Fostering Creativity and Innovation in a New-Product Research Group
I once had the good fortune to manage a growing new-product research group as it developed a new and exciting technology from idea conception to the beginning of pilot production. It is not very often that one manager has an opportunity to experiment with techniques in teambuilding, motivation, creativity development, and group goal-setting with essentially a control group, during the lifetime of a single new-product research project. I shall present in this paper an outline of those key factors which I believe fostered a high level of group performance. My focus will be on five key elements of a group structure which in my view encourages innovation and creative thinking and minimizes the fear of failure. I will include personal accounts of specific events in order to illustrate the concepts presented.
Group Effectiveness
It is interesting to consider how the group I managed (the Advanced Product Development Group of Mead Imaging) got its start. While the group existed prior to 1981, it really began to grow when an idea was developed by a stereotypical inventor who wasn’t even a group member. This fellow (I will call him Sam) was considered difficult to manage, hard to get along with, but very “creative.” He was working in a technical service group when I met him and hating every minute of it. He had managed, however, to sneak some experimental time to work on his latest new idea, a non-silver, dry-developed imaging material. He had a crude but very interesting picture which he had made with his process but he wasn’t sure what to do with it. There was no prior history of imaging research at our laboratory and no one was overly excited about his result. His manager, furthermore, would rather have had him concentrate more on his job responsibilities and less on his inventing.
Sam and I talked, and I got very excited. My background, before joining the firm, had been in imaging systems. I saw great potential in Sam’s idea and supported it enthusiastically. My boss also was interested, and between us we convinced our management to support an active research effort to develop the process further. Sam joined my group and the project was underway.
It is interesting to note that the key idea came from an individual, as it almost always does, but it had to have a group of people to turn it into something useful. This combination of facts—the individuality that often leads to the creative insight and the need for group effort which can, without great care, stifle individual contribution—is, I believe, the key to successful research management. Bradford and Cohen (1984, p. 286) state:
Groups can be dangerous forces toward conformity in thought and behavior. Too many people experience their organizations as constraining. But groups can also support individuality. As a team develops, it moves from a collection of individuals who are suspicious of each other (and therefore want to limit differences among themselves) into a cohesive but consensual group where individual differences are valued and supported. A genuinely collaborative team can allow more diversity and autonomy than one that clings together for mutually distrustful motives.
My experience with APD supports this view. Effective teams can be assembled and individual creativity can be fostered in an effective team environment. David Campbell presents this synthesis of individual creativity and group consensus in a graphic way in his book Take the Road to Creativity and Get Off Your Dead End (Figure 1). The individual creative actions are represented by many short, sometimes disjointed arrows but the general thrust of the effort is in the direction of the bold arrow. This bold arrow represents the goal of the effort, the direction in which the work hopefully will flow. This bold arrow can be developed consensually, and with strong leadership can be followed without prohibiting the kind of creative meandering which might lead to new innovations with even more potential than the original. This, I believe, has been the history of APD.
Management Style—“Management by Walking Around”
When I read In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Bob Waterman, I was intrigued by much of what their research had shown. I was especially interested in their discussion of the Hewlett-Packard Corporation and its philosophy of “management by walking around.” I liked the concept because my experience so directly reinforces their conclusions. I cannot understand how a manager can sit in an office for eight hours and shuffle papers, make phone calls, read and write memos, and expect to build a high-performing team. My philosophy of management is simple: Spend the major portion of your time with your subordinates on their turf. Listen and be involved but don’t meddle. Only in this way can you truly expect to understand what they see as key issues, what is really involved in various project activities, and especially how people do or do not work together.
I remember one of the first important lessons I learned while managing APD. The group had grown to twenty scientists and technicians, and we had assigned several project leaders to work in specific problem areas. I decided that my constant appearances in the labs and hallways might be in some way getting in the way of what I hoped would be the future “leaders” of the group, who now were learning how to run their own project teams. I didn’t want to appear to them to be meddling. With great reluctance I started to spend more time in my office and less in the laboratory area.
Within two weeks I was approached by several members of the group, including the project team leaders. “What’s the problem?” I was asked. “You quitting or something? Where have you been? Don’t you care anymore about the project?” I couldn’t fully comprehend the impact of my decision. They hadn’t seen me as meddling at all. In fact, they truly enjoyed the daily contact with me. They appreciated the interaction and discussions that took place in our hallways and wanted nothing to do with my new “style.” Even the technicians, who were typically more difficult to communicate with than the staff, were very supportive of my visits to the laboratory area. Needless to say, I returned to my former practice.
