ORGANIC - Continuous Organisational
Learning in Innovation and Companies
Richard MESSNARZ1, Romana Vajde Horvat2, Katja Harej2, Eva Feuer3
1
ISCN GesmbH, Schieszstattgasse 4, A-8010 Graz, Austria
Tel: +43 316 811198, Fax: + 43 316 811312, Email: rmess@iscn.com
2
CIT, Gosposvetska cesta 84, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia
Tel: +386 2 228 2351, Fax: +386 2 35 5134, Email: cit@cit.si
3
MTA SZTAKI, Kende U. 13-17, H-1111 Budapest, Hungary
Tel: + 36 1 279 6285, Fax: +36 1 279 5269, Email: eva.feuer@sztaki.hu
Abstract: This paper discusses different studies about innovation management
which have been performed between 1996 and 2003 and describes key success
factors of innovative organisations. These factors are taken into account for the
design of an innovation manager skill card in the EU Leonardo project ORGANIC
(2003 – 2006, http://www.innovationmanager.org ). The project results in a skills
card , an online skills portal (result from former MM 1032 project CREDIT, 1998 –
2001) which European managers can access to self assess their current skills and
receive guidance about individual skills gaps in that area, and a trainer CD so that
trainers can hold courses in the foreseen skills units. Recently a further
complementary project SOQRATES EPI (Educational Partnerships in ICT) started
which integrates the skills portal system with a set of large e-learning portals in
different countries. This will allow that after receiving a learning portfolio
automatically online courses can be entered .
1. The Need for Job Roles and Skills Cards in Innovation Management
At the moment there are many different innovation process models available which look at
different process factors. Roles like process promoter, innovation champion, innovation
team leaders, top managers are discussed and certain process steps are recommended.
However, in reality the way innovation management works is dependent on the existing
nature of business, the existing team and innovation structures, the skills and motivation of
staff to deal with new requirements, etc. So it is not just a copy and paste of a ready to use
innovation management model and then the innovation might work, it requires rather the
skills of an experienced innovation manager who can transfer the different models and
(mostly university based and theoretical publications) concepts to his/her practical working
environment.
Therefore the work in this project bases on the practical field studies from industry and
does not try to create another theoretical process model. The project rather tries to analyse
and identify the specific skills inside firms that made these firms market winners and
innovative, and include these skills in an overall skill card against which innovation
managers across Europe can assess their current skills online.
A skills definition concept (skill card) is an approach where by using standards (NVQ National Vocational Qualification Standards) a common sense is created among different
countries and institutions (as a collection of good practices and required skills) and
illustrated in a standard skills description structure.
This will allow a benchmarking of required skills against a European proposed skills set
and the establishment of learning portfolios to upgrade the skills of nowadays innovation
managers to a higher efficiency.
See also the description of some typical user scenarios at the end of this paper.
2. Underlying innovation management studies
The skills which are being incorporated into the skills card have been derived from three
large European studies which analysed key competencies of market winning and innovative
firms.
2.1 – Best Regional Innovation Transfer Study
A study in 1998 (EU Leonardo da Vinci Project BESTREGIT – Best Regional Innovation
Transfer, 1996 – 1999) analysed how innovative organisations operate and compared 200
organisations in Europe ([1], [5],[7]).
The study outlined that innovative organisations
 invest time and money into the understanding of the fundamentals of the forces of
change,
 understand the different cultures through personal contacts using networking at a
personal level,
 study trends and they are always up-to-date,
 concentrate their energy in areas where they excel or where no one else can operate,
 outsource all other non-core activities,
 are practical users of information technologies and have information technology
strategies in place .
This study illustrates the development in the mid 90s where organisations became more
networked, the market became more global [10], and the learning and innovation is largely
influenced by a networked learning society.
2.2 – Team-working and Team-Learning Study
In a project TEAMWORK ([5], [6]) with 13 partners from 7 countries (IST-2000-28162
TEAMWORK, 2001 - 2003) a generic platform has been developed that shall support these
networked team-working and team-learning and tested this platform with teams from 59
organisations in 13 countries of Europe. The working behaviour of the users (team-working
and team-learning members of the networked platform) has been analysed and a study with
key success factors for social team-learning and team-working has been produced as a
project deliverable. There were 42 different projects running through the system using the
defined environment and managed by a virtual team leader. The team size of each project
varied between 13 and down to 2 different organisations involved.
This study based on the situation at the end of the 90s where developments were not
done any more by single operations but a supply chain or a partnership of different
companies integrating joint solutions. And these networked teams were multinational ,
multicultural , and consisted of members of different organisations. So the question was
“How to manage the complexity of the distributed, multinational team-working and teamlearning partnerships ?”.
The social experts team in the TEAMWORK project applied the social patterns
analysis methodology [4] and also performed a set of interviews which were analysed to
draw a number of conclusions concerning the social factors influencing team-working. This
methodology analyses and selects typical patterns of behaviour.
