Assignment 1

Creating A Culture of Innovation

BUS302
 Creating a Culture of Innovation

For any technology company, innovation is one of the most important ingredients to

its success. In the modern world, innovation is a norm and any firm have to adjust

accordingly if it is to secure a competitive edge. Innovation is, however, only possible when

an innovative culture is in place. It is prudent to understand that an innovative culture starts

with individual employees before it is noticeable on the organizational level. As such, in my

technology company, Monrow. I will recruit and work with employees with ideal

characteristics and leadership qualities in line with the demands of an innovation culture.

Characteristics of People Suitable for Monrow

For Monrow to instill an innovative culture, it should hire creative and confident

employees. According to Wang, Fang, Qureshi and Janssen (2015), creativity and confidence

employees can remain positive and believe in their ability to succeed even when faced with

adversity. Even better, such individuals see opportunities even in challenging situations, and

do not hesitate to make the necessary moves. Therefore, creativity and confidence are

essential traits to have, especially in innovation, since innovative ideas mostly challenge the

status quo.

Risk Takers and Risk Tolerance

An innovative employee should have high-risk tolerance and management skills. For

innovative ideas to come into fruition, employees should be courageous and bereft of fear in

the formative and actualization stages (Li & Hsu, 2016). An employee who has a high

tolerance to risk does not fear the potential failure associated with risks. The employee is

aware of the possibility of failure and strategically approaches risks in attempt to avoid or at

least minimize the likelihood of failure or unintended outcomes. That is why Monrow needs

to work with such people.

An Active Player in Team Building and Networking

Innovation, in any organization, is usually not the work of only one employee. Li &

Hsu (2016) argue that successful innovations usually come about as a result of teamwork and

spirit. An employee should, therefore, be an active team player so that all employees can

effectively leverage the strengths of one another. Similarly, when an idea originates from

other members of the team or organization, an employee should be available to offer support,

feedback or even constructive criticism. Monrow, thus, need such bold individuals with the

capacity of upholding the spirit of teamwork.

Emotional Stability

For innovation to thrive in Monrow, employees should boast emotional stability,

especially when facing new ideas and events. Emotional stability refers to the ability of an

employee to maintain stable emotions and not overreact to situations or new

ideas (Altındağ & Kösedağı, 2015). Instead, they should look at them objectively and

reasonably while always maintaining positiveness. That is why Monrow needs people who

emotionally stable.

The Leadership Qualities Monrow Needs

Monrow will employ employees who portray visionary leadership. According

to Zhou et al. (2018), an employee with visionary leadership can consistently lead employees

to new periods through the adoption of new ideas that are necessary for the firm to thrive in

the future. Visionary employees can easily manage to earn the trust of other employees since

they are most likely to adopt promising management styles such as participative management

(Zhou et al., 2018). Even better, such employees are objective and proactive and they can
help to instill these values in a workforce. Monrow, thus, needs such individuals to maintain

an innovative culture.

Effective Communication Skills

For innovation to be a reality in any organization, one leadership skill that employees

should possess is strong communication skills. According to Meissner and Shmatko (2019),

effective communication skills speak to the ability of an employee to communicate across

their ideas in a manner that is understood clearly by all and leaves zero or little room for

misinterpretation. There have been cases where employees have had good and revolutionary

ideas that went untapped due to poor communication. An employee with strong

communication skills is, therefore, able to sell their ideas to other employees, superiors, and

even subordinates within the organization. There is a need to convince all internal

stakeholders since an idea can only succeed if it gets the backing of other members of the

organization. Such backing and support can only emanate after the workforce understand and

buy into the idea. Hence, effective communication skills will be instrumental for Monrow’s

innovative culture.

Fostering a Creative and Innovative Culture at Monrow

Monrow will have an innovation lab. Innovations labs are areas of departments within

organizations that have an R&D budget that is separate from the budget of a company’s day

to day operations (Darrin & Krill, 2016). In this lab, employees can actualize the ideas they

have in mind. Having such a lab at Monrow will fuel employee’s creativity and motivation,

thus enhancing the consistent establishment of creative and innovative ideas.

Company-Wide Idea Sourcing and Room for Failure

Monrow will create an environment for all employees to have an equal chance to

forward their ideas. Chutivongse and Gerdsri (2019) further posit that for a company to

entrench an innovative culture, idea-sourcing should be from all the employees irrespective

of their organizational rank rather than having ideas only from the top management. Room

for failure should also be allowed. Therefore, employees will always be encouraged to think

critically and try out new ideas without necessarily fearing failure.

Reward and Recognition

Monrow will recognize and reward creative employees. For an organization to foster

a creative culture, employees that come up with the best ideas, or those that show the best

creative efforts should face recognition and rewards (Chutivongse & Gerdsri, 2019).

Rewarding and recognizing innovative employees encourages all an organization’s

employees to embrace creativity and innovation culture.

Conclusion

The characteristics and leadership qualities of employees can serve as a pointer on

whether an innovative culture will be achieved and maintained. In the case of Monrow, the

company want to work with people who are creative and confident, risk takers and risk

tolerance, team players, and emotionally stable. Also, the top leadership qualities that

Monrow seeks is visionary leadership and effective communication skills. With such

employees, it can even be effective and efficient for Monrow to foster a creative and

innovative culture through innovation labs, company-wide idea sourcing and room for

failure, and recognition and rewards.

 Sources

1. Altındağ, E., & Kösedağı, Y. (2015). The relationship between emotional

intelligence of managers, innovative corporate culture, and employee

performance. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 210, 270-282.

2. Chutivongse, N., & Gerdsri, N. (2019). Creating an innovative organization.

Journal of Modelling in Management, 1-5.

3. Darrin, M. A. G., & Krill, J. A. (Eds.). (2016). Infusing Innovation Into

Organizations: A Systems Engineering Approach. CRC Press.

4. Li, M., & Hsu, C. H. (2016). A review of employee innovative behavior in

services. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management,

28(12), 2820-2841.

5. Meissner, D., & Shmatko, N. (2019). Integrating professional and academic

knowledge: the link between researchers skills and innovation culture. The

Journal of Technology Transfer, 44(4), 1273-1289.

6. Wang, X. H., Fang, Y., Qureshi, I., & Janssen, O. (2015). Understanding

employee innovative behavior: Integrating the social network and leader–

member exchange perspectives. Journal of organizational behavior, 36(3),

403-420.

7. Zhou, L., Zhao, S., Tian, F., Zhang, X., & Chen, S. (2018). Visionary

leadership and employee creativity in China. International Journal of

Manpower, 39(1), 93-105.