The group actually developed a new working style as the months passed and our number swelled to thirty-six. Since I spent so much time in the hallways, informal meetings would often be held. The group actually became noted for their “hallway meetings” and it became part of the APD “culture,” which was very important to maintaining positive group identity. No one ever accused APD management of not keeping them informed. You could find out anything about group issues out in the hallway any day of the week.
Another interesting effect of the walking-around mentality was its impact on group communications generally. Since I shared so openly, others began to do the same. Even technicians began to open up, to communicate more directly with their supervisors and me. The scientists shared their project work without concerning themselves with issues of turf. To openly share ideas and concerns became the norm.
In Figure 2 I summarize “management by walking around” as I have experienced it. I have noted four key “don’ts” for research managers which I believe are very important. Managers are by definition in positions of authority and their statements can sometimes be taken by subordinates as “truth” or at least as decrees. The manager has a heavy responsibility therefore to manage his words as well as his group. If high performance is expected from people, they must be allowed to express themselves openly, to pursue their own ideas vigorously, and to expect that disagreement and conflict among themselves and their management will be fairly and honestly resolved. They must also expect that this resolution will not always be in favor of the boss. The walking-around style allows this to happen in a natural way and it diminishes the dangers of missed communication.
In Figure 3 I present the “fine lines” that I had to be aware of as I attempted to foster a highly communicative style in my group. I show, for example, disagreeing and forbidding. As mentioned above, a manager’s position of authority can lead to misunderstanding. I have actually experienced situations where, as part of a discussion on an experiment, I disagreed with the specific focus of the work. I did not reject it but only presented my point of view as a colleague. Several of the younger staff, however, saw my disagreeing as forbidding and stopped their work in this area. As it turned out, I was wrong, they were right and the work was delayed. This was an important lesson for me and I try to be constantly on the alert for possible misunderstandings and, more importantly, for instances where I actually cross the line.
It is interesting that this style seemed to work well even as we grew to more than fifty. It is also interesting that it worked even as the make-up of the group shifted from a primarily young, inexperienced staff of chemists, to a more heterogeneous mix of different age groups and professions (see Table 1).
Handling Conflict—“It’s OK to Disagree With the Boss, or Anyone Else”
Throughout my many years in laboratory settings, I have noted the tendency for people to conform to certain implied or stated norms. The most obvious of these is the classic, “Don’t rock the boat.”
Because so many people adhere to these norms, those who do not adhere stand out in stark contrast. The result is that they get certain labels applied to them like “strange,” “kook,” and even “creative.” (There sometimes is a tendency to label the boat-rocker as creative regardless of whether he or she has ever really done anything new or different.)
I like to think that there is within most people, especially researchers, the desire to be a little different from others and the desire to contribute and have that contribution recognized. But too often we place people in organizational structures that suppress these desires and make it more profitable for them merely to conform. The style of management in such groups, I believe, is the key to such outcomes. If the boss is autocratic and always right, there is no obvious economic or personal gain in taking chances or making waves. If, on the other hand, the boss is sometimes wrong and admits it, if there is a clear and unequivocal commitment to sharing responsibility within the group, then there is no benefit to be gained by keeping quiet when you disagree.
My desire was to develop a different norm within APD. I wanted a team that worked well together, but at the same time I wanted people to be free to openly disagree with each other and with me. I wanted people to find ways to develop their own styles and yet build a team philosophy which would allow us to find, in a consensual way, what the key issues were, what our primary goals should be, and how we could best resolve these issues and reach our goals.
When I speak of conflict, I am focusing on the general issues associated with the relationships between people and their ideas. These relationships tend to be based, in my experience, on the need for people to feel that they are worthwhile and that their ideas are worthwhile. When they perceive that their ideas are being challenged, they project this challenge of their ideas onto their self-esteem and become hostile. In a research environment, however, this defensiveness cannot be tolerated. People must develop a sense of what science is about and be willing to accept debate, differences, and even argument as part of the process. My job, then, as manager was to create an atmosphere within APD which treated conflict and creative conflict resolution as the norm.
