Introduction
TECHSOL is a high-tech start-up company that does not have any recent experience in the market. Nevertheless, its CEO, Pedro Gonzalez, is aiming to launch a social media monitoring and analytics platform for businesses. This technology is rather innovative since it provides the opportunity to understand what customers say about brands online by collecting mentions from online sources. However, the success of this product requires some process innovations that make improvements possible, as well as the creation of new offerings. This report proposes a plan for managing creativity and innovation in TECHSOL to ensure that the company’s goals can be achieved. In particular, attention is paid to the importance of organizational climate, leadership, and team diversity. How TECHSOL manages climate is also discussed, and appropriate recommendations are made.
This topic is selected because many companies believe that success and productivity depend only on the accomplishment of business tasks. The influence of the characteristics of personnel and organizational climate is often underestimated. Thus, it is critical to emphasize their importance.
Selected Concepts
In order to improve innovation, business leaders should focus on developing the organizational climate to facilitate creativity. A company should be a place where people are encouraged to develop new ideas instead of being afraid to cope with changes. This goal can be reached through the implementation of several practices. Allocation of challenging but interesting tasks that require the skill of autonomy can be advantageous. Employees should be encouraged to share their ideas related to significant issues (Osterwalder & Pigneur 2010). Discussions and debate should be accepted in both formal and informal settings. In view of this, a sense of togetherness is important because it prevents the development of conflicts. A climate of trust and safety facilitates flexibility and risk-taking. It is vital for employees to understand the company’s mission so that they can identify problems that need to be solved and can overcome them creatively without being distracted by decisions that are not vital for the organization.
Leadership is critical for the management of innovation because those who hold these positions set the tone for the rest of the workforce. They not only provide their own example that can be followed in practice, but they can also standardize and rationalize all activities to minimalize associated risks (Arnold, Melroy & Smith 2015). Effective leaders set both long-term and short-term goals, which allow employees to understand what they are aiming to achieve and to establish trustful relationships with their workers, making certain that no significant information will be concealed. They also emphasize their future vision and explain that those practices that are common and comfortable are not always the best for the business. They develop aspirational goals and show their workers the path they should follow. In addition, leaders ask questions and develop tasks that make employees think creatively instead of keeping to the standard set rules.
Finally, team diversity is critical for the management of an innovative and creative environment. For employees to develop new ideas, it is more productive to ensure they have different views on objects or concepts. People’s background and previous knowledge affect their perception, while skills diversity provides them with an opportunity to find numerous solutions to a particular problem. Professionals who think alike usually come up with similar ideas and, thus, prevent them from being able to innovate. However, diverse views lead to debate and ensure the possibility of reaching unexpected outcomes. The difference in thoughts and actions make employees face challenges in finding a single solution differently, which is beneficial for innovation.
Obviously, these three elements can benefit TECHSOL due to their effects on creativeness and innovation. However, it seems to be more beneficial for the company to focus on leadership and team diversity because they directly influence organizational climate. As TECHSOL is a new organization, its leaders should develop the working process so that it facilitates innovation constantly. A range of tools, with both their positive and negative influences on innovation, should be considered (see Fig. 1):
Trust and openness
Strengths: Employees are not afraid to share their ideas even if they seem to be extremely risky. They are able to contact leaders easily and do not try to avoid misunderstanding or punishment. Weaknesses: Employees may develop over-friendly relationships with leaders and focus on the development of innovations that are not significant or necessary.
Challenge and involvement
Strengths: Challenging tasks facilitate creative thinking and make workers develop original decisions while cooperating. Weaknesses: The pressure of complexity can lead to burnout and depression. It may be difficult to emphasize individual achievements while working as a team.
Support and space for ideas
Strengths: Employees have access to assistance when needed and develop innovative ideas. Weaknesses: Inability to work in a stressful environment occurs.
Conflict and debate
Strengths: Diverse ideas blend and form unique solutions. Weaknesses: Possibility of interpersonal conflicts and misunderstanding increases.
Risk-taking
Strengths: Employees realize the influence of their actions and make risky but beneficial decisions. Weaknesses: There is a high possibility of failure.
Freedom
Strengths: There are no frameworks that limit creativeness. Weaknesses: Lack of cooperation may be observed.
Playfulness and humour
Strengths: Working environment and employee relationships improve. Weaknesses: Friendly but unprofessional relationships develop (Baldonado 2016).
