and resources for innovation--is significantly associated with employees' perceptions of a culture of innovation. Finally, the study finds that there is a variance in the degree to which the employee perceives a culture of innovation among agencies, and supervisors' transactional leadership still matters in fostering a culture of innovation in local government. Keywords innovation, leadership, local government, Introduction Various forms of public management practices have been adopted by local government to enhance the quality of public services and accountability through managing for results, human resources management (HRM) [...]

Historically, we've thought of leaders and innovators as belonging in two distinct categories. George Washington, Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Those are leaders. And legends such as Leonardo da [...]

What are IRI members talking about? These questions were recently posed on IRI's Community Forum. Q: How does your company measure the value created from innovation? How does your company [...]

It might look like chiles play, all that laughing and backslapping and plowing things up. But inside the San Francisco studio where MythBusters hosts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage dream [...]

A significant issue facing R&D managers today is maintaining a stimulating technology organization staffed with appropriately skilled individuals who share the vision of the corporation and constitute talented and effective teams. At the 2008 Industrial Research Institute Member Summit, Ernest R. Gilmont of the University of Pennsylvania and Robert Cook of Clorox co-chaired a discussion focused on identifying current issues related to how R&D organizations are responding to their human resources challenges to ensure viability of their R&D workforee. The case studies that follow are adapted from presentations by panelists from W. L. Gore, Roche Diagnostics and The Hershey Company. KEY CONCEPTS: human resources, organizational culture, creativity, Generations at Work., "The War for Talent never ended. Executives must constantly rethink the way their companies plan to attract, motivate, and retain employees." --The McKinsey Quarterly, January 2008. Creating Compelling Environments for [...]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2009.01.006 Byline: Jan Mouritsen, Allan Hansen, Carsten Arts Hansen Abstract: Management accounting calculations relate innovation to the firm through translations where both can change. Based on examples of the management of innovation from three firms the study shows how management accounting calculations rather than describe the properties of innovation add perspective to them mediating between innovation concerns and firm-wide concerns. This mediation happens through short and long translations. In short translations, management accounting calculations extend or reduce innovation activities via a single calculation. In long translations innovation activities are problematised via multiple calculations. When calculations challenge each other in long translations they problematise not only what innovation should be, but also where it should be located in time and space. In the three examples, calculations mobilised alternative propositions about the relevance of technical artefacts and linked this to innovation strategy and sourcing strategy in the firm's inter-organisational relations. Tensions between calculations associated with technological, organisational and environmental entities framed considerations about the value of innovation to the firm strategically differently. All this happens because management accounting calculations are partial rather than total calculations of firms' affairs and value. Author Affiliation: Department for Operations Management, Copenhagen Business School, Solbjerg Plads 3, DK 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2009.01.006 Byline: Jan Mouritsen, Allan Hansen, Carsten Arts Hansen Abstract: Management accounting calculations relate innovation to the firm through translations where both can change. Based on examples of the management of innovation from three firms the study shows how management accounting calculations rather than describe the properties of innovation add perspective to them mediating between innovation concerns and firm-wide concerns. This mediation happens through short and long translations. In short translations, management accounting calculations extend or reduce innovation activities via a single calculation. In long translations innovation activities are problematised via multiple calculations. When calculations challenge each other in long translations they problematise not only what innovation should be, but also where it should be located in time and space. In the three examples, calculations mobilised alternative propositions about the relevance of technical artefacts and linked this to innovation strategy and sourcing strategy in the firm's inter-organisational relations. Tensions between calculations associated with technological, organisational and environmental entities framed considerations about the value of innovation to the firm strategically differently. All this happens because management accounting calculations are partial rather than total calculations of firms' affairs and value. Author Affiliation: Department for Operations Management, Copenhagen Business School, Solbjerg Plads 3, DK 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark

This article examines how firms can construct their alliance portfolio to obtain higher rates of innovation. The study develops around the idea that cohesive and sparse relationships are at the same time structurally contradictory and functionally interdependent. Their structural contradiction lies in their illustrating opposite patterns of firm partners' interconnectedness: cohesive alliances imply that a firms' alliance partners are in turn highly connected among each other, whereas sparse alliances imply that the partners in these alliances are actually disconnected from each other. But they are functionally interdependent in that they provide different (and complementary) types of contribution to a firm's innovation performance. On the one hand, by facilitating trust building and cooperation, cohesive alliances provide a normative environment that guarantees the actual execution of knowledge recombinant processes. On the other by exposing firms to novel and varied knowledge flows, sparse alliances break the tendency of cohesive alliances to produce redundancy, and make it possible for the knowledge recombinations that take place across cohesive relationships to actually bear the fruits of innovation. By illustrating the mechanisms whereby the synergies between cohesive and sparse alliances can be obtained and exploited, this study suggests the development of a dual alliance network structure, made up of both cohesive and sparse alliances, as the normative ideal for innovation. The empirical results support this insight, showing that alliance portfolios made up of both types of alliances provide higher rates of innovation than those from either pattern alone. The article demonstrates these findings in the US mobile phone industry in the 1990s, a domain where firms engaged systematically in innovation processes and strategic alliance activities.

The present research stems from the results of a survey on the innovativeness of a sample of Italian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). These results, largely based on self-reported data by entrepreneurs or managers, showed that the considered SMEs were important developers of radical innovations in contrast with data published by local institutions. This misalignment between the entrepreneurs' opinions and the official data, that are typically defined and selected by academics and policy makers, motivated a new research aimed at analyzing the intimate reasons for it. The research is rooted in the social construction of innovation perspective and is based on interviews with the three main innovation stakeholders, identified as: entrepreneurs, academics, and policy makers. The results show the existence of deeply different perspectives concerning innovation, starting from its definition, to the effective policies to promote it, to the role of intermediary institutions and so on. Sometimes, these views show diverging goals among the stakeholders and, consequently, contrasting opinions on effective supporting policies. These results can partly explain the misalignment between the survey's output and 'institutional' data and, maybe, also the failure of many supporting initiatives that are largely documented by our survey and also by literature. The aim of the paper is to investigate the different perspectives on innovation held by the considered stakeholders, highlighting the points of major contrast together with similarities in order to provide new insights into the problem. Keywords: Innovation; SME; Social perspective

This week we're celebrating brilliant marketers - marketers who not only build brands and businesses but who do so through developing real partnerships with their agency suppliers. Even better, these [...]

The need of boosting the creativity in employees during team work to increase the business success is emphasized.

Advertising creatives are often characterised in terms of stereotypes such as genius or maverick. Relatively few studies have focused on the complexities and contradictions that face creatives in their professional role. In this paper we draw on depth interviews conducted with a small sample of senior-level creatives working in a cross-section of New York agency settings to explore the ways in which they negotiate and resolve their senses of personal and professional identity. We find that ad agencies are a site of conflict and insecurity for these creatives, yet also of potential fulfilment. We suggest that these creatives may be complicit in the conflict because their sense of professional identity has a substantial investment in it. We suggest that the advertising industry has not evolved working practices that fully assimilate those creatives who experience such dilemmas of identity.

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, was a proponent of simplicity. In Warren Bennis' 2002 article 'Will the Legacy Live On?' for Harvard Business Review, Bennis noted that one [...]

Impact of foreign ownership on a firm's innovativeness is analyzed with regard to the Dutch manufacturing industry.

OVERVIEW: As growth and profit alternatives continue to erode for many companies, the importance of radical innovation as a mechanism for organization rejuvenation is increasing. Some firms are building entire management systems to enable radical innovation over and over again. They are experimenting with different organizational structures that vary in terms of their relationship with R&D and in terms of how far down the commercialization path they oversee projects. To have a fully developed RI capability, firms find they must manage three sets of activities and ensure that the transitions between them are smooth. These are discovery, incubation, and accelerated growth of new businesses. In addition, firms with different cultures of innovation can all develop RI competencies. This article reports interim results of a three-year longitudinal study of 12 well known, large industrial firms with a declared strategic intent to develop a competency in radical innovation. KEY CONCEPTS: organization structures, innovation cultures, radical innovation hubs, radical innovation competencies., Companies have tried and failed to build organic growth and renewal engines. Sometimes called incubators, sometimes called corporate venturing organizations, and sometimes called radical innovation hubs, these are organizational entities [...]