The problem with conflict, when it comes to differences in ideas, seems to me to be related to our tendency to get off the subject of the debate (the difference in our ideas) and to project the arguments onto our personalities; we get personal and attack each other instead of our ideas. Eliminating this response requires constant attention. As manager of APD, I started very early fostering a questioning mentality among group members. I got them used to debate on technical issues. I supported my views tenaciously but accepted being wrong with a smile and with as much lightheartedness as I could muster. By the time APD had grown to thirty, our culture included this concept. Once again, we were viewed by the rest of the building as a group that constantly disagreed with each other, fought in the hallways and in meetings, and yet we always seemed to have fun and we got things done.
As I consider my time as manager of APD and try to isolate the key elements of success in our group, I have to believe that our ability to deal with issues directly, to fight for what each individual thought was right, and to accept each other as human beings and not just managers and scientists and technicians was as important to our success as anything else. We thought of each other as people, not just superiors and subordinates. Part of the natural working relationship included concern for each other.
Maintaining Open Communication—“I Know How to Solve Your Problem”
I agree wholeheartedly with the concept that individuals generate great new ideas. I also agree wholeheartedly with the concept that organizations are needed to turn ideas into useful innovations. As we formed APD and as it grew, many different skills were added to our group. When we were only six people, we all knew what was going on in the group. Everyone interacted with everyone else. As we grew to fifty, the issue of communication became more complex. I must say that communicating in a group setting does not necessarily mean having a meeting. My experience would support the view that meetings, while important, are probably less effective as communication tools than more informal means.
If anyone were to ask me why communication among members of our project team is important, I would answer: “No one member of our group has all the answers, but at any one time, on any key issue, someone has an important and perhaps vital contribution to make. If I don’t take advantage of this input, then I am being dumb.” But why have so many groups failed to develop good communication techniques and channels? In my experience the answer is less complex than might be expected. In simple terms, people tend to act with self-interest when they don’t trust those with whom they are expected to interact. Within organizations, this overriding self-interest can be stifling.
My approach to communications involved several elements: (1) Set an example—communicate everything that I know and above all be absolutely honest. (2) Emphasize informal structures and minimize long meetings. (3) Force cross-group communication by creating a “task force” format which minimizes or even eliminates bureaucratic structures. (4) Keep people talking all the time so that when issues develop they are accustomed to dealing with them. (5) Use group meetings and seminars to give people an opportunity to present their work and receive positive and negative feedback. (6) Hold group-wide, off-site meetings twice a year to develop goals, emphasize priorities, and, most importantly, build group identity and reinforce our culture.
Of all of the above, I believe that the first is the most vital. If mistrust is the key barrier to communication, then it must be eliminated. No meeting structure or forced system of any kind will cause effective communication to take place if people question each other’s motives. If they question my motives, and if they don’t feel that I am communicating honestly and openly, then they will not attempt to develop communication among themselves.
The history of APD is in fact replete with examples of honest communication and sharing of ideas. I never had to force people to talk to each other. One example, I believe, presents the best perspective on our group communication mentality.
As we became more convinced of the potential of our new invention, our management began to develop a plan to build a manufacturing organization. The first step in this process involved hiring a skilled engineer with experience in operations and scale-up. The process-development section of our group had been responsible for the pilot production operations up to this point and had a great deal of specific knowledge in this area. It was necessary for our new colleague, who ultimately would become production manager, to learn from our process-development engineers.
Several months after arriving in the laboratory, I was talking with our new production manager about his experiences on joining our team, and he said, “I never felt like an outsider. From the first day, I was welcomed into the group. I was given information on every aspect of the process. I was invited to group meetings and my suggestions were solicited. This was not a phony attempt to make me feel good; it was legitimate sharing of information. I never experienced such an open and totally transparent organization.”
I don’t want to give the impression that our group emphasis on communication was in some way intended to eliminate individual contribution. In fact, this constant emphasis on people talking to people seems to foster individual invention and innovation. Most inventions originate in the mind of an individual but require refinement before they become practical. Refinement can be accelerated if the original idea is shared with colleagues who can offer an honest critique. This only happens where trust is a key element of the organization. When you know that you can openly share your great new idea with your colleagues and your boss without being laughed at or, worse, having it stolen, then you will be willing to try new things, to be an inventor, and, most importantly, to be unafraid to try and even to fail.
