White Paper 2014/01

ISSN 1176-2640
Unleash your Organizations Innovation Potential:
Maximize Your Organizations Innovation Intelligence


www.synexe.com
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Overview The Innovation Challenge .............................................................. 3
2. Introducing Innovation Intelligence .................................................................. 3
3. The Innovation Intelligence Model .................................................................... 5
4. The Innovation Intelligence Model in Practice ................................................ 8
5. Interpreting the Results ........................................................................................ 9
6. Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 11
7. Contact Us .......................................................................................................... 14
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1. Overview The Innovation Challenge
A recent survey by PwC showed that 93 percent of executives believed that organic growth
through innovation would drive the greater proportion of their revenue growth.
1
Despite this,
most organizations continue to struggle with innovation. In support of this, a 2010 McKinsey &
Company study found that while 84 percent of global executives believed that innovation is
extremely important to their organizations growth strategies, a staggering 94 percent of those
same executives were unsatisfied with their organizations innovation performance.

Why is that some organizations are able to continue to successfully innovate in order to
maintain their dominance and effectiveness over time, while others are not? We would argue
that the key underlying difference between organizations that successfully innovate time and
time again and those that do not is their Innovation Intelligence.

Innovation is not just for Google or Apple. For businesses to succeed, innovation must be a
core competency. Top innovators treat innovation just like any other business process.
2
They
approach it in a disciplined way as something that can be successfully scaled across the entire
organization. Effective innovation is about creating an organization-wide innovation eco-
system. Innovation Intelligence provides a framework and set of tools to do this successfully.

Constituted by an interrelated and interdependent ecosystem of motivation, capability and
direction, an organizations Innovation Intelligence is a dynamic framework that helps enable
an organization to continually innovate over time. Based on the latest work in the behavioral
and social sciences, the Innovation Intelligence model and accompanying tools allow
organizations to:

! understand where their strengths and weaknesses lie in enabling or inhibiting innovation
at a range of organizational levels from the individual work unit all the way through to
the level of the entire organization; and
! provide a concrete set of measurable activities that an organization can undertake to
increase their Innovation Intelligence.

In this white paper we outline the science behind the model and provide examples of how the
tool can be put to work by an organization to increase their Innovation Intelligence.
2. Introducing Innovation Intelligence
Innovation Intelligence, like Emotional Intelligence
3
, is a type of social intelligence. Social
intelligences are complex sets of interconnected webs of meaning and associated structures
of knowledge which humans use to navigate our social environment. Social intelligences are
not fixed but shift and change as a result of a complex adaptive equilibrium between
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individuals, organizations and their environment. What this means though is that both
individuals and organizations can learn how to increase their social intelligences over time.
4

Just as people, and by extension organizations, can become more emotionally intelligent
through focused work, so too organizations can increase their Innovation Intelligence over
time through a specific course of behavioral shifts and changes.
5


Acting as a set of frameworks which allow us to better understand and manage people,
Innovation Intelligence can be defined as the:

ecosystem of interrelated and interdependent motivation, capability and direction
within an organization operating at a range of levels which act in combination with
an organizations human, social and organizational capital to increase or decrease the
organizations ability to innovate over time.

In any organization, innovation is fundamentally dependent on unlocking and tapping into the
potential of three different forms of capital: Human Capital; Social Capital; and Organizational
Capital. In regard to the Innovation Intelligence model, where we define these types of capital
as an asset class, they are defined as:

People (Human Capital) the skills, competencies, and characteristics of the individuals
in your organization to successfully undertake their work;

Networks (Social Capital) the social and relational connections and ties within, across,
and external to your organization which bind people together to ensure that they can
work together more effectively; the connectivity between people and ideas; and

Organization (Organizational Capital) the strategic and operational resources, systems
and processes within your organization that enable people to work more effectively.

For each of these types of assets People, Networks, and Organization the ability to tap into
them as a resource for innovation is constrained or enabled by three key drivers: motivation;
capability; and direction.

