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INNOVATION MANAGEMENT COURSE FOR FUTURE RAILWAY MANAGERS IN SIBERIA Tatyana Medvedeva1, Matjaž Mulej, Zdenka Ženko, Vojko Potočan2 ___________________________________________________________________________
Abstract In the current situation managers in organizations of the transitional countries in Central and Eastern Europe, such as Slovenia and Russia, need knowledge in innovation management very much to accelerate their organizations’ and countries’ catching-up with their experienced innovation-based international competitors. But they had poor/no chance to learn it in their education. Here we are discussing a short course that we have staged many times in Slovenia and abroad, and have recently tested with future railway managers in Western Siberia. Experience says it is offering some basic insights well enough.
Key words: innovation management, innovative business, courseware, Slovenia, Russia, railway 1.
Introduction
This contribution is completely based on experience with management practitioners in Slovenia (mostly) and Russia. Countries differ in many respects, which we will not address here. But they share two attributes, which we are focusing on: (1) they have only about 15 years, rather than decades, of experience in introduction of the so called market economy, which means that their exposure to supply-demand ratio with supply exceeding demand very much has been a short one for most organizations and their managers; (2) their managers had a very poor or no chance to learn about innovation management in their formal education. Thus, they have a poor background in aspects of innovation that are exposed in quite some recent practice-based literature in the oldest innovation-based countries: innovation of management and innovation of business rather than the technological innovation only. They need, first, to understand better than ever before that making of inventions and innovations depends on innovation of management from the concept ‘division into the thinking tank and the working tank’ to the concept ‘we all think, we all invent, innovate, work, and co-operate as specialists in teams in which managers make synthesis of all thoughts of everybody into a shared, rather than imposed, decision’. And, second, they need to understand better that innovation of business concepts/practices is equally crucial as the technological one, because technology is a tool for owners, entrepreneurs, managers, and their co-workers to do business with. Over many years, an introductory course has been created and applied in many organizations in Slovenia; it has recently been tested for applicability in two Russian applications. The resulting experiences demonstrate that managers, who have been exposed to concepts such as the learning organization or co-operative management, understand the said two needs better than the others do. On the other hand, managers, who have been exposed to a strongly centralized rather than co-operative organizational hierarchy and running their processes by prescribed regulations, understand the said two needs less well than the others do. Exposure to the course helps them to understand situation of their organizations better and to think of their own action quite creatively. – We attach the summary of the course.
1
Dr. Tatyana Medvedeva, Assoc. Prof.; Siberian University of Transport, The Center for Business and Management; Novosibirsk, 630049, Russia; E-mail: mta@stu.ru 2 DDr. Matjaž Mulej, Prof. Emeritus, Dr. Zdenka Ženko, Assist. Prof., Dr. Vojko Potočan, Assoc. Prof.; University of Maribor, Faculty of Economics and Business; SI-2000 Maribor, Slovenia; E-mail: [Mulej; Zdenka.zenko; vojko.potocan] @uni-mb.si
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The new generations – condemned to innovation
Today, the most advanced 20 % of humankind live in an innovative society. Information society, knowledge society, learning society, knowledge-based society, post-industrial society, etc. are terms denoting parts of attributes of the innovative society and economy. OECD, in 1971, and European Union in 1995, defines innovation as every novelty proven beneficial to and accepted by its customers (EU, 2004). It is not up to authors and owners of a new idea, product, process, management style, method of work and collaboration, business program, education program, etc., to decide which novelty is an innovation, but up to its customers. In other words, innovation = invention + successful commercialization / use (Afuah, 1998). The term innovation denotes both the process of making a successful novelty and its outcome. Commercialization includes the entire business process, of course (supply, production, supportive activities, marketing, sales, etc.). Today, the world is divided in the innovative 20 % and too-poorly-innovative 80 %. By globalization and world-wide free market the 20 % may and can both help to and exploit the other 80 %. This fact makes, among others, an inter-disciplinary issue requiring systems thinking. Humankind is, in addition, facing the innovation-need paradox: the ones