Innovation and Productivity Grand Challenge

1. Innovation and Productivity Grand Challenge AIM Conference Zurich September 2008 www.ipgc.ac.uk

2. Establishing the Grand Challenges? • The UK spends £21bn annually in creating new knowledge via the science system in universities, research institutes and companies. • How do we extract greatest benefit from this investment? (Social and economic impact). • The GCs were seen as significant issues to be solved which, once solved, would have major impact. www.ipgc.ac.uk

3. The Grand Challenge programme (first release) • In 2006 four programmes were released • with funding = £14M. • The four programmes were: • Knowledge &Information Management Through Life. • Innovation and Productivity. • Micro-manufacturing. • Regenerative Medicine. www.ipgc.ac.uk

4. The Innovation and Productivity Grand Challenge Overall objectives: To obtain better ways of organising and managing innovation. Funding £3.4M (EPSRC and ESRC) + £2.3M from the IMRCs www.ipgc.ac.uk

5. Who are the players? www.ipgc.ac.uk

6. Innovation and Productivity Grand Challenge • The four work packages: • To develop new models of university/business collaboration. • To investigate how industry takes up new ideas. • To investigate the evolution and productivity of the science • base in the UK. • To investigate new organisational and internet • enabled collaboration schemes www.ipgc.ac.uk

7. Advisory board • Richard Lambert, Director General CBI • Ms Caroline Barr, Science and Industry Team, HM Treasury • Mr Gareth Buchanan, Associate Programme Manager, Control and Robotics Portfolio, EPSRC • Dr Peter Davies CBE, Chief Executive, PERA International • Professor Richard LesterDirector MIT Industrial Performance Center • Professor Jeremy Myerson, Professor of Design Studies, Royal College of Art • Mr Dave Sands, Shell Global Solutions • Dr Malcolm Skingle, Director of European Academic Liaison, GlaxoSmithKline • Professor Sir John Taylor www.ipgc.ac.uk

8. Work package 4 Loughborough and Liverpool Objectives: To develop and deploy the talents in the UK research base. To develop appropriate technical collaboration infrastructures. To develop new forms of dissemination and e-Business links. To find ways of reducing organisation resistance to innovation. Loughborough Researchers Two research fellows: Markus Perkmann and Sue Morton. Two research students: Abeer Pharaon and John Withers www.ipgc.ac.uk

9. I will describe the work of Sue Morton and Abeer Pharaon They are working closely with two companies: Plant A car part supplier, Birmingham. Engineered product approx 500 employees Very successful plant exemplar of lean techniques, high degree of monitoring, cell based systems, continued profit growth, open plan offices, very open culture. Plant B Pharmaceuticals Jordan. About 2000 employees. Large functionally organised company, relatively poor performance, Beauracratic controls. www.ipgc.ac.uk

10. What the company wants appears to be more incremental innovation. All employees feeling empowered to come up with and develop their ideas. People’s natural creativity to be applied in the work place in a spontaneous and continuous manner. All the employees to feel they are in a supportive and encouraging culture of innovation. Neither firm is greatly interested in radical innovation. Radical Innovation tends to be handled in other parts of the company. www.ipgc.ac.uk

11. Research steps • Exploratory interviews with all employees • Profiling: • Organizational culture • Organizational climate • Team climate • Situational & leadership • Interviews & questionnaires with all personnel • Development of a framework for organisation improvement. • Organisation changes and improved training. • Measurement of innovation in company from existing lean measures, questionnaires and formal suggestion scheme. www.ipgc.ac.uk

12. Overcoming resistance to innovation and productivity improvement Variables Beliefs Structure – team/flat etc History/legacy Values of org’n/team Rewards/Measures Variables Culture Rewards Beliefs Pressure Size Culture Situation Strength Freedom to innovate A culture for innovation Innovation Other variables Source of innovation Org’n/chain/segment Implementation ability Variables Personal history Safety Ability/knowledge of person. Value of innovation to person Motivation & psychometric profile Communication patterns A wish to innovate Personal aspects www.ipgc.ac.uk

