Innovation Roles The innovation process is supported by people in key roles. For innovation to be successful, these roles must be filled by talented and motivated people. Not only must roles have definition and identification, but those playing innovation roles must also have an expectation that they are part of an overall process. Innovation roles do not exist in isolation of one another. Understanding these roles is important to the understanding of innovation. Roles give identity and meaning to the actions of individuals who make innovation happen. Innovation roles can be compared to actual activity and performance situations in an organization. This comparison helps to identify the presence or absence of an innovation process and organization's capability to innovate. Key Innovation Roles Consistent with the process steps outlined in the next chapter, the following roles i are crucial for achieving innovation in most organizational settings. While the labels are somewhat arbitrary and informal, and in some cases they overlap, they reflect the actions required to achieve basic innovation steps. The spotter role serves as the eyes and ears of the organization, with an orientation to the external environment. Spotters scan the external environment and monitor the organization s internal operations to identify the need for new products, services, methods, or processes. Spotters have the viewpoint and conceptual power to grasp the sense of the organization s mission, interpret events and trends, and to recognize problems that suggest opportunities for innovation. This role serves as a trigger that starts the innovation process. Spotters are often first to recognize those problems, needs, and opportunities that require an innovative response from the organization. Spotters tend to be boundary spanners, having interests and responsibilities both within their organization and in diverse areas outside of it. They have traits usually found in very experienced employees who have maintained close ties to their professional or technical field. Regular exposure to the literature and conferences in their field, a wide network of colleagues in the same or similar fields, regular interchange with a user community outside the organization, and sustained relationships with other key players inside the organization are also important to the spotter. In business, it's hard to underestimate the importance of competitive intelligence. Recognizing problems and opportunities in competitive intelligence is one of the key activities of a spotter. Over the past decade, gathering
information on competitors has grown from an obscure function in a few companies to a widely practiced element of competitive strategy. One powerful avenue for spotters to seek competitive intelligence is through the internet to web pages that offer important strategic information. i This discussion of innovation roles is portrayed within a framework drawn from Roberts, Edward B., (1987). Generating Technological Innovation. Oxford Press, and Albrecht, Karl. (1987). The Creative Corporation. Dow Jones-Irwin. The inventor role describes the person or team that is able to generate creative ideas that lead to options and solutions. Inventors are the catalyst for a new innovation. They usually present their ideas to others for review and critique. Approval is the logical result from this sequence. Because this role relies heavily on creativity and insight, it is usually performed by individuals or small groups working as a team, rather than by a larger organizational unit. As such, the role is often a temporal one, seldom designated formally. Anyone in the organization can perform this role, either regularly, or occasionally by circumstance. This role is important in the innovation process because it translates a need or opportunity into an idea or concept that represents a solution. This conceptual translation enables the innovation process to work with the essence and value of an idea rather than simply being stalled with the recognition of a problem. Effectiveness of an inventor in the innovation process relies on the three characteristics of creativity described earlier in this text: creative skills, professional or domain knowledge, and task motivation. Creative skills enable the inventor to imagine approaches or solutions that others might not recognize. Domain knowledge enables the inventor to be aware of and fully understand the nature of a problem or phenomena. Task motivation drives inventors to solve problems and meet needs and opportunities. The tester role provides the experiential and practical leadership to evaluate the feasibility and potential of the innovative idea. A tester is a conceptual thinker who has the knowledge and experience to see the relevance of an idea in relation to the mission or purpose of the organization. Testers can be found in almost anywhere in the organization. They are people with solid experience that comes from both successes as well as failures. They have an "institutional memory" of both good and bad results experienced by the organization in past efforts to change or innovate. Drawing on a broad base of experience, their opinions are convincing and respected. Testers have a reservoir of experience in the internal workings of the organization with an understanding of the key technical hurdles required for success. They also are masters of the external user environment where
knowledge of the practical concerns about users and their applications are keys to a successful innovation. Credibility is a key factor for their effectiveness in this role. An individual serving as the champion of an innovation persistently advocates the value and importance of the new idea, and sees it through to implementation. The champion s role is to be a strong leader, helping to overcome key political and procedural hurdles required for success. In order to do this, the champion must first assemble, then orchestrate all the necessary support from sources within the organization. Although not independent of the organization, champions are often compared to entrepreneurs. They use entrepreneurial methods such as selling ideas to others, securing resources like money, people, and facilities, while taking risks to develop an innovation. The champion usually has access to top management through avenues of communication, direct reports, or control of resources. Typically, the champion emerges as the one best able to present the benefits of the idea, concept, or product better than any other role player in the innovation process. The gatekeeper is an informal role that involves collecting and channeling information about relevant people and sources of knowledge both inside and outside the organization. Gatekeepers provide links to key sources of information for those involved in the innovation process. They are the authority on who knows what, and what needs to be done. They serve as facilitators of the innovation process, brokering information among the various innovation role players. Gatekeepers can serve in marketing or technical roles through network relationships outside the organization. Gatekeepers use their connections to transmit information between marketing and R&D departments, between quality management and product development departments, or between lead users and top management. Qualities of effective technology gatekeepers include a high level of technical competence and an ability to translate complex technical ideas into understandable language. Technology gatekeepers keep informed of technical developments that occur outside the organization as well as inside the organization. They are resources of technical knowledge drawn from journals, conferences, colleagues, and other organizations.