OVERVIEW: Accelerating the rate of innovation is a top priority for technology managers; understanding and managing common innovation enablers and barriers saves time and money. A review of multiple programs in Hewlett-Packard revealed that the top enablers of innovation are highly skilled people, a helping culture, management support, using checkpoints to provide focus, and interdisciplinary people working together. However, barriers are different across programs; consequently, managers should regularly interview teams to determine which barriers need to be addressed. And, barriers can be predicted on the basis of technology and market newness. For example, products with technologies that are new to the company face capability issues while products with new markets may experience market planning issues. KEY CONCEPTS: managing innovation, portfolio management, effective R&D., For the past several years, an Industrial Research Institute annual survey has identified accelerating innovation as one of the top issues facing R&D managers (1). This is also a top [...]

This article discusses how firms innovate within and across firm boundaries by reconfiguring their resources and business units over time. Focusing on acquisitions and internal development as key aspects of business dynamics, the authors track the evolution of 87 product lines and 88 business units in Johnson & Johnson's medical sector from 1975 to 1997. The study highlights the dual importance of acquisitions and internal development as sources of value and innovation for a firm, along with the complementary role of business unit reconfiguration. The company commonly looked beyond its boundaries for new resources, acquiring most of its product lines and units during the period, and actively reconfiguring most acquired units in attempts to create new value, rather than simply leaving them to operate within their original boundaries. In addition, unit reconfiguration commonly preceded product line movement across unit boundaries, providing evidence of the embedded nature of resources within structure. At the same time, however, internally developed resources and units were more likely to be retained: indeed, stable internally created units, where business routines were most understood, were the most common sources of innovations. The underlying message of these evolutionary patterns is that innovation stems from maintaining a deep understanding of organizationally-embedded routines, while undertaking careful ongoing redefinition of unit and firm boundaries.

An analysis of the development of an innovative and efficient corporate management style through implementation of new ideas and business initiatives is offered. Additional information on various views on how managers can efficiently implement new ideas to further boost their corporations' operations and competitiveness is included.

'Every business leader, entrepreneur, innovator and marketer wants to know where customers are headed. The problem? The received wisdom on how to find out is wrong.' So states the back [...]

Introduction With the accelerating dynamics of competition the key to competitiveness no longer lies in employing strategies which have been successful in the past or in emulating strategies of successful [...]

The pursuit of innovation is popular, but success can be elusive. From companies to nonprofits to governments, everyone wants to be tagged as innovative! A good number of local governments [...]

Growing Importance of SME Innovation In recent times there has been a lot of research on the phenomenon of 'open innovation.' Open innovation is defined as '...the use of purposive [...]

Byline: Ann-Christine Diaz CREATIVITY AND Advertising Age's Production Company A-List honors companies that lead the way in compelling and groundbreaking storytelling. It celebrates established giants who make traditional cinema feel [...]

The brand/agency relationship can be a complicated thing. Mutual understanding, trust and a little deference have kept the ad industry's cogs turning for decades to create a vibrant and productive [...]

Erik Wahl is the founder of The Wahl Group, a San Diego-based consulting firm that specializes in helping organizations identify and implement breakthrough thinking to achieve extraordinary results. He is [...]

The effects of innovation, cost control, and product quality on competitive advantage of firms are presented.

ENTREPRENEURS ARE CREATIVE PEOPLE who follow passions and may toy with 101 ideas for a business before starting one. Then come the endless Things That Must Be Done: raising capital, […]

It's no secret that many brands are benefiting from moving work in-house--it cuts agency fees and allows clients to more efficiently combine creative and business talent under one roof, something [...]