Bessant John. High Involvement Innovation. Building and Sustaining Competitive Advantages Through Continuous Change
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220 HIGH-INVOLVEMENT INNOVATION
networks. Experience suggests that many of the basic principles in our model, and
suitably adapted and configured enabling mechanisms, can be applied.
11.5 Challenge 4. Focus of Innovation
Much of the early reported experience of high-involvement innovation was from
manufacturing, and within that sector from what were mainly ‘shop floor’ activi-
ties. There has been an expansion of effort in other areas, recognizing the ubiquitous
demand for innovation across all kinds of organizations and also the generic poten-
tial of high-involvement innovation. For example, much work has been carried
out in service sectors, looking at how principles of high-involvement innovation
can be applied even where the ‘product’ is intangible (Owen and Morgan 2000).
Although R&D has traditionally been the province of innovation specialists, there
is growing recognition that many of the tools and disciplines we associate with
enabling higher involvement can usefully be applied in a broader context (Endres
1997; Dilani and Pearson 2000).
Whilst much early work was focused on stabilizing and improving the processes
within organizations to create and deliver products and services to satisfy existing
customers, an increasing amount of emphasis has been given to looking at the
new product/service creation process as a target for high-involvement innovation
(Caffyn 1998; Cooper 2003). And, although the driver for innovation has always
been strong in businesses that compete directly for customers, the scope for
improvements in non-profit and public-service activities—such as health care,
education, police work, etc.—is just as high and therefore the potential application
of high-involvement principles is just as great (Kaplinsky et al. 1995).
So there is still considerable scope for elaborating the basic model of high-
involvement innovation and particularly for looking at ways in which enabling
mechanisms can be developed and configured to suit particular local conditions
and sector contingencies.
Beyond this there is clearly a need to explore further and emerging targets
for innovation. Much high-involvement innovation has been hitherto concerned
with meeting the challenges of becoming and remaining competitive—dealing
with issues like cost reduction, quality enhancement, waste elimination, time com-
pression, etc. But new drivers are emerging, which will also represent important
targets for future innovation and require adaptation and configurations of mech-
anisms and r esources to enable high-involvement innovation. One clear example
is the growing concern with the sustainability agenda, with organizations and
organizational networks trying to develop ‘greener’ approaches to what they offer
and how they deliver it.
11.6 Challenge 5. Inter-Cultural Learning
High-involvement innovation is not a new concept, and it is one that relates to
a basic human capability—to find and solve problems creatively. Whilst there
have been particular periods when it h as been exploited to good effect and
where a range of enabling resources—tools, techniques, structures, etc.—have
emerged, there is no particular geographical source for it. The case of Japan is
FURTHER CHALLENGES 221
often cited, but although post-war conditions were favourable for its development
and diffusion there, the ‘Japanese model’ derived from experience in the USA and
was transferred via programmes to help economic reconstruction. (In turn some
of the American model drew on earlier European ideas.)
Development in Japan tended to overshadow experience being accumulated
elsewhere—for example the strong socio-technical and group work tradition
in Scandinavia and various activities within the ‘humanization of work’ pro-
grammes in Germany. In fact, what we have is a global laboratory, in which
many different countries are the sites of experiments and experiences in putting
high-involvement innovation in place (Boer et al. 1999; Gertsen 2000; De Jager et al.
2002; Smeds 2002).
Whilst we should be very clear that simply copying what works in one country
is a recipe for failure, such diversity offers enormous learning opportunities.
Mimicking the quality-circles approach of Japan led many American and European
firms into difficulties during the 1970s, because the idea was transplanted with
no thought for the underlying cultural context—strong group-work norms etc.
But taking the basic idea and adapting it to suit local circumstances in various
problem-solving teams, workgroups etc. has proved enormously valuable.
What is needed are mechanisms to capture and share country-specific experi-
ences and tailor and adapt ideas emerging from them to suit different national
cultural contingencies. Such international networking is an analogue of the firm-
level groupings where traction is gained on the journey towards high-involvement
innovation through the inter-change of experience, ideas and enablers.
11.7 Conclusions
In a book that has the idea of continuous innovation at its heart it becomes difficult
to draw a line and make some form of closure. This chapter has tried to identify
where and how the high-involvement innovation field is moving and some of the
emerging and challenging directions for the future.