who need innovation the most, like it the least (Rogers, 1995). But it has become very difficult, if not impossible, to live (well) on tradition and compete in the global ‘free’ world market. (Florida, 2005; Economist, 2006, 2006a, 2006b, 2006c). Many do not understand the basics of innovation, innovative society, innovative business, innovation of management, and innovation management, well enough. They and people around them need help to master their own destiny in conditions of global life and work more holistically and therefore more successfully. Empirical researchers have namely found out that only one single percent of patented inventions become innovations, and only about seven percent of incremental inventions become innovations. Thus, the risk level is 92 %, if one tries to innovate, and 100 %, if one tries to live on the old routine for too long. (Likar, Fatur, 2007). Nussbaum (2005) reports, that even the well prepared innovation projects of big companies fail in +95%. Therefore the point of innovation management is to diminish this high risk level. And the aim of the workshop under discussion is to open the door to basics of innovation management. A few recent proofs that it is not only the technological innovation which matters, but innovations of other contents as well include the following common denominator: Innovation of the management and business style preconditions the technological one, say the world’s greatest companies’ heads. In March 2006 IBM published its report on its world-wide research about innovation (www.ibm.com/gio). It showed: the knowledge society differs from the industrial society and its point is not in the technological innovation, but rather in the innovation of the way to any innovation as a new benefit from application of new ideas in practice. One talks about social innovations, which means, that owners and managers innovate relations, roles, and mutual impacts. Thus, environment is created in which people co-operate and the basis of their relations consists of their creative contributions and their reconciliation in emerging synergies. The latter makes capital of reputation crucial; it depends on capability to see far, broadly and deeply, such as to stop asking ‘either economic development or preservation of the healthy natural environment’, but to take care of both of them at the same time. Similar is the message from McGregor (2006). She reports about the world’s most innovative companies. Survey says that it is not enough to innovate technology; it is equally unavoidable to innovate business strategies and models. The point is not simply in new products, but in much more – in new business processes, markets, choice of the right ideas and record speed of marketing them. At the top of the most innovative companies there are those with several kinds of innovation, up to seven of them, used in synergy. Sources of success include long-lasting creative co-operation of all business functions and putting the right questions. Procter & Gamble introduced vice-president for innovation and knowledge. In the said journal
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and in Harvard Business Review (Huston, Sakkab, 2006) this multinational is reported to assess that 6.500 researcher and development (R&D) professionals are not enough; they completed their traditional R&D model with the new one: connect and develop. They find that in the wide world there are at least 200 experts per every one of their own 6.500, and they are worth detecting and co-operating. Results are visible. Of course, there is no end to obstacles. Survey includes into the most frequent one: the long development time, lack of co-ordination, culture opposing risk, limited insight in customers, poor collections and lack of ideas (inventions, suggestions), unsuitable measuring tools, and mistakes in marketing and communication. (Nussbaum, 2005). There are companies that live well as consultants about customers’ trends. It makes innovation effort easier to master. What ever all the risks are and what ever is their size, creativity in the form of innovation pays, Business Week reports in the same edition (Henry, 2006). Such data from such sources remind us of Alan Mogensen and his experience in 1926, which is 80 (eighty) years ago: it pays to the boss to consider his subordinates as his co-workers, who are creative rather than living machines with no thinking capability. From this experience Mogensen’s Work Simplification was developed and helped many companies around the world, military, etc., but under one condition: bosses admit they are not the only clever ones around, and they encourage and train their co-workers for creative work and co-operation along with continuous refreshment of their professional knowledge, as well as the bosses’ capabilities. (Mogensen, 1981; Mogensen, Rausa, 1989). These experiences match the contents of the course, which has taken place in Slovenia and elsewhere several hundred times over the recent 25 years. In April 2007 we tested its applicability in another setting of a catching-up economy – in Novosibirsk, Russia. 3.