A process manager is similar to a project leader or project manager in a matrix organization. Process managers usually play informal roles, but may be designated formally in the organization s hierarchy, if only temporarily. This role is filled by someone acting as a conductor to orchestrate the overall innovation effort. By getting individual role players to do their part, the process manager serves as the "organization man" and primary supporting person to the champion. They draw on skills for motivating others, planning, and being able to see and translate the big picture views of other innovation role players. Another way to describe the process manager role is to compare and contrast it with the traditional description of the project manager. i At one time or another, almost every project manager takes on the role of a project champion. The project management role in most organizations has several dimensions: administrator, cheerleader, ambassador, integrator, and planner. In addition to their many formal duties, project managers are required to perform many informal duties to ensure successful implementation of their projects. In contrast, a traditional project manager may be caught up in the day-to-day details of a project and may not be able to shift focus to the broader perspective of an organization-wide innovation process. The sponsor is a somewhat passive role in the innovation process, but no less important. Sponsors may be involved in assisting other innovation role players gain access to resources and communicating with top management. A derivative role of the sponsor is the protector. These protectors are usually higher level managers or executives in the organization who insulate the innovation from internal bureaucratic threats emanating from other parts of the organization. Usually top-level executives acting behind the scenes, sponsors oversee the innovation effort and help get the required resources by removing organizational barriers and providing advice and guidance to the innovation team. Another way to describe the sponsor role i is to contrast it with the role of a mentor. A sponsor is different than a mentor, although in some cases both roles may be held by the same person. A mentor relationship is deeply personal and deals less with innovations for the marketplace and more with ways to align personal and professional growth to corporate life. Mentors are concerned with career strategies as much as with business strategies. The sponsor, however, helps the innovation process by presenting ideas to top management, and intervening behind the scenes to keep the innovative idea under consideration and viable. Sponsors may be characterized as "godfathers," i who actively, though indirectly, support an innovation. They do everything possible within their capacity as senior managers to see that an innovation receives the support it needs. One important function of godfathers is to make it known throughout the organization
that a specific innovation effort is under their personal guidance or protection. As sponsors, godfathers make certain that resources remain available to the effort throughout development to implementation. In addition, sponsors also use their influence to coach innovation teams when problems arise so that the likelihood of a political derailment is lessened. Sponsors wield considerable political power in their organizations and use it to protect an innovation effort under their wing. The seller role involves positioning the innovation in the marketplace, or the user environment. In order to do this, the seller must develop a business definition of the innovation which clearly identifies its value. The seller also takes responsibility for translating that definition of the innovation's value into a strategy for adopting the innovation. Where the user environment is inside the organization, the seller must make a case for the innovation within the organization. Convincing an internal bureaucracy of administrators, supervisors, middle managers, and coordinators of the value and importance of an innovative idea is what the seller must do. For example, where the innovation is an improvement in a manufacturing process or management operation, the seller outlines the costs and benefits of the improvement and makes a case for the change to line managers who must ultimately adopt it. Where the innovation is developed for the marketplace, the seller serves as a promotional and marketing arm for the organization. Here, the seller is involved developing a market strategy to gain customer acceptance of the innovation and sees that the innovation is adopted, utilized, and widely diffused in the marketplace.