Designers and innovation: Creativity problemsolving styles and organisational resistance to new idea

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Designers and innovation Creativity
problem-solving styles and organisational
resistance to new ideas
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Design and innovation

• Research on the role of design in innovation very
  limited
• Problems in quantifying designs contribution to
  new product success
• Defining design in itself is difficult
• Design quality notoriously difficult to assess
• function / ergonomics / reliability / safety /
  form / intangibles?
• Designers themselves are part of the problem!

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Organisational thinking

• Organisations need to harvest what they have
  already created
• They have to please shareholders and other
  stakeholders
• They develop routines, systems and structures
  that are economic for existing products
• They develop belief systems over time
• as the result of learning what works and how not
  to repeat mistakes
• Paradigm resistant to deviant, i.e. novel, ideas

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(Source Scott Adams, Dilbert Cartoons)
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Design thinking

• Design leads the organisation where it has not
  yet been - creating the future
• Positioned in the territory where art and science
  come together, the quantifiable and the poetic,
  the rational and the intuitive
• Focussed on possibilities and opportunities (not
  problems and solutions)
• Grounded in dissatisfaction
• based on a sense that something better is possible

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Reconciling the two stereotypes

• The designers role is to think out of the box
• . but also produce new ideas that will be
  accepted
• isnt there a contradiction here?

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Some provisos

• Not all organisations are completely antithetical
  to novelty
• Some build in systems to constructively dismantle
  existing thinking
• Double-loop learning
• Not all designers are interested in breaking the
  bounds
• Some like working on improving things

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Cognitive styles

• Consistent individual differences in preferred
  ways of organizing and processing information
• In-built and automatic way of responding to
  information and situations
• Present at birth or at any rate fixed early on in
  life
• and deeply pervasive
• Psychometric instruments, Myers- Briggs (MBTI),
  Cognitive Style Index (CSI) KAI

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Kirtons adaption / innovation inventory (KAI)

• KAI is an instrument that defines and measures
  creativity, problem-solving and decision-making
  style
• Style does not mean amount of creativity but the
  way of being creative.
• Doing things differently innovation
• Doing things better adaption

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Organisational KAI distributions
2/3rds of the population within this range
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Adaptors

• Provide solutions that depend on generally-agreed
  paradigms, and therefore are more readily
  accepted by most.
• innovate within rules, need structure
• are reliable, cautious, practical
• use standard approaches
• prefer improving things
• act in a cohesive way,
• concerned to make existing things better

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Innovators

• Ideas less closely related to the groups
  prevailing paradigms,
• consequently more strongly resisted.
• Break rules
• Challenge assumptions, reframe, take risks
• Idealistic
• Not overly concerned with what has gone before
• More concerned with doing things differently than
  well

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Comparison KAI occupational group scores

• Branch Bank Managers, Civil Servants,
  Manufacturing Managers, Plant Managers, Machine
  Superintendents, Production Managers, Accounts
  Supervisors, Maintenance Engineers, Programmers,
  Cost accountants
• Nurses
• General population
• Managers generally
• Teachers
• R D professionals
• Personnel
• Finance
• Marketing
• Planning
• Design managers
• RD Managers (Special Project Teams)

• 80-90
• 92
• 95
• 96
• 97
• 101
• 103
• 105
• 106
• 110
• 111
• 112-115

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Design Managers KAI scores (n 156)

• 111
• 112
• 109
• Possible Population Design Mgrs
• Range Mean Mean
• 13-65 41 47
• 7-30 19 28
• 12-60 35 35

• Mean score
• Of these
• Women Men
• Sub scores
• sufficiency of originality
• efficiency
• rule / group conformity

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How the other half sees it!

• High Is see high As as
• Boring
• Stodgy
• Over-cautious
• Old-hat
• Outdated

• High As see high Is as
• Reckless
• Abrasive
• Dangerous
• Inefficient
• Out of control
• undisciplined

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Or maybe.

• Safe
• Nice
• Sound

• Glamorous
• Exciting
• Interesting

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High I scores behavioural implications

• Have more permeable search boundaries, scattering
  effort and gathering ideas from every direction.
• Present many less formulated possibilities but
  are more likely to reconstruct the problem. Work
  better with change and in an unstructured
  environment
• Can be undisciplined, abrasive, and not follow
  through projects systematically

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High A scores - behavioural implications

• Good implementers
• Detail-oriented
• Follow projects through systematically
• Produce ideas based on, but stretching, existing
  agreed definitions of the problem
• Search for creative solutions thoroughly in a
  limited area.
• Offer fuller and deeper ideas, but fewer of them.

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Divergent and Convergent Innovation Phases
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Coping / flexing

• People crossing style boundaries
• Have to use coping behaviours
• These are psychologically expensive
• When people operate in a hostile environment
  stress is the result
• Alters behaviour and perception

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Coping behaviours

• Coping is problem solving behaviour
• Outside of someone's preferred style
• For as short a period as possible
• In minimal quantities
• Attempts to remove or deal with the stress
• Need to enhance behavioural repertoire
• Fuelled by motive
• When motive switches off there is a return to
  preferred style

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Coping for high As

• Be open to new ways of doing things
• Give ideas a fair chance to mature
• Try to recognise the contribution of apparently
  ridiculous ideas

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Coping for high Is

• Seek clarification of important requirements
• Do not look for novelty for its own sake
• Be aware that the best solution may lie within
  the existing paradigm
• Become more tolerant of structure, as a means of
  achieving tasks
• Become more respectful of consensus
• Understand that others are not wrong about
  everything all of the time!

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Role for Janusian bridgers or boundary-spanners

• Bridgers have scores between two other scores
• Social role of intermediaries
• Translate behavioural norms
• Likely to be stressed because they never spend
  time with their own style group

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Semi-permeable membranes
Unit / Firm B
Unit / Firm A
Resource access
(knowledge, skills, infrastructure)
Resource transfer
(cash, information, product)
Resource protection from appropriation
and preservation from contamination
context
-
- specific
Facilitated access to context-specific resources
resources
(e.g. culture, ideology, routines reputation)
semi
-
permeable membrane type A
Boundary spanner
semi
-
permeable membrane type B
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Further research

• Links between creative styles, creative climate
  and creative output at an early stage of research
• Not clear how style interacts dynamically with
  organisational climate factors
• Some evidence of links between some aspects of
  organisational creativity climate (WEI scale for
  example) and style
• Relationship between style and level of
  creativity on creative outcomes not well known
• Impact of experience

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Further research (contd.)

• Fleshing out semi-permeable membranes
• The role of boundary spanners
• How they protect resources from contamination
• How they clean and translate behaviour from one
  group to another
• Some work on politics of change and champions of
  innovation, but fairly a-contextual
• What coping behaviours they use
• What coping behaviour is in practice not well
  known - especially in design context
• What makes for effectiveness in specific
  innovative contexts