Presented at ISPIM 2008 Conference, Tours, France together with Anu Suominen, co-writen with Heli Aramo-Immonen and Kaj Koskinen. Received Best Student Paper Award.
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Requisite variety of expertise within a group in idea generation
1. 1
REQUISITE VARIETY OF EXPERTISE WITHIN
A GROUP IN IDEA GENERATION
ANU SUOMINEN MSc., PhD-student
JARI JUSSILA MSc., PhD-student
Co-writers:
Heli Aramo-Immonen, PhD
Dr. Kaj U. Koskinen, docent
Industrial Management
2. 2
Pauling:
”The best way to have a
good idea is to have lots
of ideas…”
Industrial Management
3. 3
INTRODUCTION: TERMS
CREATIVITY
• Individual’s capability
• Within every person
• Involved in all human activities (with problem solving etc.)
• Prerequisite for organizational innovation
INNOVATION by OECD
“...the implementation of a new or significantly improved product
(goods or services), or process, a new marketing method, or a
new organisational method in business practices, workplace
organisation or external relations.”
IDEA GENERATION
• The 1st phase of innovation process
• Without any ideas, no innovations will emerge
Industrial Management
4. 4
CREATIVITY AND IT’S LINK TO INNOVATION
Resources Management
practises
Creativity feeds
Innovation innovation
Work Organizational
Motivation
Environment
I
IM
PA
PA
CT
CT
Task
Expertise
S
S
Motivation
Creativity
Individual/Team Creativity
Creativity Skills Amabile CTC, CTOCI (1997)
Industrial Management
5. 5
REQUISITE VARIETY
Asbhy’s Law of Requisite variety:
• the internal complexity of a system should correspond to the multiplicity and
complexity of the environment; otherwise the system will not function
effectively enough in its environment
Innovation requires Requisite variety:
• diversity is necessity (Florida)
• value of diversity (Martins & Terblanche)
• diverse range of skills; Hybrid nature of people and managers (Trott)
• team diversity (Farr et al.)
• Requisite variety of information (Nonaka & Takeuchi)
• Leveraging diversity: seeing differences as richness, being able to benefit
from different viewpoints and opinions
• Requisite variety: employment of range of people with different
backgrounds and skills
Industrial Management
6. 6
EXPERTISE
Professional expertise:
• includes the mastery of job-related knowledge: technical, professional, or
managerial
• the motivation to use, develop, and share work-related knowledge with others
• Expertise & Challenges => Flow (Csikszentmihalyi)
Self-development
• different levels
• most basic level: used to sustain the current professional and technical expertise
• higher levels: extending knowledge beyond the current work tasks or current field
of expertise
Creative tension (Senge)
• is generated by the difference between a vision and a clear picture of current
reality (where we are relative to what we want) - a force to bring them together
Industrial Management
7. 7
METHODOLOGY: CASE STUDY
4 TEST GROUPS:
Test persons from many industrial branches
Technically oriented people
GROUP 1: Experienced experts with higher level technical
education
GROUP 2: Experienced experts with lower level technical
education
GROUP 3: Less experienced, young experts
with higher level tehcnical education
GROUP 4: mixed group with bothh young and older experts
with both higher and lower level technical education
• Expertise minimum: 5 years in project work
• Higher education minimum: BSc or MSc or corresponding
Industrial Management
8. 8
METHODOLOGY: CASE STUDY
TWO TEST SETTINGS:
1. Individual test
• Four types of innovations were studied:
• 4 P = Product, Process, Position, Paradigm
• paper and pencil
• look at the video
• simultaneously capture as many ideas of four innovation types as
possible
• write them down
2. Pair test
• Same procedure with pair
• Conversation allowed (and encouraged)
Industrial Management
9. 9
RESULTS
Quantity Quality
GROUPS 1 SETTING 2nd SETTING 2nd SETTING
Average amount ideas per group
of ideas
1 (4+7) EXPERIENCED Average: 51,6 Group 1 50 %
EXPERTS ideas per group generated Position & Paradigm innovations
WITH HIGH altogether most (especially in the Test setting 2)
EDUCATION ideas: 77 pcs
2 (11) EXPERIENCED Group 2 generated 44 % of just Product innovations
Average:
EXPERTS only 3,45 ideas
WITH LOWER 15 % more with
per person pairs
EDUCATION
3 (7) YOUNGER 40 % Position & Paradigm
EXPERTS WITH innovations
HIGHER EDUCATION
Group 4 generated
4 (7) MIXED 65 % of Product & Process
most ideas:
innovations
10,42 per person
Industrial Management
10. 10
RESULTS
Test setting 1:
• ideas by individuals: 0 - 31pcs
• 12 ideas on the average
Test setting 2:
• with pairs 15 % more ideas on the average
• people generate even more ideas while working in
pairs than as individuals.
Industrial Management
11. 11
RESULTS
• the mixed age structure and variation of expertise and
experience also influenced on the capability to capture the ideas
from the video (group 4)
• the lower the education level of the test group was => the less
new ideas were generated (group 2)
• the higher the education was, the higher the quality of ideas
was (group 1 and group 3); process and paradigm innovations =>
more complex ideas
• the highest number of new ideas was generated by the
homogeneous group of highly educated expertise in the
second phase as working in pairs (group 1)
• both the expertise group (group 1) and mixed group (group 4)
were able to generate over 70 pieces of different ideas in two
times 13 minutes sessions
Industrial Management
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RESULTS
• people of all backgrounds generate ideas
• requisite variety of expertise adds both to the
quantity and quality of idea generation in a group
• working additionally with pairs adds considerably
to the quantity of the generated ideas
pair working causes stimuli to idea generation
and also pairs learn from each other while
generating ideas together
Industrial Management
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CONCLUSIONS
The requisite variety of expertise
• important feature in idea generation within a group
• grows the quantity of the generated ideas
• expertise generate more complex ideas, but
Innovations require a lot of new ideas – and especially different types of ideas
Working in pairs:
• Two people working together generate greater number of ideas than two individuals
accumulated singularly
• people learn from each other during idea generation
Working in a project work context:
• working in mixed groups conducts more new ideas => fruitful to have mixed aged
groups
• expertise is partially based on experience
• variation in individual’s capability to idea generation creates a risk of failure in innovation
process, whereas working in teams reduces the risk significantly
Organizations should build up groups with people having various types of expertise and
ages; also working as pairs or within a group should be encouraged, in order the idea
generation to flourish in organizations
Industrial Management
14. 14
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION
CONTACT INFORMATION
Tampere University of Technology at Pori
PL 300, 28101 PORI, FINLAND
Anu Suominen
E-mail: anu.suominen@tut.fi
GSM: +358 40 556 2303
Jari Jussila
E-mail: jari.j.jussila@tut.fi
GSM: +358 407178345
Industrial Management