Innovation is, as we noted at the start of this book, not a luxury or optional
item on an organization’s agenda, but a survival imperative. Put simply, without
continuous and well-directed change, the prospects of being able to maintain
a position, never mind grow, in an increasingly hostile environment are not
promising. So every organization needs to give this topic a high priority—and, to
judge from the increasing use of the word in mission statements, annual reports
and other public announcements, this is the case for many of them. The question
is whether o r not they can deliver on the e xpressed commitment to innovation.
We can think, a little fancifully, in terms of organizations having a kind of
‘IQ’—an ‘innovation quotient’. Have they got sufficient innovation capacity to
meet the challenges they are facing? This IQ is a complex mixture of an all-round
capability, targeted at innovation in product/service offerings, processes that
deliver those, the contexts into which they place their offerings and the overall
ways in which they frame what they do. It also n eeds to take account of short-term
‘steady state’, ‘do what we do better’ innovation and longer-term, ‘breakthrough’,
‘do different’ innovation, and to strike an effective balance between the two.
Above all, it depends on the ability to organize and manage the process of
222 HIGH-INVOLVEMENT INNOVATION
translating often weak signals about possible changes into successfully adopted
and implemented innovations.
Like all open-ended problems, this one has no single ‘right’ answer, but rather
a set of potential and complementary solutions. Much undoubtedly depends
on things like strategic targeting of innovation, energizing leadership, access to
adequate resources, which fuel the knowledge base for innovation, development
and maintenance of different competencie s, etc. ‘High involvement’ in this context
is a significant theme, in the sense that innovation is a co-operative, knowledge-
based process. Organizations need to learn to work across organizational and
knowledge boundaries, to develop and manage networks and partnerships beyond
their own confines, to link different perspectives on needs and means, to foster
communities of practice, and so on. These themes form part of the emerging and
significant agenda for research and experimental practice around innovation in
the 21st century.
One component of this compound prescription is the ability to mobilize and
involve more people in the process. Since every human being is capable of creative
behaviour, at a m inimum the IQ of an organization is likely to be enhanced by the
sheer volume of effort if attempts are made to bring more people into the process.
But the potential goes much deeper—innovation is particularly about creative and
new combinations of needs and means and the development of those combinations
into effective and implemented solutions. Bringing different knowledge sets to
bear (including formal qualifications, personal and professional experience, tacit
knowledge, emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills) offers much greater
traction on the innovation problem. The whole can be significantly greater than
the sum of its parts, and in surprising and exciting ways.
Enabling this to happen—and, more importantly, to happen regularly such that
it represents the ‘normal’ pattern of behaviour in the organization—is not easy.
This book sets out a crude road map for the journey towards such a goal—and,
even though the map is still only a basic sketch, it does indicate that the road is less
a four-lane highway than a relatively lightly trodden path. Whether organizations
decide to embark on the journey or not is a matter of choice, but, with the
destination being something that can make a significant contribution to survival
and growth in an increasingly hostile environment, it may well be worth while
taking a few steps in that direction.
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Appendix
DETAILS ON
THE HIGH-INVOLVEMENT
INNOVATION REFERENCE MODEL
A.1 Research Base and Problem Statement
A key theme in the literature surrounding employee involvement in innovation is
the difficulty of translating the simple concept into a sustainable set of organiza-
tional practices. Case studies and interviews with practitioners regularly highlight
the difficulties in implementation and there are a number of reports of failures in
programmes aimed at engendering high levels of employee involvement in what
is often termed ‘continuous improvement’ (CI). The problem of implementation is
not simple and the solutions clearly involve more than simple inputs of training
or the application of proven tools and techniques.
Concern with these problems of implementation led to the establishment of a
major research programme in the UK in the 1990s. The CIRCA programme has
been working with a range of industrial organizations over a sustained period in
what might be termed ‘action research’, aimed at understanding the problems in
establishing and sustaining CI and in developing a methodology to support this.
A.2 Key Findings
ThemainconclusionfromtheCIRCAresearchisthatCIcanbestbeunderstood
and managed if it is seen as being about behavioural routines in the organization.
Introducing and sustaining CI is about creating and embedding a set of routines
around systematic, focused problem finding and solving, and doing so with
a wide group of people rather than just within the context of R&D or other
specialist groups.
Capability—such as high-involvement innovation—can be seen as a hierarchi-
cal concept, made up of abilities, which in turn depend upon behavioural routines.