Some selected results of the 2003 study about organisations were:
Management Style Related


It was significant (statistical analysis) that people were happy with the more democratic
distributed team management and team learning style of a TEAMWORK environment.
Actually people from university, public service, and research centres were happier, than
from large enterprises.
We have found, that there was a significant difference how people from university,
public service, and research centres feel the effect of such this tool to enhance
teamwork spirit, for managers from large enterprises it was felt more that it gives
negative affect to their influence.
The difference between research and large traditional companies was due to the fact that
if you set up a team and you involve a large organisation it is not sufficient to just define
your agreed team-working processes, but also to integrate properly the existing hierarchies
inside the collaborating large organisation.
Innovation Related


It was significant that people from university, public service, and research centres
believed that a TEAMWORK environment encouraged an innovative approach to
solving problems together, and creating new ideas together, people from traditional
large enterprises believe it might interfere with existing procedures.
It was significant that people from university, public service, and research centres
believed that e-working helped them to improve the understanding of team roles.
It was an observation that larger organisations want to have more impact and decision
power on projects and innovations, while the distributed team-working concepts (role
based) only gave them equal weight among all team members (independent from their size).
Some selected results of the 2003 study about individuals were:
Community of Trust
„If you are building a human networked organisation you must have a foundation of
trust and respect for effective communication at levels deep enough to sustain growth.“
Work-Flows Inward
„If you want information to flow to the innovative producing roles in an organisation
then put the developer at the centre and see that information flows toward the centre, not
from the centre.“
This means that innovation is carried out by a selected set of highly intelligent people
(producers) who should not be hindered by too many hierarchies above them but become a
central role in a networked organisation, to unleash the innovation power.
Altogether the study produced some 200 criteria and proposed a list of 17 criteria which
shall be considered by managers [3],[6].
2.3 – Innovation Management Study at 124 Multinational Large Companies
While these first two studies were carried out with involvement of research centres, SMEs
and to some extent by large companies, the third study has only been performed at 124 very
large multinational companies. Thus it largely represents now the viewpoint on innovation
by large co-operations [8].
Large co-operations had the following expectations from learning organisations:
 Learn faster than competitors
 Balance teamwork with personal performance
 Reward high performers
 Develop ambidextrous thinking
 Transformational rather than incremental change
 Create and exploit new knowledge
 Ensure customer & company-wide diffusion of ideas
 Inherently entrepreneurial with a high risk tolerance
The favourite approach to implement innovation in a large corporation were
 Pilot programme with review
30%
 Company wide process with review
18%
 Systematic implementation
15%
 Project by project
14%
 Area specific
9%
 Benchmarking with competitors
5%
 Don’t know
9%
And the drivers that influenced the success of an innovation were
 Executive management commitment
26%
 Supportive organisational structure
17%
 Positive culture with global reach
15%
 Young technically literate employees
13%
 Realistic milestones - fewer layers
6%
 Don’t knows
13%
The overall model for the implementation of an innovation management programme
contained seven phases :
1. Understanding the learning antecedents (nature of global business, anthropomorphism,
dissatisfaction with traditional paradigm, customer responsive culture, intellectual
capital)
2. Creating an environment of innovation
3. Analysing the perceived need and the required learning mechanisms
4. Executive challenge and implementing a learning processes
5. Including cultural and human factors and joint mission building
6. Organisational wide learning
7. Sustaining a learning organisation
And already in the first phase a number of parameters appeared which seemed to deal
with factors that influenced the difference in opinion between large organisations and
SMEs, research centres and universities in the study mentioned in section 2.2 of this paper.
A large co-operation very much focuses on the protection of the intellectual capital
and global business opportunities and thus a networked learning and working across
organisations needs additional controlling parameters to ensure the commitment from top
managers. And as we see in the study the top managers by 26% have the largest influence
on the success of an innovation in a large co-operation. (compare with results in section
2.2).
3. 3. A skills card and skills portal for the innovation manager job role
The job role of an innovation manager (see Figures 2, 3) therefore is a specific position in
an organisation who understands all these factors: networking, learning, organisational and
social factors and is able to encourage, promote, manage, control, and disseminate
innovation strategies in an organisation.
For structuring a skills set the EU leonardo da Vinci project ORGANIC followed the
EU standards for skills cards [2] (see Figure 1).
A Domain, contains
Job Roles, which contain
Units, which contain
Elements, which contain
Performance Criteria, which must be proven by
Evidences.
Figure 1: Basic elements of the skills definition model
Job Role
Innovation
Manager
Domain:
Innovation
Skill Unit
Skill Unit
Know ledge About
Innovation Mgmt.