Motivation the reasons people in your organization have for acting or behaving in a
particular way; the will to innovate;

Capability the ability and capacity of the organization to innovate; and

Direction the sense of focused action that helps an organization move forward as a
whole towards achieving specific innovation objectives.

Combined, these six factors provide a comprehensive matrix of influences that can enable or
inhibit innovation within an organization.
6
The power of the Innovation Intelligence model and
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accompanying system is that it provides insight into an organizations innovation strengths and
weaknesses at a range of levels from the individual work unit all the way through to the level
of the entire organization as well as provide a concrete set of measurable activities that an
organization can undertake to increase their Innovation Intelligence.
3. The Innovation Intelligence Model
This section of the white paper provides a more in-depth outline of the constituent aspects of
the underlying model as well as provides an outline of how the Innovation Intelligence system
can be used in an organizational setting to improve an organizations ability to innovate.

Table 1. presents the Innovation Intelligence model as a 3x3 matrix, bringing together the six
factors, which combined, constitute an organizations Innovation Intelligence: People;
Networks; Organization; Motivation; Capability; and Direction, and demonstrates their inter-
relationships.

DRIVERS
ASSETS
PEOPLE NETWORKS ORGANIZATION
MOTIVATION
Passion Creative Tension Incentive
MOTIVATION of PEOPLE to
Innovate
MOTIVATION of NETWORKS to
Innovate
MOTIVATION of the
ORGANIZATION to Innovate
The deeply motivating and
aligning fire that comes from
the thrill of being involved in
doing something meaningful,
the freedom to explore, the
connection to personal
values, the achievement of
mastery, and the resulting
creative spark that can lead
to breakthrough ideas
The inspiration to networks that
comes from growing mastery of
the fundamentals, obsession with
value, continuous improvement,
cross-pollination, effective
collaboration and partnerships --
generating the relentless churn of
renewal and the spark of
innovation
Incentive is created by the sum
of enterprise mechanisms that
propel the organization to
continue to improve, renew
and change. Incentives can be
monetary, but they are more
effective when they are social,
behavioral, inspirational and
connected to meaning.
CAPABILITY
Talent Synergy Execution
ABILITY of PEOPLE to Innovate
CAPABILITY of NETWORKS to
Innovate
CAPABILITY of the
ORGANIZATION to Innovate
The invaluable and diverse
resource of human capital,
which contributes to the
development of
organizational mastery,
entrepreneurship, creativity,
and resilience; and the
shepherding and nurturing of
that resource
The interplay of a diversity of
elements in a business network to
improve insight, increase agility,
and produce new and/or better
value for the business and its
customers; the coordination of
networks to target their energy
toward delivering value
The structures, processes and
mechanisms of the organization
that enable the enterprise to
deliver effectiveness,
continuous improvement,
renewal and innovation
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DIRECTION
Leadership Alignment Vision
DIRECTION of PEOPLE for
Innovation
DIRECTION of NETWORKS for
Innovation
Innovation DIRECTION of the
ORGANIZATION
The service of guiding,
mentoring and challenging
the organization to achieve;
leadership can and should
happen at many levels and in
many forms in the enterprise
Alignment is created by the
powerful, yet sometimes
intangible, forces that focus and
guide innovation across
networks: burning platform or
igniting purpose for change,
shared destiny, integration of
goals and objectives,
commitment to core values.
The irresistable pull of a
compelling design / future state
for the product, service,
business, or society,
communicated across the
value chain in a way that
provides continual focus,
alignment, accountability and
inspiration everywhere
Table 1 the Innovation Intelligence matrix

At the most basic level, the Innovation Intelligence system can be used to provide a simple
baseline assessment of an organizations Innovation Intelligence through the use of the InQ
diagnostic tool. Using this tool you are able quickly quantify how an organization performs in
regards to each of the nine categories presented above: Passion, Creative Tension, Incentive,
Talent, Synergy, Execution, Leadership, Alignment, and Vision. These questions, when
combined with focused interviews and team discussions, provide a solid baseline of data upon
which an organizations Innovation Intelligence can be measured. These results then provide
the initial framework for a course of action to be designed to improve an organizations ability
to innovate with a focus on building upon the organizations strengths while addressing the
organizations areas of weakness.