The Center for Business and Management as a model of socio-economic innovations
The Center for Business and Management was created at Siberian State University of Transport, Novosibirsk, Russia, on April, 29, 2003. The main goal of the Center is to provide training for students (future managers of the West-Siberian Railroad) and railroad managers so they can increase the efficiency of the railroad in the new conditions of a market economy. The Center works in transitional time, trying to introduce new knowledge, and fighting the still-remaining/surviving centralism. Center’s activities can be described under three headings: (1) Education and training; (2) Consultation; (3) Real-production intervention, and (4) Written papers based on analysis of real-production problems and experience of training of prospective managers, called ‘management reserve’. From the very beginning the Center’s specialists worked out programs of the Center development and training based on the concept of corporate university in close collaboration with the personnel management service of the West-Siberian Railroads and other services interested in training. Deputy Director of the West-Siberian Railroads on Personnel and Social Issues E. N. Kulinich suggested that four levels of the hierarchy of the ‘management reserve’ be determined and that each level be trained accordingly (orally). Each program of the Center is an integral part of the four-level complex of programs concerning the development of management reserve. Programs introduce lists of issues, which the modern manager should be familiar with. The programs are structured to complement each other so that the trainees accumulate necessary knowledge moving from level to level, and this is how the principle of on-going management education is realized. As the Center deals with young managers, ‘the reserve’, in other words, with the future of the company, the specialists and teachers of the Center aim at proactive training philosophy. So the trainees should be able not only to respond to current problems of the enterprise, but also to envision strategic goals and objectives of the company and the ways to achieve them. This, in
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turn, enables them to manage task-oriented changes in the organization and motivate its employees for necessary changes. Accordingly, each study program in the Center sets as its goals, first, enabling young leaders for systemic, strategic, and conceptual thinking and, second, the provision of essential knowledge, including the basics of innovation management, innovative view of competition, cooperation, interaction of all interested parties. This should form their new motivation-intellectual basis and later make them prepared to undertake the implementation of corporate objectives on higher management levels. Hence the programs emphasize issues of strategy and crisis management, innovation management, Total Quality Management, management competencies, etc. This, in Center’s view, could create foundation for a modern corporate culture that, while preserving the best of the existing culture, would trigger processes of goal-oriented changes required in these times. Probably the use of group facilitation methods could serve as the Center’s ‘business card’. In Soviet Union, and earlier, workers learned to wait for bosses to make decisions. People in those times had to accept an authoritarian, repressive style of management, which suppressed individuality and initiative. As a rule, presently an authoritarian style of management is still around in Russian organizations. It means that the person receiving a task, at the same time receives the “warning” about punishment for bad execution of the task. As a result, the person thinks about possible ways to avoid punishment rather than about the quality of fulfilling the task. People came to believe that nothing depends on them in their country. Soviet Union developed high technology, but conserved the old style of social relationships among people, including a repressive style of management. But a market economy requires a faster rate of change and more workers’ initiative. Workers need to learn teamwork, problem identification and problem solving skills. Group facilitation methods are focused on releasing creative initiative of personnel, on involving all employees of all levels in the continuous process improvement of services. (See for details: Umpleby et al, 2004; Medvedeva, 2006). In the Center each group of managers has an interactive seminar on strategic planning activity based on the Technology of Participation (ToP). (These methods were developed by the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA)). In this way, young managers discover a new type of leadership and new methods of management. In addition, they can both discuss actual problems of management with their colleagues and try to create a strategy of overcoming these problems, to see that often another side of the problem is an opportunity to overcome the ‘narrow place’ of the process, an opportunity to improve the process. Each program focuses on corporate issues. In accordance with the ideology of corporate university, the Center pursues the development of trainees’ loyalty to a shareholder-owned company “Russian Railroads”. For this purpose, on each level in addition to lectures on corporate culture, trainees take part in a series of events aiming at the development of corporate culture, including lectures on the history of Russian Railroads, visits to the museums of Russian Railroads, field exercises at the leading enterprises of the West-Siberian Railroads, meetings with outstanding people who cast in their lot with the West-Siberian Railroads, with heads of the West-Siberian Railroads. Underway is the development of the training in values of the shareholder-owned company “Russian Railroads”. The block is considered as “cementing” the relationships in the team as something that makes employees proud of belonging to this company. Another block, which the Center includes in its programs and keeps developing, is the health of manager. Stress management. There is a generally accepted fact that the manager’s work is associated with high stress, which is particularly true for railroad management. The Center sees its mission in training managers to cope with such problems. It solves this problem in collaboration with specialists of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biophysics, Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, who evaluate psycho-physiologic resistance to stress and diagnose the ability of optimal functioning in the conditions of long-acting stress factor.
