Creativity and innovation is a key driver of competitiveness in today’s economic world and re- searchers and practitioners search for ways to improve creativity and innovation within organ- izations (Khessina, et al. 2018). It appears on four different levels, (1) individual, (2) team, (3) organizational and (4) multi-level (Anderson, et al. 2014). In order to anchor creativity and innovation within organizations, IN.flow focuses on team-level and uses dynamic facilita- tion to facilitate the team’s journey towards a creativity and innovation friendly team cli- mate. The first goal of this thesis is therefore to understand, which factors foster creativity and innovation within teams. The second goal is the development of a facilitation toolbox, which can be used by IN.flow facilitators during dynamic facilitation with teams. The third goal is to develop an intervention concept for IN.flow facilitators in order to facilitate a sus- tainable change towards creativity and innovation friendly climate within teams. The first two goals are reached by the development of a toolbox with 55 facilitation tool cards, which can be applied to foster the nine important factors fostering team climate for creativity and innovation. These factors are (1) clarifying and ensuring commitment to shared vision, (2) task orientation, (3) managing conflicts and minority dissent constructively, (4) psychological safety, (5) trust, (6) cohesion, (7) support for innovation, (8) participation in decision-making and (9) reflexivity. The third goal is reached by the development of the 3 months innovation journey with the three phases, initiation, innovation, and integration and a support question- naire and information about the chronology of the tools. This team intervention is part of an IN.flow service called “Innovation Flow” containing an introduction into Design Thinking by applying a Double Diamond process on a team specific innovation challenge and simultane- ously facilitating the development of team climate fostering creativity and innovation within the team. The facilitation toolbox and intervention concept contain only facilitation tools and
thesis.
This thesis shed light on a specific aspect of organizational creativity and innovation. As men- tioned, it focuses on team-level and leaves out individual, organizational, and multi-level. Within the team-level, it focuses on team climate and leaves out (1) structure and composi- tion, (2) processes, and (3) leadership style, as West and Sacramento (2012) recommend that managers should pay attention to developing a team climate for innovation, as the largest ef- fects on innovation come from this factor. The toolbox and the intervention concept is useful to facilitate team climate for creativity and innovation but in order to grow creativity and in- novation within teams and organizations, additional influencing factors and parameters like leadership style, salary and incentive systems, goals, team/organizational structures and composition, space, tools, support from the management board, innovation processes, and many more need to be considered. Nevertheless, by applying the facilitation toolbox and the intervention concept, the chance for more creativity and innovation within the team rises, because climate and processes variables have a stronger influence on team creativity and in- novation than team structure and composition variables (Hülsheger, et al. 2009).
In order to successfully use the toolbox and the intervention concept, Design Thinking and fa- cilitation skills are required from the facilitator. Some of the tools are based on Design Think- ing tools like prototyping. Without a background in Design Thinking the facilitator is not able to understand and apply these tools. In addition, the 3 months innovation journey contains the facilitation of a Double Diamond process with the team. Only an experienced Design Thinker can facilitate and teach a team through this process. Because the toolbox contains many tools on team psychological-level like trust, cohesion and psychological safety, the fa- cilitator needs to be experienced in order to discuss topics like vulnerability and shame with the team.
The limitation of the methodology of this thesis is the small number of interviews conducted in the discover phase. Nevertheless the planned effect of the interviews, which was to give the author of this thesis a better understanding of the nine factors fostering team climate for creativity and innovation, was achieved.
Even one interviewee narrated his experiences with an international team developing an in- ternational services, the author of this thesis would like to mention, that the results of this thesis cannot be applied all over the world. Even if the nine factors fostering team climate for creativity and innovation would be the same in any culture, the way they are expressed within the team would be different. For example, the interviewee who facilitated the inter- national team mentioned hugging as a special behavior he observed within the team. Hugging
each other is an expression of cohesion in some culture. In other culture, cohesion is not ex- pressed by hugging and hugging would not be an appropriate behavior among team members, nevertheless cohesion exists within the team. A facilitator therefore needs to be aware of the different cultures within a team and wisely choose the right tools. It might be necessary to talk about how the nine factors fostering team climate for creativity and innovation are ex- pressed in the different culture represented in the team.
An interesting insight of this thesis are the three interactive stages (1) problem identification, (2) idea generation, and (3) idea evaluation an innovation team constantly is in, no matter whether they currently started the innovation process or whether they are currently imple- menting the developed solution (see chapter 2.3). Further research about these three stages and how there are intertwined is needed. The author of this thesis is convinced that a team should be informed about these three stages and trained to (1) recognize in which stage they constantly are, (2) know what kind of thought patterns to apply in which stage, (3) know what kind of team roles are important in which stage and (4) how to handle the stages, for exam- ple when to switch from stage to stage. Additionally a Design Thinking facilitation toolbox can be developed that contains tools for each of these stages and can be applied by facilitators or the team itself.