Group Goal Setting—“The Buying-in Process”
I have already mentioned the importance of the group in turning new ideas into useful products. In high-technology endeavors, this is especially true. High-tech problems tend to be very complex. Because of this complexity, multidiscipline groups are assembled to attack the problem. The question then becomes, “What is the problem?” This may sound silly, but my experience reinforces the belief that clearly defining the key problem or issue to be solved is of fundamental importance. The question that any individual or group of individuals involved in new-product research should ask is, “What is my goal?”
I believe that APD succeeds at what it does because everyone has a chance to contribute to the setting of their own goals. I don’t believe that goals by themselves are really significant, but in the process of goal-setting, the individual communicates with colleagues, understands the purpose of the effort, and identifies those areas of expertise which must be drawn into the project if it is to be successful. I don’t believe that management-by-objectives works in research. In MBO systems, at least as I have experienced them, the emphasis seems to be on the objective, to the exclusion of the effort which was made to reach the objective. In a research setting this tends to lead to safe goals rather than the “stretch” goals which are to be preferred.
I view goal-setting primarily as a communication tool. It fosters a buying-in attitude among the members of the group and makes it relatively easy to generate enthusiasm for tasks. When every member of the group has a say in what it is trying to accomplish, and feels free to offer criticism or support for particular points of view, then they feel like the group’s goals truly are their own. It might be said that we are not really establishing a climate for individual creativity when we focus individual effort so completely on group goals. I would only say that when individuals have a clear view of where they are going, and when an atmosphere of trust, risk-taking, and open communication exists, then the creative impulse can be encouraged. It takes many creative impulses to build a complex, new technology.
Performance Appraisal—“A Real-time Process”
I left performance appraisal for the end of my paper because it is by far the most difficult topic for me to address. I have read a substantial number of articles and books on the subject but have come to no definitive conclusions. The complexity of the issue is almost overwhelming and has apparently troubled organizational-development professionals for many years.
I believe that discussions of individual performance should be part of the ongoing process of communicating. These discussions should be two-way and should involve specific suggestions for action. The concept of “shared expectations” is especially attractive to me. When both parties understand clearly what they expect of each other, then evaluation becomes relatively straightforward. I also believe that in a research setting, care must be taken to discriminate between the goal and the effort to achieve the goal. Again, I have a fear of MBO in the laboratory.
Since our primary effort was focused on building a high-performing group, the evaluation of individuals could not easily be separated from the group activities. If the group performed well, and all were expected to have been part of the group, then were all the members good performers? This is a complicated and difficult question without a simple answer. It is at least reasonable, however, to assume that a real-time, ongoing review of expectations versus performance would keep both the evaluator and the evaluated on the same wave length.
If I had to propose a program for evaluation that I felt was best for my organization, I would begin by squirming in my seat uncomfortably. I would then propose that any attempt to measure performance in some analytical way is both counterproductive and impossible. I would say that a better approach would be to allow the long-term success of the team to speak for itself. Give appropriate raises at regular intervals to all members of the team but reserve incentive bonuses for the outstanding performers. These individuals will be clearly recognizable as the project proceeds. I have had no problem recognizing developing leaders in my group and have given them more responsibility and (insofar as I could) more substantial monetary rewards. The key is that I am in daily contact with these people and know exactly what their contributions have been.
Conclusions
David Campbell (1977, pp. 87–99) has listed seven blocks to creativity in organizations. Two of these, A Preoccupation with Order and Tradition and A Reluctance to Play, seem to me to be the most pertinent in laboratory settings. We have attempted in APD to minimize hierarchy and maximize intergroup activities. We have also tried to do things in different ways, ways which lead to loosely structured teams and a lot of argument and laughter. The success of our organization has been encouraging. It has reinforced in my mind the idea that people are fundamentally fun, creative, and interested in each other. At the same time I have seen that people are, at their core, not very rational. In fact, people are an interesting study in conflict and paradox. Peters and Waterman (1982, pp. 55–56) state beautifully what I fully believe is true.
To understand why excellent [organizations] … are so effective in engendering both commitment and regular innovation from [many] … people, we have to take into account the way they deal with the following contradictions that are built into human nature:
1. All of us are self-centered, suckers for a bit of praise, and generally like to think of ourselves as winners. But the fact of the matter is that our talents are distributed normally—none of us is really as good as he or she would like to think, but rubbing our noses daily in that reality doesn’t do us a bit of good.