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Using the information obtained, specialists of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biophysics advise managers and recommend how to optimize their work. The Center created the laboratory of bio-management. Teaching methods used in the Center should be specifically recorded. Instructors are trying to reduce the number of traditional lectures to the minimum and give preference to innovative methods of teaching such as interactive seminars, business games and trainings. The Center’s instructors do not consider themselves the source of absolute knowledge with proper answers to all questions; they try to present the material as advice while knowledge is jointly created by the instructor and trainees. Quite frequently the leading managers of the West-Siberian Railroads become instructors of the Center and participants of its graduate conferences. The Center’s business culture is another form of educating its trainees. The specialists of the Center believe that the way they implement their tasks and achieve its goals is an important conceptual component of their work. The Center’s curriculum is based on Quality Improvement Methods, which have been widely adopted in Japanese, American, and European companies. Russian managers should no longer work in old business culture with authoritarian, repressive style of management. The Center’s specialists consider it as developing environment, where trainees might be treated as the conductors of modern business culture, the substance of which is the combination of: 1. Respect to personality and understanding that success of an enterprise, its reputation and viability depend primarily on its people; 2. Understanding that the result of any work is the result of joint effort of the company’s employees and that employees should be able to work in a team; 3. Understanding that profit is an alternative measure of efficiency of work and a source of development and that the service provided should be competitive; 4. Social responsibility as an indicator of the quality of interaction of individual and collective, individual and organization and individual and society. 4.
A recent experience
Previously the Russian railroad was a state-owned monopoly. Since October 2003 it is a shareholder-owned company. In Siberia there are no managers with experience in managing such a company. And there are very few professors with current knowledge of Western management methods, for example, change management, innovation- and innovative management, organizational behavior, quality improvement, and human resource management. The Center’s specialists try to use their international professional contacts in order to bring knowledge of these fields to Novosibirsk. In April 2007 Professor Matjaz Mulej, beside a workshop for students of international economy, gave a workshop on basics of innovation management to Center’s students, which are considered as a prospective management reserve of the West-Siberian Railroad. He started with questions on invention and innovation. Students expressed their views about what is a novelty; why should we work on novelties? Etc. (see Attachment). Discussion caused some comments and led the conversation to problems of Total Quality Management. TQM or continuous process improvement methods are a way not only of improving the quality of goods and services, but also of increasing worker skills and worker autonomy, as well as management style. These methods require workers and managers to be more aware of the whole process in which they are involved, to measure the performance of the process, and to continually innovate, i.e. beneficially modify or redesign the process in order to improve performance. These methods are used in many cities, states, and countries. The tie was explained between innovations and ISO 9000, ISO 14000, the Baldrige Award, and other national awards for outstanding quality, such as Deming Prize. Students mentioned that Russia has great history of developing quality in former Soviet Union and now it has its national award for
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outstanding quality. Since that modern economy is innovative economy, it is impossible to have outstanding economic results without continuous innovations. What is their focus? In 1960th business was oriented on reducing cost, in 1970th quality was added, in 1980th extending of products range was added, in 1990th leading companies focused on production of unique products, after 2000 the ecological problems are added to the earlier ones, in synergy of all five requirements rather than alternatively. Thus, knowledge and emotions management is the hottest subject of the day. Along with equipment, capital, and market, is knowledge the only precondition for invention-innovation processes to succeed? Values are crucial: they dictate in which way one uses knowledge. How do values change? How do ‘mentalities’ change? Macroeconomic theory can guide national economic strategy, but to successful carry out policy recommendations people must behave in the anticipated way. However, in societies with different values, people behave differently. If beliefs and values of people in a society are different from the beliefs and people in the society in which they had emerged, the consequences of policies will be different from what is expected. Change strategies will need to be developed for all intervening organizational levels. Which production factor – land, capital, labor and human creativity (used for innovating) is the most important today? Students concluded – human creativity. Accordingly, it is necessary to develop innovative style of thinking as well as innovative style of management in order to succeed in the market economy. Discussion emphasized importance of cooperative management, which is based on trust and ethics of interdependence. Students concluded that repressive style of management is a problem. Strict management is unrealistic when many solutions are possible, when there is a rapid rate of technological and structural shifts, and when productive relationships are becoming more dynamic and complex. There are many Russian managers who use a strict “Soviet” style of management in their organizations while doing business in the new conditions. The stress of the time of transitions makes an authoritarian style of management tempting. But a market economy requires a faster rate of change and more workers’ initiative, while managers must listen to them more than ever before: it pays. Probably, workers and managers need to learn teamwork, problem identification and problem solving skills, and managers need to learn and practice new styles of management and leadership, in particular, which denotes a cooperative management. The transition from the old to the new style of thinking is not completed. There is great variety in thinking and values among people and confusion in the minds of many. But the main idea Professor Mulej and students jointly concluded with is quite clear – in order to succeed in innovative economy, countries in transitions have to create many modern, innovative managers by innovating their management style toward a co-operative one. 5.