13. Culture Measurement • Shared perceptions of organisational policies, practices & procedures – formal & informal, multiple climates thought to exist in org’ns [Reichers & Schneider, 1990] • Individual descriptions of the social setting/context of which the person is part, individuals’ descriptions neither specified nor constrained by the climate construct [Rousseau, 1988] • KEYS: Assessing the climate for creativity [Amabile et al. 1995,1999] – measure of elements in the work environment that can have an impact on creativity www.ipgc.ac.uk

14. KEYS results Results overall plant A www.ipgc.ac.uk

15. KEYS elements (78 items) 8 work environment scales (66 items) 6 stimulants/2 obstacles to creativity 12 outcome/criterion scales (12 items) creativity and productivity in the work • Freedom (4) • Challenging work (5) • Sufficient resources (6) • Supervisory encouragement (11) • Work group support (8) • Organisational encouragement (15) • Organisational impediments (12) • Workload pressure (5) • Creativity (6) • Productivity (6) Plus 3 additional checklist questions (%age of total): • Most important stimulant/obstacle to creativity • Suggestion for improving the environment www.ipgc.ac.uk

16. Early measurements of company using the KEYS tool Keys Tool applied to plant B www.ipgc.ac.uk

17. Group 5 www.ipgc.ac.uk

18. Team Climate Inventory Team climate • Shared perceptions of organisational policies, practices & procedures – formal & informal, multiple climates thought to exist in org’ns [Reichers & Schneider, 1990] • Individual descriptions of the social setting/context of which the person is part, individuals’ descriptions neither specified nor constrained by the climate construct [Rousseau, 1988] • Effective teamworking skills need an atmosphere or climate within the team that will facilitate efficient performance • Climate refers to the manner of working together that the team has evolved Team Climate Inventory (TCI) • Multidimensional measure of work group climate • Based on the four factor theory of climate – team vision, participative safety, task orientation, support for innovation – plus social desirability www.ipgc.ac.uk

19. Plant (A) TCI Climate aspect appears sound but need to keep monitoring and evaluating team procedures Room for improvement on climate aspect. High utility for some types of team building intervention Demonstrable need for structured and intensive intervention to redress this climate aspect. Very high utility for specific team building interventions 8th sten or over 4th – 7th sten below 4th sten www.ipgc.ac.uk

20. Team Climate Inventory • Social aspect - team members claim: • to rarely feel tense with each other • there is harmony in interpersonal relations Task aspect – team members: • claim the team functions well • claim the team achieves most targets with relative ease • believe the team to be one of the better in its field NB there may be some inaccuracies over reported social climate to portray the team favourably www.ipgc.ac.uk

21. Plant A overall culture www.ipgc.ac.uk

22. Differing perspectives www.ipgc.ac.uk

23. Consensus Process: feedback/discussion workshop small group comparative analysis small group feedback large group comparative analysis Issues: General wish to improve team-working “consensus” majority/mgt slanted different areas/levels/factions of org’n have different views But, useful: raised awareness  ways forward www.ipgc.ac.uk

24. What seems to be having effect • Plant A • Communication and empowerment. • Extensive training programme for managers to enable empowerment – • adjusted to meet each individual need. • 3. Employee involvement meetings. • 4. Direct attention to KEYs headings. • 5. Slight move away from Lean to Cell based systems with less • emphasis on full utilisation and more time availability. • Ideas recording system- no rewards. • Limited and controlled suggestion scheme. • Plant B • Concentration on small area only –Quality department. • Framing in terms of religious values. • Extensive training of managers. • Otherwise same issues as Plant A. www.ipgc.ac.uk

25. Plant A Employee Surveys 2003 2007 www.ipgc.ac.uk

26. Next steps • Further analysis: • KEYS reports • TCI data • Dissemination/discussion workshops • Interviews/surveys? • Collate results & develop framework. • Further develop the training programme for the company. www.ipgc.ac.uk

27. Grand Challenge – reflections on operation Grand vision Individual / institutional objectives Accountability for use of public funds Team building & Collaboration Quantitative research methods Qualitative Research methods www.ipgc.ac.uk