The use of the Innovation Intelligence system while open and dynamic generally follows our
D
3
design and implementation process. The steps in the D
3
process are:



Discover

We kick off Discovery with our InQ diagnostic an assessment tool that provides a quantified
analysis of the nine key aspects of the organizations Innovation Intelligence. These initial results
are then augmented with the InQ Deep Dive. The Deep Dive begins with deeper research,
which may include focused interviews, team discussions, and ethnographic research.

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(Reframe)

Once the initial InQ results have been collected and analyzed, we conduct a series of
facilitated conversations with groups across levels and areas of the organization. These group
conversations allow for the initial results to be refined, shared and understood across the
organization. They also provide a platform for the different parts of the organization to begin to
grapple with, and accept, the challenges emerging from the assessment process.

Design

In order for the organization to move forward from this new understanding, they require a
vision for the future. With our Innovation Agenda, the organization begins to converge upon,
and crystalize intent on, how they will move forward. Once the vision and innovation
objectives are established, the next stage of the Design process involves developing and
testing ideas to address the gaps and opportunities. Through our Hack Labs, a variety of
inclusive group techniques are utilized including solution sprints, reality checks and conceptual
prototyping to rapidly move through options on how to move forward and concretely increase
the organizations Innovation Intelligence. The options may involve building new organizational
functions, leadership and cultural programs, training and organizational design, etc. we help
the organization select interventions to meet the organizations needs at the time in order to
create the Innovation Intelligence they require.

(Refine)

Once we have conceptually defined initial solutions to increasing Innovation Intelligence, we
work to refine the ideas. In this stage of the process, the detailed design of specific solutions is
undertaken, utilizing techniques that can include charettes, proof of concept of modelling
and stress testing. At this point in the process, not only do we build out solutions, but also we
address the implementation approach.

Do

Once the prototyping and refinement process have been completed, the various interventions
begin to be deployed through an iterative implementation process based on Lean and Agile
best practice. An iterative process is always used to ensure the continued fit-for-purpose
nature of the changes and their ongoing suitability in the real-time organizational setting.
During this process, we work closely with the various teams through our Innovation Fitness
programs, like train-the-trainer processes, to ensure that the teams possess the capabilities
required to successfully deploy the interventions.

(Review)

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In the final stage, the hand-over process is completed by the team working with the
organizations leadership, including the establishment of ongoing monitoring, evaluation and
learning systems to ensure successful change over time.
4. The Innovation Intelligence Model in Practice
Combined then, the Innovation Intelligence system and associated tools and services provide
a powerful framework and path forward for organizations wanting to improve their ability to
innovate over time. In this next section we provide a brief worked example of an
organizational assessment and subsequent pathway forward to help show how the Innovation
Intelligence system is used in practice.

Table 2 sets out the data as found after an initial Discover process has been undertaken.


DRIVERS
ASSETS
PEOPLE NETWORKS ORGANIZATION

Passion Creative Tension Incentive
MOTIVATION
MOTIVATION of
PEOPLE to Innovate
MOTIVATION of
NETWORKS to Innovate
MOTIVATION of the
ORGANIZATION to
Innovate

(30 possible) (30 possible) (30 possible)

18 20 13

Talent Synergy Execution
CAPABILITY
ABILITY of PEOPLE to
Innovate
CAPABILITY of
NETWORKS to Innovate
CAPABILITY of the
ORGANIZATION to
Innovate

(30 possible) (30 possible) (30 possible)

24 15 20

Leadership Alignment Vision
DIRECTION
DIRECTION of
PEOPLE for
Innovation
DIRECTION of
NETWORKS for
Innovation
Innovation DIRECTION of
the ORGANIZATION

(30 possible) (30 possible) (30 possible)

19 23 12

InQ
Overall
Score
(270 possible)
163
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Table 2 Initial InQ diagnostic results (raw data)

These data can be presented in a range of formats to illustrate the results and to help in the
design of the steps required to increase the organizations Innovation Intelligence. In this case,
the data has been presented as a spider diagram in Figure 1 below.