Some conclusions
Practitioners of business and management lack time to read all available literature of today. On the other hand, conditions have changed very much since the times of education of most of them, who have had a normal step-by-step carrier. Managerial knowledge they have been taught, if any at all, in their education, is obsolete, especially in the catching-up countries. The new knowledge is provided by the new literature, or summarized in courses such as the one presented briefly here. With it, managers have a better chance to cope with the current conditions, in which supply exceeds demand very much except for the most innovative suppliers: for their products and services customers are queuing like in the old days. Hence, it might make sense to take seriously the suggestions of the European Union that governments and organizations of all types should make more for Europeans to understand that Europe is lagging behind USA and Japan, potentially also behind China, India, Brasilia, Malaysia etc, because too few governments and managers promote innovation as a culture and practice in Europe, including its latecomers such as Slovenia. The same might be suggested to Russia that currently lives and progresses quite well
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on the basis of its huge depots of raw materials, which may not last for ever. Many underused opportunities may be tackled with more benefit with knowledge from the course under discussion. Innovation of management is crucial. 6.
Attachment: Elementary questions to think about
The course is made of about thirty provocative questions rather than of lecturing, and runs in a lively discussion and workshop style. Therefore this attachment summarizes workshop that is foreseen to tackle the following questions (short answers will follow). 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.
What is a novelty? Why should we work on novelties? Where does a novelty result from? Which novelty / invention becomes a suggestion? Why? Which novelty/invention/suggestion becomes innovation? Why? What are preconditions for a novelty/invention/suggestion to become innovation? Why? What benefit does a novelty/invention/suggestion, which becomes innovation, bring to you as an employee who authored it, and as one who did not author and register it? Why? What has school to do with innovating as the engine of modern progress? In which areas is novelty/invention/suggestion / innovation possible? Why? What benefit does a company/organization have from suggestions? Why? What benefit does a company/organization have from innovations? Why? What links innovations with ISO 9000 certificates? And with ISO 14000? And with EQA or Baldrige Award or Deming Prize or a similar (inter)-national award for outstanding quality? What (work) life quality can one expect in modern conditions, if one does not create innovations (and suggestions as their background)? What can be patented or protected in another way – inventions or innovations? Why? What percentage of patented inventions – by USA data – becomes innovation, i.e. success? Which business functions are tackled by innovating and innovation? Why? What is the degree of risk in modern business that necessarily lives on innovation? Who is considered a loser in most of Europe and who in e.g. Silicon Valley, Ca, US? Why? Today one talks a lot about knowledge management. Along with equipment, capital, and market, is knowledge the only precondition for invention-innovation processes to succeed? Why? What is visible from history and practice of successful ones – what had its turn first: innovation of management, or innovation management (= dealing with creation of inventions, suggestions, potential innovations and innovations)? Why? What is innovative business and how do we make it happen? Why? How do we measure success of the innovative business? Why? How is innovating linked to the entrepreneurial spirit and entrepreneurship? Why? How long can a country keep its rather good quality of life, if its economic development models makes knowledge and knowledge-based products import more important than its / their export? Why? What is today more important and difficult to have – capital or break-through, not only incremental, inventions able to become innovations (while all of them matter)? Why? Which production factor – land, capital, human creativity (used for innovating) and labor matters most today (while all of them matter)? Why? Which production factor – land, capital, human creativity (used for innovating) and labor can leave a company or region most easily, if (work) life conditions are bad? Why? What is more crucial for business success – profit or (creative) staff / coworkers (while all of them matter)? Why?
