Book Description

When writing this book I aim to accomplish several goals. First, I would like to show that building a cooperative environment for a diverse workforce is a crucial antecedent to any attempts at building innovativeness. Diversity expresses itself in various forms. It may be the fact that men and women may have different creative sensitivities (Chapter 11), or that the employees differ in their views on the importance of various components of the business model (Chapter 3), or that different employee groups or different companies employ different strategies with respect to innovation management (Chapter 7). Being aware of these sources of diversity may be of practical importance for thoughtful managers. Second, the heuristic methods described in Chapters 4, 10, and 11 are well suited for managerial practice, since they are the tools ready to be implemented in everyday work, when the need arises to stimulate employees’ innovativeness. Several hundred original examples provided in these chapters are meant to serve either as direct triggers of creativity (Appendix to Chapter 11) or potentially useful cases to enrich one’s thinking about their problems to be solved (examples of the TRIZ method in Appendix to Chapter 4 and examples of the SCAMPER method in Appendix to Chapter 10). Third, modeling innovation dynamics using game theory (Chapter 7) and quantifying within-organization diversity with methods that are borrowed from community ecology, open novel opportunities for researchers in the area of management (Chapter 3). The existence of team roles creates a natural organizational setting through which plurality of employee views on the main business model of the organization are expressed. Since each team role has a unique view on the importance of particular components of the business model, an informal but very dynamic diversity of business models co-existing in the organization arises. I adopt quantitative concepts and methods from ecology to show how the diversity of team-role views can be assessed. Furthermore, the same method can be used to capture the diversity of views on business models among individual employees, especially at managerial and executive level. In a turbulent business environment an organization’s flexibility may be improved by internal diversity of the ways its business model is implemented. Finally, several topics may be used in the educational context, with very low barriers to entry for the student users. Reciprocity as a mechanism promoting cooperation and building trust (Chapters 2 and 3) is, in my view, a fundamental concept when teaching about organizational behavior. Game theory is useful in strategic management. The heuristic methods mentioned above are key to implementing a very effective approach in creative thinking and innovation management courses.