Figure 1 Initial InQ Discover results
5. Interpreting the Results
So, what do the example results shown in Table 2 and Figure 1 mean for the organization?
Whats happening in this organization in terms of their InQ? The explanation below
summarizes the insights that emerge for the organization after utilizing the InQ system.

EXAMPLE InQ DEEP DIVE RESULTS (DISCOVER PHASE)

People Employees feel positive about being a part of this business, but may not be
incredibly passionate about the work theyre doing. They feel that a number of
promising and talented individuals have been recruited lately and they are
encouraged by a number of new initiatives in the plan. Leadership is strong, but they
dont feel that leadership allows them to spend the time it takes to really explore new
ideas before pushing projects through the pipeline.

Networks The business is organized along regional P&L units, and there is little
opportunity to work with people outside of ones own core team, except for the people
driving large-scale change initiatives across the business. Execution is a major focus, and
so not only do people have the relationships they need to deliver projects (within their
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own area) but also the sense of urgency around execution helps to overcome the
tendency to resist influence from outside individual lines of business.

Organization Discipline is the name of the game here, and thats one of the reasons
the business has been so successful for so long. On the other hand, the relentless drive
for execution means that sometimes the business ends up following leaders in the
industry being a me too type company and people really question whether or not
anything theyre doing is actually innovative, or adding up to real competitive
advantage in the long run. Incentives are based on execution and not on creativity,
risk-taking or innovation. Individuals are unclear as to the vision for innovation, how it
relates to the overall strategy or what they can do in their roles to contribute.

With this data collected and analyzed, the team then works with the organization through the
Design and Do phases. They implement a plan to move forward that builds on the strengths
and weaknesses highlighted in the use of the Innovation Intelligence system. In this particular
worked example, the business strength in execution everything that makes them successful
now is simultaneously their greatest Innovation Intelligence weakness. In order to deliver
innovation, they will work carefully to make adjustments whilst retaining this core competency:

Starting first with systemic changes, the business needs an approach to projects that
allows for experimentation. This may change how projects are structured, funded and
resourced particularly in the early phases. Changing the approach to execution will
threaten the long-standing culture of pride around execution, and change
management will be needed to help people transition.

In order for the new experimentation to be strategic and fruitful, as well as to drive
innovation in a financially responsible manner, the business will need to address the silos
that exist. Establishing shared innovation goals across silos as well as restructuring some
areas will help to begin the process of operating as a whole team. As people begin to
compare perspectives and clash in their cultures and ideas new ideas will emerge.

As the pressure to focus solely on execution lifts, people will need to be supported with
additional capability to understand how to navigate the uncertainty and ambiguity
that comes with the new processes of exploration, iteration and innovation. Training in
methodologies such as Agile, Lean and Design Thinking processes will help address this
capability gap. It can be expected that some projects may stall in the early phases
during the initial period of change as teams become accustomed to a new way of
working, but the business can expect momentum to build if they stick with the plan long
enough to see it out and dont give up too early.