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28. May a company expect today to receive from school – especially from higher education – a finally formed person who can do any work immediately? Why? What is reflected in such expectations – a modern or an out-dated view of work, education, and creativity? What should therefore be the main point in modern education and life long training? Why? 29. Which size of companies matters in the invention-innovation process as an effort for good quality of (work) life today – small, medium size, or large ones? Why? 30. Where from should a government start to make its country innovative and entrepreneurial rapidly, hence competitive in the global markets, and therefore enjoying a rather good quality of (work) life? 31. How are all these issues linked to the »Rise of the Creative Class« and the 3T (technology, talent, tolerance) experience? 32. Summary 1: Can the coming generation feel (1) entitled do live on the inherited routine or (2) condemned to make innovating its new routine/habit with no break? 33. Summary 2: If ten ingredients should be chosen for a requisitely holistic action aimed at promotion of the invention-innovation processes and high quality business and personal life, what would you combine?
Short answers: 1. Everything, which we have not known so far. 2. Because of the contemporary socio-economic conditions. 3. From our own and others' individual and team creativity, knowledge, ambition and possibilities matching the needs. 4. Novelty suggested to authors' employer for application. 5. Novelty that creates benefit to the user / consumer (inside the same organization or in the outer market), and on this basis authors/owners benefit too. See definition in bold in the main text of this paper above. 6. See equation of preconditions for making an innovation. What can be omitted? Nothing, most probably. Innovation = (invention X entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial spirit X requisite holism X management X co-workers X innovation friendly culture X customers X competitors X suppliers X natural environment X socio-economic environment and other outer, i.e. objective conditions X random factors, such as luck) Legend: X = interdependence 7. Employment and pay, perhaps additional pay or better pay. 8. School provides for knowledge and values, develops talents and emotions – but in every direction chosen (by government, teachers, parents, influential others), be it pro- or antiinnovation. 9. Everywhere, in all departments / business functions, not on production shop floor only. 10. Ideas – suggestions what could be done better and how, and more co-workers who think and create. 11. Lower cost, better quality, broader range, more uniqueness and more care for natural environment happier customers, higher margins, more chances for development and therefore for survival of the organizations, employment and pay-role in them. 12. International document on achieving the best possible quality. The given quality cannot become better with no innovation. 13. Worse and worse. 14. Inventions – suggestions and perhaps potential innovation; innovations are already publicly known and yielding benefit. 15. One. It is a very complex activity and it requires a high level of the requisite holism. 16. All. And in co-operation. 17. Risk is beyond 90/95 %. One becomes a loser, once one stops trying. Success is not normal.
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18. No. Values and other emotions are equally crucial: they direct one's use of knowledge and are interdependent with it. 19. Innovation of management – from a commanding to a co-operating one; then, co-workers may and must develop and use their capabilities to the benefit of their employers. 20. Business in which on lives on innovation predominantly. 21. With creditworthiness criteria, but with no limitation to accountancy data. 22. Entrepreneurship is not equal to owning an enterprise, but to use of all kinds of inventions to make innovations. The entrepreneurial spirit is the will and capability to do it rather than being lazy and subordinated. Everybody can author an invention, but this does not make them entrepreneurs and yield any benefit, until they become entrepreneurial. In law, entrepreneur is the owner of an enterprise, in business he or she is an innovator (but not necessarily an inventor), along with other attributes. 23. Not much longer, because this is no attribute of an innovative society and innovative business. 24. Break-through inventions (banks offer money, but without a really good idea one cannot employ money as capital; neither will a serious bank provide it due to too much risk). 25. Human being; land-ownership supports only a small portion of owners. This change makes no need for having colonies any longer, and capital for really good ideas is always available. Trading with former colonies is cheaper than having colonies with all responsibilities. 26. Human being; therefore management must first of all innovate itself and its own style in order to create a team with a high level of trust (interdependence, identification, consideration of the need to authorize and educate/train/enable co-workers, and thus freeing boss's time for the most long-term and difficult matters, as well as for him or her to be replaceable after departure) development and consideration of values matters equally as much as knowledge education by example of the influential ones, especially owners and managers. 