2. Our imaginative, symbolic right brain is at least as important as our rational, deductive left. We reason by stories at least as often as with good data. “Does it feel right?” counts for more than “Does it add up?” or “Can I prove it?”
3. As information processors, we are simultaneously flawed and wonderful. On the one hand, we can hold explicitly in mind, at most a half dozen or so facts at one time. Hence, there should be an enormous pressure on managements—of complex organizations especially—to keep things very simple indeed. On the other hand, our unconscious mind is powerful, accumulating a vast storehouse of patterns, if we let it. Experience is an excellent teacher; yet most businessmen seem to undervalue it.…
4. We are creatures of our environment, very sensitive and responsive to external rewards and punishment. We are also strongly driven from within, self-motivated.
5. We act as if express beliefs are important, yet action speaks louder than words. One cannot, it turns out, fool any of the people any of the time. They watch for patterns in our most minute actions, and are wise enough to distrust words that in any way mismatch our deeds.
6. We desperately need meaning in our lives and will sacrifice a great deal to institutions that will provide meaning for us. We simultaneously need independence, to feel as though we are in charge of our destinies, and to have the ability to stick out.
Now, how do we deal with these conflicts?
I believe that we begin by developing, as we have in APD, a culture. This culture should come about as a natural result of people dealing with people in an open and honest way. Integrity must be the starting point and high performance must be the goal.
I used the word culture several times earlier in this paper. The idea that groups or companies develop a culture has been presented in several theories of management including William Ouchi’s (1981) Theory Z:
Organizational culture consists of a set of symbols, ceremonies and myths that communicate the underlying values and beliefs of that organization to its employees. These rituals put flesh on what would otherwise be sparse and abstract ideas, bringing them to life in a way that has meaning and impact for a new employee.
As I watched the APD group grow, it became clear to me that this concept is very important and very real. As we developed as a group with our own way of doing things, and with our own style of interactions, goal-setting and conflict resolution, we began to get a reputation in the central research facility in which we were only a part. We were different and strange but we had fun and we got results. To me, however, the key element was that people in APD were proud of their membership in what to them was a very special group.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Dr. Dale R. Shackle for allowing me to “do my thing” with the APD group and for always being supportive. I want to especially thank the members of APD who were always fun, always enthusiastic, and, most importantly, always themselves.
Bibliography
Bradford, D. L., & Cohen, A. R. (1984). Managing for excellence: The guide to developing high performance in contemporary organizations. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Campbell, D. (1977). Take the road to creativity and get off your dead end. Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership.
Ouchi, W. G. (1981). Theory Z. New York: Avon.
Peters, T. J., & Waterman, R. H., Jr. (1982). In search of excellence: Lessons from America’s best-run companies. New York: Harper & Row.
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My first meeting with Dick Wright was in Chillicothe, Ohio, at the first of a series of seminars on creative leadership that I was giving at Mead Central Research. One of his comments was particularly memorable. He said that he had not received his education as a student at university; instead, he had received it at Polaroid where his job made it possible for him to follow Edwin Land around for ten years and observe the process of innovation.
Dick had just left Polaroid to lead a soon-to-be-formulated Advanced Product Division for Mead. His first assignment was to find out what inside-the-lab ideas had product potential. I was also impressed with the organization’s recognition that creativity existed inside that laboratory; they did not see a need to start afresh. Mead’s management assumed that a new leader from the outside would be able to explore internally and see potential products that people before Dick had missed because they were concentrating on managing the lab activity.
I don’t want to give the impression, however, that Dick wasn’t interested in management. When I talked with him I saw immediately that he was passionate about managing the people process. Despite his fascination with and understanding of technology, I perceived that he would give the nod to the importance of the people-process side of new-product development and research.
I gave eighteen seminars over a period of thirty months, and during that time I witnessed Dick finding individual contributors and nurturing them, encouraging those ideas that, although they may have initially appeared to be half-baked, had high potential. Then he would expertly draw together a team around those ideas and build excitement about the projects.
Dick’s team meetings would often take place standing in the hallway. These team conferences were matter-of-fact, relaxed, and oriented toward problem solving. He encouraged team members, providing a certain freedom to take risks. I think that you can sense the flavor of his management style in this article.
Using these skills, Dick took an idea to the marketplace in a very short time and introduced an imaging technology that subsequently spun off into a new company. I hope you enjoy his description of that process. SSG.