The executive summary presented to the participants that specified the recommended actions to take, was:
To develop a relevant innovation strategy that relates to the overall business strategy.
To add context to their opportunities by considering them in relation to future technologies, regulation, society and their existing projects and value offerings (which would assist with prioritisation of opportunities).
To identify systems and tools to support their specific process and knowledge management requirements (which would assist with managing explicit knowledge).
To identify a means of managing their core competencies and tacit knowledge – a crucial requirement for a small, knowledge-driven organisation.
7.3.4 Plan procedure
This section will briefly describe the activities of the Plan stage of this case study. Basically, this involved presenting and discussing the results, prioritising the opportunities for improvement and identifying the necessary actions to be taken.
2.63 2.49 2.36 3.89 4.33 2.56 Explore & Converge 2.75 2.69 2.62 2.55 3.27 3.45 2.65 Portfolio Management 2.32 2.47 2.40 2.34 3.01 3.17 2.44 Consolidate & Exploit 2.32 2.47 2.40 2.34 3.00 3.17 2.43 Process Control & Risk Management 2.51 2.57 2.50 2.43 3.13 3.30 2.53 Discover & Absorb 3.00 2.81 2.73 2.66 3.42 3.61 2.77 2.84 Consolidate 3.19 2.90 2.82 2.74 3.52 3.72 2.86 Core Competency & Technology 2.32 2.47 2.40 2.34 3.00 3.17 2.43 Innovation Strategy & Leadership 2.41 2.52 2.45 2.38 3.06 Structure & Infrastructure 3.07 2.84 2.76 2.69 3.45 Environment & Climate 3.21 2.90 2.83 2.75 3.53 Resources & Measurement 2.06 2.33 2.27 2.21 2.83 Innovation Process 2.50 Knowledge & Competency Organisational Support 2.60
The summarised results were presented in much the same way as the other interactions – using VOIP technologies to connect all the individuals and a common presentation used by the facilitator to guide the individuals through the results and discussions.
All participants basically concluded that the approach proved accurate in it representation of the organisations strengths and weakness, illuminating what (again – as with other cases) was subconsciously known, but not yet explicit. A respondent commented that the approach provided scientific evidence of various aspects needing consideration.
The respondents all agreed that the approach stimulated action, i.e., provided the necessary motivation to instigate an improvement initiative that would address the identified and agreed upon improvement areas. This motivation was also fuelled by the added understanding of the Innovation Capability Landscape and how their organisation mapped onto this landscape (considering the results of Figure 52).
As mentioned, a discussion was had on the small and specialised nature of the organisation and how this would have an impact the results. What was initially discussed, before having processed the responses, was the possibility of significant variance in the ratings between the different requirements for innovation capability. If this were the case, it could be explained by the fact that a specialised organisation may be highly competent in certain areas, and less so in others. This was found to be accurate after having processed and interpreted the results.
Related to this is the fact that a small organisation will have very different instantiations of the capability requirements compared to a larger organisation. Thus, while the requirements themselves are generic, how those requirements are fulfilled would differ substantially between organisations. Therefore, the requirements as specified by the model, remain relevant to the organisation, and only when considering how to address the specific requirements, would an in-depth understanding of the organisation become crucial. This point formed a pivotal part of the discussions around the summarised results.
7.3.4.2
Actions to address opportunities
The procedure used in this case was the same as the one used in Section 7.1.4.2 to support the fulfilment of requirements for Case Study 2 (CS2). The literature identified as applicable “To develop a relevant innovation strategy that relates to the overall business strategy” (the first requirement to be fulfilled for CS2 in Section 7.3.3) was the same for both case studies. For this reason, the findings will not be repeated but to state that the outcomes would be different due to the different environments that the organisations operate within. These findings were presented to the participants with the purpose of initiating the development process. At the time of writing this report, the outcomes had not been finalised.
This case study was performed with a major insurance provider to South Africa and other countries. The specific division with which the process was conducted was Client Services. To remain concise, only the unique aspects of this case study are discussed.
7.4.1 Context
The context for this case study was the first (and only) that would relate to a specific division of an organisation, as opposed the whole. The following aspects conveyed this context:
The innovation capability of the Client Services department would be evaluated.
The questionnaire would be completed by individuals from three levels within the department – business leaders, operations managers and team leaders, with the responses of the general manager of the department being included with those of the business leaders.
As many individuals as were available from each of the levels would complete the questionnaire.
This being the largest case study in terms of organisational size, obtaining responses from all relevant individuals within the department would be difficult to achieve. Therefore, it was decided that so long as a sufficiently representative sample from each of the relevant groups was obtained, the results would be considered relevant.
7.4.2 Evaluation procedure
This case was initiated with a planning meeting attended by the instigator (or champion) thereof. Essentially, this individual plays a consultative role to the group, particularly at the operations managers‟ level. Within this meeting, the basic context (as discussed in Section 7.4.1), was decided upon.
Two evaluation workshops where held – one to accommodate the business leaders and another for the operations managers and team leaders. Basically, the workshops were much the same as the previous cases, except that this was the first where the questionnaire was paper-based. The most significant impact hereof seemed to be that the respondents worked more quickly though the paper-based version than the computer-based one (this was not timed and verified, but merely an observation).
Few discussions followed these workshops due to time constraints, but it was agreed that the results feedback presentations would be more interactive. Interpretation of the results then commenced, with requests from both the business leaders and operations managers, to show the results from the different perspectives of the 3 levels of individuals having completed the questionnaire.
Mentioned previously is the fact that the completion of these case studies and the representation of results was a progressive and maturing process. Thus, new mechanisms for completing these activities, interpreting the responses and presenting the results were identified and used as the cases were performed, one after the other. This particular case used several new mechanisms for the results interpretation and representation; a few of which will be discussed in this section. Additionally, this was the only case (except for CS3) where a sample of individuals, and not the entire population, completed the questionnaire. To accommodate for this, the confidence interval (CI) statistic was used as an indication of the confidence that may be held in the calculated average.
The overall, normalised average innovation capability maturity level was 2.27. The average standard deviation between respondents was 0.96. The calculated CI at a confidence level of α = 0.1 was 0.29. The interpretation of this static implies that 90% of all samples taken (from the population) would give a confidence interval that contains the population average (or mean). In this case, the bounds of the interval are 2.12 and 2.41 (as depicted in Figure 53).