27. Human beings; if they are not there and are not creative, chances for profit are poor. It profit matters to owners and managers more than humans and their innovation, profit becomes an end of its own and destroys profit, because it destroys trust and commitment, which requires costly supervision. 28. No. In the available time one cannot provide enough of the basic knowledge to be applicable for creativity anywhere, and add enough of the applied knowledge related to specific needs of a specific company and job in it. Additional training inside company is needed, but linked to a regular use of knowledge, especially an innovative one. 29. All, depending on the industry and business topic, and market relations. 30. In its own work. It should enable all public servants and politicians to know and practice innovation (the non-technological one!!); it should encourage them all for it, first of all. Then, it should behave like a big buyer in a buyers' market all its suppliers of anything from research to daily commodities must be at the top of all innovators of their industry and require their own supplier to be so as well. 31. In USA R. Florida (2002) discovered that the creative class has grown from 5 (five) % to 35 % of all employed, while the worker class has fallen from 40 % to 10 (ten) %, and the 55 % making the service class do not earn much either because they only create condition for the creative class to work well and contribute most of all three, thus to earn most as well. The best social environment for the creative class exists where the 3T are best: tolerance for different habits in life style etc. brings talented people and technology follows them. Innovation is more assured then otherwise. 32. (2). 33. Let us starts from OECD's definition of knowledge-based society. It tries to make a synergy of (1) the process from making of knowledge, invention etc. all way to a well diffused innovation, growing into a beneficial daily practice; (2) invention/innovation typology; (3)
Logistics & Sustainable Transport
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dialectical system of preconditions for knowledge to give birth to innovation; (4) requisite holism as a way to diminishing the high risk level of the invention-innovation process (IIP); (5) application of the combined application of Mulej's USOMID and De Bono's 6 Thinking Hats methods as a tool for requisite holism in practice, to which (6) Christakis' and Bausch's co-laboratories of creativity can be added; results are put in (7) diffusion of innovation; (8) heart storming is added anew to facilitate it in order for (9) innovative business and (10) innovative society to surface and/or evolve. What should managers, researchers, and government do in order to make such approach to IIP meet its potential users' absorption capacity, is the suggestion at the end. References: Afuah, A. (1998): Innovation Management. Strategies, Implementation and Profits. New York etc. Oxford University Press EU (2004): Innovation Management and the Knowledge-Driven Economy. Brussels-Luxembourg. European Commission, Directorate-general for Enterprise Florida, R. (2005): Vzpon ustvarjalnega razreda. (The Rise of the Creative Class. In Slovenian, translated from English). Velenje. IPAK Huston, L. and N. Sakkab. (2006): Connect and Develop. Inside Procter & Gamble’s New Model for Innovation. Harvard Business Review, March: 1-9 Henry, D. (2006): Profit Margins. Creativity Pays. Here’s How Much. BusinessWeek, April 24, p. 76 IBM (2006): Global Innovation Outlook 2.0 (www.ibm.com/gio). Likar, B., Fatur, P. (2007): Sistemski pristop v uvajanju strategije inovativnosti - primer lesne industrije = The systemic approach to innovation strategy implementation - the case of wood industry, LES wood, 59, 1-2. Medvedeva, T. (2006): “Innovative Influence” Kybernetes, 35, 7/8, 1126-1135. McGregor, J. (2006): The World’s Most Innovative Companies. Business Week. April 24: 63-76 Mogensen, A., ed. (1981 and earlier for decades): Work Simplification. Executive Conference Material. Lake Placid, NY, Work Simplification Inc. Mogensen, A., and Rausa, R. (1989): Mogy. An Autobiography. Father of Work Simplification. Idea Associates. Chesapeake, VA Nussbaum, B. (2005): Special Report. Get Creative! How to Build Innovative Companies. And: A Creative Corporation Toolbox. Business Week, 8/15 August: 51-68 Nussbaum, B. (2006): inmanifesto. In inside innovation. Business Week, June: 3 Rogers, E. M. (1995): Diffusion of Innovation. Fourth Edition. The Free Press, New York .. The Economist. (2006): The new organisation. A survey of the company. The Economist, January 21st: 1-20 .. The Economist. (2006a): Technology Quarterly [with several contributions on technological innovation]. The Economist, June 10th: 1-36 .. The Economist. (2006b): Technology Quarterly [with several contributions on technological innovation]. The Economist, September 23rd: 1-36 .. The Economist. (2006c): Technology Quarterly [with several contributions on technological innovation]. The Economist, December 2nd: 1-36 Umpleby, S., Medvedeva, T. and Oyler, A. (2004), «Technology of Participation as a means of improving universities in transitional economies». World Futures, 60, 1-2, 129-136