This brief worked example of the Innovation Intelligence system in practice thus shows how the
data collected through the various tools that are part of the system can then be used to come
up with insights about the organizations ability to innovate and develop concrete
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interventions that the organization can then utilize to increase their Innovation Intelligence over
time and so increase the ability to deliver value over the long term to their various stakeholders.
6. Conclusion
The Innovation Intelligence system provides a robust basis for organizations to be able to
understand where their strengths and weaknesses lie in enabling or inhibiting innovation at a
range of organizational levels from the individual work unit all the way through to the entire
organization. Using the Innovation Intelligence model, organizations use the InQ diagnostic to
assess innovation capability across a range of competencies from their ability to bring new
ideas to life though to the flexibility of their organizational structures to come up with an
aggregate total score and targeted breakdown of these scores across the sub-categories.
These scores allow organizations to both peer-rank themselves with other organizations, as well
as provide a targeted breakdown of where the organizations specific strengths and
weaknesses lie in terms of their Innovation Intelligence. By working through the Innovation
Agenda process, the organization is able to create a concrete set of measurable activities
that they can undertake to increase their Innovation Intelligence. This will yield a focused
roadmap of actionable interventions to increase an organizations Innovation Intelligence.
Through Hack Labs and the Innovation Fitness program, which involve coaching, facilitated
projects and monitoring, the Innovation Intelligence team supports the delivery of improved
innovation results. Combined, the Innovation Intelligence system and accompanying tools
work to increase an organizations ability to innovate over time.
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Appendix One: Theoretical Foundations of the Innovation Intelligence Model

In constructing the model that underpins the Innovation Intelligence system, we have drawn
from the latest work across the behavioral and social sciences. Given that innovation
necessarily involves change, this model is firmly embedded within the broader change
management, transition and organizational transformation literature. In this respect, the model
is novel because change management and innovation are generally seen as being two
different aspects of organizational design.
7
However, given the continually transitional nature
of change and hence innovation we have feel that it is necessary to bring these two
bodies of literature together to ensure that the model is able to not only help identify successful
factors for innovation but also to provide the associated tools and frameworks to put these
ideas into practice. In this we have also been particularly influenced by the ways in which
practice-based change at a multi-level mode can be actualized from within the
organization in terms of promoting robust and sustainable change.
8


One of the key initial structuring frameworks we drew on for our work was the Influencer model
popularized in Patterson et.al.s book Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. Broad in its
outline, their framework provided an ideal starting point for our work. Simply stated, the
Influencer model is based on the idea that in order to bring about change one needs to
change behaviors in many forms. While this insight itself is not particularly novel, Patterson et.al.
argue that the reason most change processes continue to fail is that people tend to look at
only one source of influence or they dont focus on the key behaviors requiring change. In
looking to overcome these issues, Patterson et.al. present a model which is based on
identifying the vital behaviors required for a particular type of change or action, analyzing
what they identify as the six key sources of influence
9
and ensuring that these processes are
linked to the achievement of measurable results. The power of this particular model lies in its
ability to provide a systematic outline of factors that can help enable successful change
processes at a range of scales, from the personal through to the systemic.

Building on Patterson et.al.s work, the three forms of capital we use human, social and
organizational allow us to understand at a disaggregated, relational and aggregated level,
respectively, what resources are available within the organizational context to enable or inhibit
innovative activity.

At the level of individual capital we have drawn heavily on the bodies of work dealing with
adaptive learning and the new human capital theories.
10
This is particularly important given the
increasing importance of knowledge workers to organizational success in any sector.
11
We
also drawn heavily on the emergent body of work looking at the role that affect plays on
individual human capital in the development of the model given the role that perception
plays in organizational change.
12


In terms of the utility of social capital as an enabler of innovation we have based our system on
the understanding that increased connectivity between organizational members in both a
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formal and informal way helps provide channels for the antecedents for innovation to occur:
such as robust flows of information from customer-facing services through to product design
functions.
13
We also build on recent preliminary research that has shown how collaboration is a
function of interdependency that is, people collaborate more frequently and more
effectively when they depend upon one another for success.
14
The success of collaboration
across boundaries, in turn, influences the outcome of innovation efforts. Recent work on
organizational leadership from older work on servant leadership through to more recent work
on adaptive and distributive leadership has also heavily informed our work.
15
In this though,
we are aware of the role that cognitive overload can play in overwhelming key connectors
within an organizational system. We account for this in our use of the creative tensions factor
(discussed later) with respect to social capital.

