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A Successful Innovation Experience
16-07-14
My interest in innovation started at the beginning of 2007 reading the book İnovasyon: Kalkınma ve Rekabetin Anahtarı (Şirin Elçi-2006) (Innovation: The Key for Development and Competition).
My interest in innovation started at the beginning of 2007 reading the book İnovasyon: Kalkınma ve Rekabetin Anahtarı (Innovation: The Key for Development and Competition) (Elçi, Innovation: The Key for Development and Competition, 2006). Whilst I was working for Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) in an engineering role I was also an active member of the Management Development Association within TAI. The association members and managers ran the association in their free time at work. For example, my functional area of expertise was as a senior design engineer for helicopter electrical systems, however I was also involved with innovation and association work in my spare time. Later, when I mention "my managers", I refer to my functional and project managers in my helicopter projects.
Elçi's book very much impressed me with the innovation definitions, examples from other countries and solutions that it offers to various problems. I thought; "That is it! This is the solution for companies, workers, regions, associations to be successful on whatever they are doing." I was developing an inspiring vision of my innovation. (Nochur, Kumar, 2009)
I invited the author, Ms Elci, to TAI to give a speech as an association activity and she happily accepted our invitation and did not require any payment for coming and even donated some books for free. She gave an excellent presentation about innovation to TAI workers and management, however there were only three people from TAI management and approximately twenty workers. Considering that around 2000 people were working in TAI, the attendance to the presentation was disappointing. I believe that not paying any money for this marvellous event and books had a negative affect in TAI and the management did not take it seriously. That taught me a valuable lesson, that one has required reasonable payment otherwise the value of the service provided drops down in the eyes of the customer. Business psychology aside, the important point of this activity was that I found my innovation system supporters within the TAI workers and management like "Cultivating an informal support network" (Nochur, Kumar, 2009) and "Forming a powerful guiding coalition" (Kotter, 1996)
Ms Elçi was giving away her first pressed book for free because she had taken European Union support to publish it. She wanted to take attention to innovation subject in Turkey with this book and free presentations to organisations. I took many books from her and delivered them inside the company to my friends and managers. I made sure about the short explanation of her speech was published in TAI's company magazine. I spoke to the Head of Human Resources Department to put my own presentation about innovation inside the internal portal of TAI. By doing these actions I have targeted all employees for the introduction of innovation within TAI. "I was establishing a sense of urgency." (Kotter, 1996)
When I was giving the books I was also talking individually with the managers and workers and taking their opinions about innovation in TAI. "It was an activity for communicating the vision" (Kotter, 1996). Some of the managers liked the idea of innovation system at TAI and some of them did not like it and kindly told me whether they did not believe its advantages or if it would work at TAI. Some of the managers, actually one of them was my manager, told me that somebody else did the same kind of thing in TAI years ago suggesting a total quality management system in TAI and set up an association but later on TAI fired him. So it was a subtle warning to me that I may lose my job if I push too hard.
I have asked Şirin Elçi if her company gives courses about innovation. She sent me the details of her next course. However I could not persuade my manager to send me an innovation course. He was totally against the innovation idea. I guess he had a low tolerance for change as described by Kotter and Schlesinger (1979). I have missed the first course like that.
The next course was 4 months later. This time I asked for the HR Manager's help to send me on the course. He was foot dragging and busy all the time as Kanter mentions as a form of resistance (Kanter, 1983). I have written an e-mail to him saying whether they send me or not I am going to that course even if I must use my personal holiday time and money. However, I would prefer TAI sent me to course because I am working for them and it is totally for TAI. Then in the last day HR manager informed me they would send me on the course. My manager did not like it but could not stop it because the HR Manager was in a higher position than he. From then I have relied upon the HR manager as my unique and powerful contact for innovation matters in the high executive position at TAI. I took the course and prepared an action plan and presentation for setting up an innovation system at TAI. Although it was my idea to set up an innovation system, the HR manager communicated this to the upper management. I had empowered others to act on the vision. (Kotter, 1996) I was advising him about innovation systems.
My inspiring vision was being more successful and competitive as a big aerospace company and having much more contented workers gaining their commitment using the proven techniques of innovation.
I have privately taken a project management course and started to prepare for Project Management course. I took my aim of setting up an innovation system as a project and prepared the project charter and project scope for the TAI higher management. I have put my name and HR Manager inside the charter paper. I was building the business case. (Nochur, Kumar, 2009)
The HR Manager instructed the IT department to develop and implement software to collect ideas from employees. He did not involve me reading through the ideas, complaints, and suggestions. He made his HR department handle this issue. They were categorising the ideas and publish them to the portal. I was constantly reading them and writing new ones to be an example for workers. Because there was a culture of fear, everybody was afraid of being punished because of their ideas.
Although most of the suggestions were about the food being given inside the company, they were short term 'wins' implemented through power of the HR Manager. (Kotter, 1996)
I was directing the HR manager and meeting with him about innovation processes for correcting mistakes in the implementation of the ideas collection system. As he was powerful, he could manage distributing the ideas (not just food!) to related departments. The idea system started to be used as a normal kind of procedure. It was institutionalised. (Kotter, 1996)
Therefore I can count this system to that point as a successful implementation of innovation.
However that was not exactly what I envisaged for TAI.