Learning Elements:
Introduction
Know ledge Management
Skills Management
Customer Relationship Management
Netw orking
Market Research
Skill Unit
Communication
Skills
Leraning Elements:
Literacy in E-Skills
Reporting & Presentation Skills
Team Working
Learning Elements:
Team Communication
Conflict Management
Distributed Team Mgmt.
Motivation Building
Cross Cultural Succes Factors
Figure 2: Skills Card of an Innovation Manager Job Role Part 1
Domain: An occupational category, e.g. childcare, first level management or
software engineering.
Job Role: A certain profession that covers part of the domain knowledge. E.g.
domain = automotive, job role = automotive SW project leader
Unit (UK standards): A list of certain activities that have to be carried out in the
workplace. It is the top-level skill in the UK qualification standard hierarchy [9] and each
unit consists of a number of elements.
Element (UK standards): Description of one distinct aspect of the work performed
by a worker, either a specific task that the worker has to do or a specific way of working.
Each element consists of a number of performance criteria.
Performance criterion (UK standards): Description of the minimum level of
performance a participant must demonstrate in order to be assessed as competent. A
performance criterion may have different relevant contexts.
Evidence: Proof of competence.
In ORGANIC we have identified 6 skills units and 24 learning elements for an
innovation manager. These skills are available for online browsing and for online skills
self-assessment.
Job Role
Innovation
Manager
Domain:
Innovation
Skill Unit
Management
Skills
Learning Elements:
Innovation Skills Needed in - Innovation Project Management
- Innovation Process Management
- Corporate Innovation Management
- Risk Management
Skill Unit
Skill Unit
Personal
Characteristics
Case Studies
Learning Elements:
Know ledge about Personal Characteristics
Learning Culture
Cross-Cultural Skills
Learning Elements:
New Markets
New Structures
New Products and Services
Figure 3: Skills Card of an Innovation Manager Job Role Part 2
Figure 4: Sample Self Assessment and Formal Assessor Profile
For each learning element ORGANIC develops a training module. The training
module covers all performance criteria listed for the learning element in the skills card. A
skills portal has been configured with the skills card and supports the steps of browsing
required skills (see Figure 5), self assessment, formal assessment, evidence collection,
generation of skills profiles (see Figure 4), and learning recommendations.
Figure 5: Online Skills Requirements Browsing
4. 4. Typical Scenarios of Usage
4.1 – Accreditation scenario examples
A skill card can be used to accredit training providers as well as to certify people.
For the job role (skill card) certified software tester, for instance, represented by ISQI
(International Software Quality Institute in Bavaria) and the Austrian Testing Board (ATB)
for central Europe, accreditation is offered. Already many hundred certificates have been
issued since 2003.
Concerning e-commerce related job roles, for instance, (skill cards) two projects plan
to merge their interest to offer 4 job roles, such as e-commerce engineer, e-business
manager , e-strategy manager and an e-marketing manager. This way institutions from
Hungary, Austria, Spain, Ireland, Germany, and Czech share the same content / skill criteria
for these professions.
Through the skill card different participating universities have used it to refine their
study programmes to cover all aspects of the skill card and become comparable on a
European level. In some cases, e.g. University of Valladolid, the development of a skill
card influenced the establishment of a whole new study programme of an e-business
manager.
For the certified innovation manager a similar approach is expected where the project
will include a critical mass of training providers, and educational institutions and to
establish a standard against which the training of an innovation manager will be
benchmarked.
4.2 – Learning scenario examples – Learning from the work place
While universities create study programmes which focus on 4 to 5 year long learning
schemes where students learn all skills related with general skill domains (a skill domain =
computer science – telematics engineer, or computer science – software engineer, etc.), the
industry (under constant time pressure and competition) has to focus and tailor much
towards specific skills sets and job roles (software architect, tester, etc.) . And learning must
become possible from the work place to upgrade skills for specific job roles.
The service portal of the ORGANIC project will allow managers to access the server
online, browse the required skills, do a self assessment, print an individual (confidential)
skills profile and receive a generated learning plan / portfolio.
4.3 – Service Delivery Scenario – Virtual Competence Centers
In July 2004 , for instance, a selected group of managers from China visit Europe and 20
managers attend the certified e-business manager course. This inter-continental
collaboration could be extended by offering this accreditation between Europe and China
through an e-portal with skills assessment and online attendance of courses . With the
completion of the complementary SOQRATES project EPI this will become possible due to
an integration of the skills portal software with a set of e-learning systems.
5. Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the support for this paper from the following project partners from
ORGANIC: D. Ekert (ISCN), B. Wöran (Danube), K. Ennsfellner (IMC Krems), A.
Gvishiani (EDNES), N. O’Shea (Tecnet), G. Velasco (FGUVA). We acknowledge the
support for this paper from the following project partners from EPI: Miklos Biro
(BUESPA) and Gearoid O Suilleabhain and Ray Coughlan (CIT-IRL).
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