In constructing our model in terms of organizational capital, we have drawn heavily on recent
work exploring how Lean and Agile processes have been pivotal in helping refine the thinking
around the enabling factors to allow organizations to successfully pivot during periods of
organizational or broader environmental stress.
16
So too, this body of work as well as
emergent practice in the field of Design Thinking has been influential in helping us better
understand how organizational discipline, iterative experimentation and customer-based
design are a critical element of the innovation engine of any organization.
17
The discipline of
Design Thinking as well as emergent thinking in the organizational psychology field have also
been especially useful in providing a stable platform of research to understand the impact
that empathy and compassion plays in organizational success.
18
These are factors of particular
importance to the sections of the model addressing organizational and social capital in
particular given the way in which they enable or constrain individual action.

In terms of the cross-causal factors linked with these three forms of capital, we have modified
and extended on Patterson et.al.s model in a number of ways. We found that Patterson
et.al.s model, while conceptually robust, seemed to be predicated on the belief that
individuals and organizations operate in a sort of steady-state model punctuated by periodic
shifts and changes. While this may have been true in earlier periods we would claim that
increasingly the global environment tends to be characterized by change itself being the
norm. The term VUCA is often used for our current operating environment: Volatile, Uncertain,
Complex and Adaptive. Within this, it is important also that we treat organizations not as
machines but as living ecosystems. Given this, we needed to adapt the model to both
account for the increasingly dynamic nature of organizations as well as provide a way to
understand how these same organizations, and the people who work within them, deal with
this change. Our answer, in part, to this issue was to replace the concept of ability in
Patterson et.al.s original formulation with the concept of capability. We adopted the concept
of capability as building on the latest work in the human capital field it represents the
intersection of capacity and ability.
19
This helps add both a more dynamic character to the
concept, in line with the realization that we now operate in a global system of ongoing
change, while also expanding it to more properly accommodate the modern concept of
human capital with its positive impact on learning within organizations.
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We also added an extra variable to the model one we have termed direction to account
for the necessarily directional nature of innovation. Innovation occurs for a goal to improve
something. And, in order to do that there is a need for some kind of directionality over time
and in relationship to the operating environment across the three types of capital.

While innovation can work to capture the development of new or novel ideas and/or
procedures, effective innovation requires championing and implementation of the ideas
and/or procedures.
20
This is where the concept of directionality comes into the Innovation
Intelligence model.

Direction and the concept of organizational directionality while related to leadership
cannot be reduced to a simple one-to-one correspondence between the two concepts.
Directionality is dependent though on a multi-dimensional view of leadership including,
amongst other things, a focus on the collective to gain followers trust and commitment.
21

While this includes modern concepts, such as servant leadership and loose-tight management,
it extends beyond that to create an open-ended field of mutual self-reinforcing support
between the different constitutive parts of an organization as leadership (while directive) is
increasingly holographic in its nature that is it is contained within all parts of an organization.

Similarly, and of key import in the distribution of this sense of directionality across the
organizational field is the role that middle managers play in the translation of the organizations
vision to its employees and the feedback from employees into subsequent re-configurations
of the organizations vision.
22
This then feeds back into the broader re-shaping and re-
conceptualizing underway around the world about what work itself constitutes and how we
organize to successfully complete work of which innovation is but part.
23


Combined then, this brief summary helps explain how the various factors of the Innovation
Intelligence system and underlying model come together as a coherent whole.
7. Contact Us

To learn more about the Innovation Intelligence or trial the InQ diagnostic feel free to
contact either of the two lead authors:
Manuhuia Barcham mbarcham@synexe.com
Michelle Miller mmiller@synexe.com