For example, a virtuoso musician has the overall capability o f entertaining and
226 HIGH-INVOLVEMENT INNOVATION
captivating an audience. This derives from a set o f constituent abilities—for
example, the ability to play the instrument technically, to interpret compositions
in an emotionally rich way, to ‘read’ the audience and react to their responses,
to entertain through gestures and on-stage behaviour, etc. Below this are some
basic (but nonetheless learned) behaviours that function in relatively autonomous
fashion—reading the notes on the page, making the mechanical movements to
play the instrument, getting dressed for and appearing on time for the concert,
etc. An important mechanism whereby these behaviours become automatic is that
of practice, rehearsing every day until they become second nature.
Table A.1 lists the key abilities (sets of behavioural routines) associated with CI
and their constituent behaviours.
A.3 Towards a ‘Reference Model’ for Continuous Improvement
Our case-study research indicated that different firms had developed these abilities
to a greater or lesser e xtent, and this development of practice had some bearing on
the likely performance improvements that t hey could expect. From this experience
it seems that the development of CI is essentially an evolutionary process involving
gradual learning and embedding of an increasing number of behavioural abilities.
This led us to postulate a staged development model which identifies particular
levels of evolution o f these behaviours and tries to connect them with likely
performance impacts. These levels are:
Level 1. Pre-CI (‘natural’ or background improvement, ad hoc and short-term)
Level 2. Structured CI (formal attempts to create and sustain CI)
Level 3. Goal-oriented CI (CI directed at company goals and objectives)
Level 4. Proactive CI (CI largely self-driven by individuals and groups)
Level 5. CI capability (CI is the dominant culture—‘the way we do things around
here’)
Organizations move through the levels as the CI behaviours (identified in
Tables A.3 to A.10) are adopted and reinforced, and as the form a behaviour
takes becomes more highly evolved. For example, at Levels 2 and 3 staff may
work effectively at solving problems allocated to them by management, but at
Level 4 employees would take responsibility for discovering and prioritizing, as
well as solving, problems for themselves. The model is evolutionary, as opposed
to additive—all the key behaviours would be present at Level 2, although in a
relatively immature form; for a firm to advance to a higher level the behaviours
need to evolve further.
Classifying CI evolution in these terms can help firms understand where they
stand in r elation to other companies and how they can develop a plan to expand
their own CI abilities. Table A.2 provides an overview of the expected patterns at
each stage in the model.
It is important to recognize that these represent generic ‘archetypes’. Each
organization’s e xperience will be specific to it, but its development of CI capability
will have to pass through these common stages. Progression from one stage
to the next involves both maturing of particular routines (and their constituent
behaviours) and also adding new routines to the core set.
APPENDIX 227
TABLE A.1 The key abilities associated with CI.
Ability Constituent behaviours
‘Understanding CI’—the ability to
articulate the basic values of CI
People at all levels demonstrate a shared belief in the
value of small steps and that everyone can
contribute, by themselves being actively involved in
making and recognizing incremental improvements
When something goes wrong, the natural reaction of
people at all levels is to look for reasons why etc.,
rather than to blame individual(s)
‘Getting the CI habit’—the ability to
generate sustained involvement in CI
People make use of some formal problem finding and
solving cycle
People use appropriate tools and techniques to
support CI
People use measurement to shape the improvement
process
People (as individuals and/or groups) initiate and
carry through CI activities—they participate in the
process
Closing the loop—ideas are responded to in a clearly
defined and timely fashion, either implemented or
otherwise dealt with
‘Focusing CI’—the ability to link CI
activities to the strategic goals of the
company
Individuals and groups use the organization’s
strategic goals and objectives to focus and prioritize
improvements
Everyone understands (i.e. is able to explain) what the
company’s or department’s strategy, goals and
objectives are
Individuals and groups (e.g. departments, CI teams)
assess their proposed changes (before embarking on
initial investigation and before implementing a
solution) against departmental or company
objectives to ensure that they are consistent
with them
Individuals and groups monitor/measure the results
of their improvement activity and the impact it has
on strategic or departmental objectives
CI activities are an integral part of the individual or
group’s work, not a parallel activity
‘Leading CI’—the ability to lead, direct
and support the creation and
sustaining of CI behaviours
Managers support the CI process through allocation
of time, money, space and other resources
Managers recognize in formal (but not necessarily
financial) ways the contribution of employees to CI
Managers lead by example, becoming actively
involved in design and implementation of CI
Managers support experiment by not punishing
mistakes but by encouraging learning from them
‘Aligning CI’—the ability to create
consistency between CI values and
behaviour and the organizational
context (structures, procedures, etc.)
