Tibor Dőry

Innovation and excellence

Management methods for innovation transformation

What can we learn from other companies?

If a business or institution wants to be more competitive and adaptable, or wants to develop a culture of learning and error, or even encourage its employees to think entrepreneurially, ambidextrous organisations have been proven to offer numerous advantages. O'Reilly and Tushman's (2004) study points out that companies with excellent innovation performance share several similarities, from which all companies can draw inspiration.

Value system

Successful companies are distinguished by a clear vision and a shared identity that embraces both exploitation and exploration. It is therefore essential for a company to develop values that fit its corporate culture and that its employees appreciate and can identify with. In addition, care must be taken to ensure that there are no contradictions in the organisation's value system or overly extreme, conflicting goals.

Providing creative spaces and time

The company and its management can give employees the opportunity to think about their work or the performance of their own team and ways to improve it during working hours, within certain limits. It is not necessarily expected of a manager to know everything, because employees often have a better understanding of which processes can be improved and how. By regularly providing employees with time to formulate new development and efficiency proposals, this new practice can eventually become routine and be integrated into the work culture. If, in addition to this, you create a creative space or a small "thinking corner" as well as inspiring spaces for group work, you are sending a message to your employees that innovation is part of their work, an important task and area of responsibility for them.

Creating innovation team(s)

It is advisable to recruit creative and experienced employees to form a team responsible for innovation and the creative rethinking of the existing corporate culture. This team should also help to develop the company's future management methods. It is important for managers to create opportunities for experimentation and innovation within the organisation and to give responsibility to employees. With the active involvement of employees, managers must ensure that they participate in the planning of various innovation projects and are given the opportunity to participate in decision-making.

Strengthening a culture of learning from mistakes

Leaders and employees of organisations involved in innovation must understand and accept that mistakes are part of the innovation process. Only through numerous iterations and experimentation can previously unknown solutions be created, which also has a significant financial impact. It is therefore important for leaders to foster a culture of feedback within the company so that both employees and management can learn from their mistakes. Do not punish mistakes. On the contrary, clearly communicate through the company's values that employees are allowed to make mistakes.

Unfortunately, there is no universally applicable solution or method that can be used equally in all types and sizes of organisations to create ambidextrous organisations and promote ambidexterity. As in many other areas of life, actions speak louder than words. Let's get started and take action! It is worth starting to build ambidextrous structures in small steps, but it is not advisable to immediately dismantle all familiar working methods. Instead, agile methods should be integrated with classic organisational and management systems. This will create a hybrid organisation that operates both efficiently and innovatively.

According to the recommendations in the literature, the first possible step is to create a creative space or corner and then give employees a few hours to discuss their development ideas with each other. A next step could be to change the corporate culture so that management does not penalise employees for mistakes made during creative, experimental activities. Of course, it is not easy for management to view mistakes made during development activities, whether intentional or unintentional, differently, given the usual demands for accuracy, precision and premium quality in production and services. However, continuous experimentation and experiential learning promote entrepreneurship and innovation, but it takes years of continuous management communication and employee training to create such an atmosphere and develop an organisational culture conducive to innovation.

Successful companies with ambidextrous organisational structures try to strike a healthy balance. In other words, they do not focus exclusively on exploitation, process improvement, or exploratory activities promising radical innovations. This recommendation may seem elusive, but the examples presented in the previous chapters and in the case studies prove that an ambidextrous organisation is feasible. The example of such companies clearly shows how it is possible to maintain a balance between improving efficiency and innovation.

Tartalomjegyzék

Kiadó: Akadémiai Kiadó

Online megjelenés éve: 2026

ISBN: 978 963 664 182 5

Menedzsment

The aim of the book "Innovation and Excellence" is to inspire and encourage company leaders, managers, and experts to initiate and implement innovation transformations with the help of professional literature and corporate case studies. Another important goal is to help develop the innovation capabilities of small and medium-sized enterprises in particular by sharing simple, proven management methods that can be tested in practice.

The first part of the volume reviews the factors of corporate excellence and success, then highlights the possible sources of innovation, with a focus on the role of users and employees. The empirical section presents a detailed description of the supportive role of the workplace environment and creative working conditions based on corporate case studies (AUDI, BOSCH, MELECS). The volume concludes with a description of selected tested practical methods and management techniques that readers can try out in their own businesses.

Hivatkozás: https://mersz.hu/dory-innovation-and-excellence//

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