Innovation Europe > News > Innovation EU Vol2-1 > Collaborative management to beat the crisis

Innovative performance and evaluation are extensively reported in various EU and other institutional documents, which provide several analyses of international examples. The third edition of the Oslo Manual has included considerations about other types of innovation besides product and process, namely marketing and organisational innovation. Nevertheless, this last definition (the implementation of a new organisational method in the organisation’s business practices, workplace organisation or external relations) is still far from allowing a quantitative analysis of data, thus making it difficult to gain further insights leading to improved success rates.

One of the reasons seems to be the wide spectrum of what might be designated as an example of “organisational innovation”. Also, creativity appears connected with arts or creative industries, namely with design, or other indexes, as in the works of researchers like Richard Florida, with the quality of the educational system, the desire of people to express themselves (artistically), or the openness of a society towards different countries and cultures. Therefore, measures have to rely on the so-called proxy indicators, which only indirectly measure creativity, thereby creating possible errors in measuring “true” performance.

The designation of 2009 as the European Year of Creativity and Innovation seems to have contributed to a wider perception of innovation. The 2009 Scoreboard, for example, specifies as to the “neglected indicators” that the activities of organisations that innovate without performing R&D are of interest to policy. Other methods of innovating include technology adoption, incremental changes, imitation, and combining existing knowledge in new ways. With the possible exception of technology adoption, all of these methods require creative effort and collaborative managementon the part of the organisation and employees and consequently will develop the organisation’s in-house innovative capabilities. These capabilities are likely to lead to productivity improvements, improved competitiveness, and to new or improved products and processes that could have wider impacts on the economy.

As present policies are based mainly on funding strategies, which cannot cope well with the financial crisis, the EU overall Lisbon Strategy post-2010, and those of other countries, are changing from technology-based priorities to encompass other priorities, especially service innovation and workforce development.

The case of Ireland reflects this tendency, especially with respect to workforce development. Ireland has created a Ä6m fund to support workplace innovation, in order to develop the role of employee participation and workplace partnership in the SMEs. To them, the term “workplace innovation” and collaborative management means the adoption of new workplace practices, structures and relationships, exactly as we designate “corporate” or “organisational” creativity and innovation.

It follows that a new approach to innovation is needed and should include creativity and innovation together and connected with business orientation, as in the Irish example, separating it from artistic, educational or social tolerance aspects of creativity. Nevertheless, an interaction between art and business, as a means to fulfil the integration of education, technology, research, business, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, can be made. A new culture of entrepreneurial education and innovation is needed and art can play an important role in facilitating creativity and innovation. As in the words of Koïtchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, creativity, imagination and the ability to adapt competencies which are developed through arts education are as important as the technological and scientific skills.

The EU and countries like Israel are changing priorities and including services and other non-high-technological activities in innovation policies and financing. The US and Japan are losing much of their workforce capability due to cost-reduction policies and lack of organisational commitment of employees. This means that the priority given to R&D in state institutions or big company’s laboratories may be shared with innovation policies devoted to SMEs and service companies. If this new definition is made, then, innovation shall be understood as organisational, besides process and product.

Instead of trying to define organisational innovation as changes in the structure of the organisation, which do not allow for quantitative and return on investment analysis, the concept must be seen as the existence of a system devoted to channel individual and team creativity into profitable corporate innovation i.e. collaborative management. Here, organisational or corporate innovation, and organisational or corporate creativity, must be seen as synonyms.

Even though future European innovation policies will favour the service sector and the SMEs, its application to reality seems to be a challenge. Involving the personnel in profitable innovation projects requires the need for a relationship of trust between management and employees, collaborative management. Not the trust and the loyalty expected in pre-technological times, when the company provided protection and care while “trusting” the employees to provide loyalty and engagement, but, at least, the trust that is expected from a value proposition that is authentic and gets them excited in the immediate task. Collaborative management will be, in many cases, the only possible solution to the present crisis in order to continue innovating.

The Portuguese Association for Creativity and Innovation (APGICO) is a partner of the European Association of Creativity & Innovation (EACI) for ECCI XII