Ongoing assessment ensures that the organization’s
structure and infrastructure and the CI system
consistently support and reinforce each other
The individual/group responsible for designing the
CI system designs it to fit within the current
structure and infrastructure
(continued overleaf )
228 HIGH-INVOLVEMENT INNOVATION
TABLE A.1 (continued)
Ability Constituent behaviours
Individuals with responsibility for particular
company processes/systems hold ongoing reviews
to assess whether these processes/systems and the
CI system remain compatible
People with responsibility for the CI system ensure
that, when a major organizational change is
planned, its potential impact on the CI system is
assessed and adjustments are made as necessary
‘Shared problem solving’—the ability to
move CI activity across organizational
boundaries
People co-operate across internal divisions (e.g.
cross-functional groups) in CI as well as working in
their own areas
People understand and share a holistic view (process
understanding and ownership)
People are oriented towards internal and external
customers in their CI activity
Specific CI projects with outside agencies—customers,
suppliers, etc.—are taking place
Relevant CI activities involve representatives from
different organizational levels
‘Continuous improvement of
continuous improvement’—the
ability to strategically manage the
development of CI
The CI system is continually monitored and
developed; a designated individual or group
monitors the CI system and measures the incidence
(i.e. frequency and location) of CI activity and the
results of CI activity
There is a cyclical planning process whereby the CI
system is regularly reviewed and, if necessary,
amended (single-loop learning)
There is periodic review of the CI system in relation to
the organization as a whole, which may lead to a
major regeneration (double-loop learning)
Senior management make available sufficient
resources (time, money, personnel) to support the
ongoing development of the CI system
‘The learning organization’—generating
the ability to enable learning to take
place and be captured at all levels
People learn from their experiences, both positive and
negative
Individuals seek out opportunities for
learning/personal development (e.g. actively
experiment, set their own learning objectives)
Individuals and groups at all levels share (make
available) their learning from all work experiences
The organization articulates and consolidates
(captures and shares) the learning of individuals
and groups
Managers accept and, where necessary, act on all the
learning that takes place
People and teams ensure that their learning is
captured by making use of the mechanisms
provided for doing so
Designated individual(s) use organizational
mechanisms to deploy the learning that is captured
across the organization
APPENDIX 229
TABLE A.2 Stages in the evolution of CI.
CI level Characteristic behaviour patterns
Level 1—Pre-CI
Interest in the concept has been
triggered—by a crisis, by
attendance at a seminar, by a
visit to another organization,
etc.—but implementation is on
an ad hoc basis
Problems are solved randomly
No formal efforts or structure for improving the
organization
Occasional bursts of improvement punctuated by
inactivity and non-participation
Solutions tend to realize short-term benefits
No strategic impact on human resources, finance or
other measurable targets
Staff and management are unaware of CI as a process
Level 2—Structured CI
There is formal commitment to
building a system that will
develop CI across the
organization
CI or an equivalent organization improvement
initiative has been introduced
Staff use structured problem-solving processes
A high proportion of staff participate in CI activities
Staff has been trained in basic CI tools
Structured idea-management system is in place
Recognition system has been introduced
CI activities have not been integrated into day-to-day
operations
Level 3—Goal-Oriented CI
There is a commitment to linking
CI behaviour, established at
‘local’ level, to the wider
strategic concerns of the
organization
All the above plus:
Formal deployment of strategic goals
Monitoring and measuring of CI against these goals
CI activities are part of main business activities
Focusincludescross-boundaryandeven
cross-enterprise problem solving
Level 4—Proactive CI
There is an attempt to devolve
autonomy and to empower
individuals and groups to
manage and direct their own
processes
All the above plus:
CI responsibilities devolved to problem-solving unit
High levels of experimentation
Level 5—Full CI Capability
Approximates to a model
‘learning organization’
All the above plus:
Extensive and widely distributed learning behaviour
Systematic finding and solving problems and capture
and sharing of learning
Widespread, autonomous but controlled
experimentation
A.4 Detailed Behaviour/Capability Analysis
The underpinning behaviours contributing to the key abilities and an indication
of differentiating levels of performance are given in Tables A.3 to A.10.
Key Ability 1. Understanding CI
This cluster of behaviours (Table A.3) refers to how well the organization under-
stands and shares the underlying values and beliefs about CI.