Concept Application
TECHSOL is a company that operates in the sphere of high-tech. This field is relatively new and is continually developing, which presupposes the existence of numerous opportunities for a company to become successful. Even though many innovative products have already been created, there is no limit to improvement. Businesses operating over a variety of spheres have started using technology because it provides them with an opportunity to streamline their business and contact clients more easily (Tidd & Bessant 2014). Realizing this fact, TECHSOL has developed a product that allows companies to understand how customers talk about their brands online. This offering is expected to attract potential clients because businesses can evaluate their performance and consider what kinds of changes are needed to improve their business services. The fact that millions of online sources are used to collect information is beneficial because it makes the product more valuable and increases the quality of the data. Since the analysis is presented in a simple format, TECHSOL’s clients are not likely to face any issues associated with the use of the platform.
The CEO of the company emphasizes that it is critical for TECHSOL to ensure that the initial product can be developed and improved through the innovation process. Moreover, the possibility of the creation of new offerings is underlined. In view of this, the organization should pay close attention to the utilization of those tools that allow the building of an innovative climate. Various aspects should be managed by TECHSOL because each of them has a significant influence on the environment.
Trust and openness can be managed through the establishment of regular meetings, where all employees are encouraged to share their ideas. They should not be harshly criticized, but feedback, with the justification of the outcome, is required (Mineo 2014). TECHSOL can encourage its employees to spend free time together since it makes them feel united and open to discussion. Challenging tasks that require innovative ideas and cannot be solved in one step should be offered because they improve overall performance and competitiveness. They can be associated with the creation of new products that are unique to the market (Trott 2013). In order to implement involvement, leaders should let employees acknowledge the company’s goals and objectives so that they can consider them when developing new products.
Support and space for ideas can be ensured if TECHSOL’s workers have an opportunity to work both in teams and independently. As a result, employees manage to emphasize their individual achievements but also obtain assistance when needed. It is possible to benefit from conflict and debate because this process can result in the selection of the best ideas and solutions. TECHSOL should encourage teams to discuss their work and present their achievements during meetings. Taking risks, TECHSOL’s employees can become more conscious of the outcomes of their decisions, which will make them focus only on the best ideas. Individual and group responsibility for tasks is required to implement this element. Employees should be free to do everything they want until it benefits the company. Set standards should not limit creativeness. Playfulness and humour can be implemented in the workplace to stimulate innovation and creative thinking. It is possible to provide employees with games for use in their free time to reach this goal.
Conclusions and Recommendations
In conclusion, it can be seen that it is vital for TECHSOL to manage creativity and innovation processes because it is these that will ensure the company’s ability to compete and develop unique products that will appeal to clients. To reach this goal, the company should consider the ways its leadership, team diversity, and organizational climate affect performance. It is important to acknowledge that each of these elements is significant for success. Even if only one of them is overlooked, it is impossible to reach the optimal benefits. Developing a climate of innovativeness, TECHSOL can potentially become one of the leaders of the high-tech industry because it values unique ideas. Realizing how this environment can be achieved, leaders obtain an opportunity to implement required changes appropriately. In particular, the CEO of TECHSOL should consider the following recommendations:
- Development of challenging but interesting tasks for the employees, aligning them with both short-term and long-term organizational goals;
- Increased interaction of personnel in both formal and informal settings to improve relationships;
- Organization of regular meetings for discussions;
- Provision of tasks for both individual and group work;
- Creation of diverse teams, ensuring that people with different background and skills work together;
- Ensuring that all employees realize the overall business goal of the organization;
- Practice of both individual and group responsibility;
- Availability of opportunities for playfulness and humour.
Successful organizational leaders stimulate innovation and creative thinking in their employees. They consider all opportunities for a company to perform but select only the most beneficial ones. The CEO should realize that tools for improvement can be extremely advantageous, but, at the same time, their implementation can also be associated with some risks. Employees are also not always willing to change their preferred operations to new ones. However, appropriate justification is likely to alter their decision. This current report assesses the range of strengths and weaknesses of several practices that are needed for the management of innovation. They are presented for the CEO of TECHSOL to choose those that seem to be the most beneficial for the company.
Reference List
Arnold, A, Melroy, S & Smith, J 2015, ‘The management of leadership and innovation’, International Journal of Management Excellence, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 549-555.
Baldonado, A 2016, ‘Workplace fun: learning from Google, Southwest Airlines, and Facebook’, Journal of Business and Human Resource Management, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 1-3.
Mineo, D 2014, ‘The importance of trust in leadership’, Research Management Review, vol. 20, no 1, pp. 1-6.
Osterwalder, A & Pigneur, Y 2010, Business model generation, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY.
Tidd, J & Bessant, J 2014, Strategic innovation management, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY.
Trott, P 2013, Innovation management and new product development HBR, Pearson, Boston, MA.