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1
PwC, (2013) Breakthrough Innovation and Growth (New York: PwC): 5.
2
PwC, (2013) Breakthrough Innovation and Growth (New York: PwC): 5.
3
Emotional Intelligence is the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one's own and others'
feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one's thinking and actions.
P. Salovey and J. Mayer, (1990) Emotional intelligence Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 9(3):189.
4
At an individual level see, Ilios Kotsou, Jacques Gregoire and Mora Mikolajczak (2011) Emotional Plasticity:
Conditions and Effects of Improving Emotional Competence in Adulthood Journal of Applied Psychology 96 (4):
827839.
5
For more on this refer to Appendix One: Theoretical Background. In terms of mapping these ideas up to the
organizational and sub-organizational levels we have been influenced by recent conceptual work by Christian List,
Philip Pettit, and Raimo Tuomela which has shown, on our interpretation, how we can understand group dynamics
as something beyond just the simple aggregation of the preferences of individual members of specific organizations
while nonetheless maintaining the agency of individual actors within the organizational system while also using
data gathered at the individual level to understand organization level dynamics. See Christian List and Philip Pettit,
(2011) Group Agency: The Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents (Oxford: Oxford University Press) and
Raimo Tuomela, (2013) Social Ontology: Collective Intentionality and Group Agents (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Peter Senges concept of the Learning Organization is an earlier example of this type of thinking with his allied
concepts of systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision and team within the broader
Organizational Science literature.
6
While enablers for innovation are relatively clear openness to new ideas, willingness to experiment, desire to
collaborate; as some examples the barriers to innovation can sometimes be less clear in their structure. These
barriers to innovation come in a number of forms and can often comprise a mix of personal, cultural and structural
issues. Classic examples include: staff being protective of the way its always been done, which may not be
appropriate for the current environment; a weak or non-existent system for gathering and acting on customer
insight; or unwillingness to experiment with existing Intellectual Property (IP) despite external competitive pressure.
7
Given that we identify innovation as a process, it will come as no surprise that we tend to draw more in our work on
the change management approach exemplified by William Bridges with its strong focus on the importance of
transitions and transitional states as change occurs within an organizational setting. See for example William Bridges,
(2009) Managing Transitions (Jackson: De Capo Lifelong Books).
8
Michael Smets, Tim Morris, and Royston Greenwood, (2012) From Practice To Field: A Multilevel Model Of Practice-
Driven Institutional Change Academy of Management Journal 55 (4): 877904.
9
These six key sources are the combinations of motivation and ability when combined with the three scales of
change in their model, these being personal, social and structural.
10
See, for example Anthony J. Nyberg, Thomas P. Moliterno, Donald Hale, Jr and David P. Lepak, (2014) Resource-
Based Perspectives on Unit-Level Human Capital: A Review and Integration Journal of Management 40: 316-346,
Huang, J. L., Ryan, A. M., Zabel, K. L., & Palmer, A. (2013, September 9) Personality and Adaptive Performance at
Work: A Meta-Analytic Investigation Journal of Applied Psychology Advance online publication. See also T. Crook,
Samuel Todd, James Combs, David Woehr, and David Ketchen (2011) Does human capital matter? A meta-
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analysis of the relationship between human capital and firm performance Journal of Applied Psychology 96(3):
443456. Interesting work has also emerged recently more concretely linking these practices to improved
organizational functioning. See for example Kaifeng Jiang, David P. Lepak, Jia Hu, and Judith C. Baer, (2012) How
Does Human Resource Management Influence Organizational Outcomes? A Meta-Analytic Investigation Of
Mediating Mechanisms Academy of Management Journal 55 (6): 12641294. So too interesting work is emerging,
and has influenced our thinking, on the role that emotions play on Organizational Learning (OL), see John Sillince
and Helen Shipton, (2013) More Than a Cognitive Experience: Unfamiliarity, Invalidation, and Emotion in
Organizational Learning Journal of Management Inquiry 22: 342-355.
11
For a discussion on how to enable the innovation potential for technical staff see Robert T. Keller, (2012)
Predicting the Performance and Innovativeness of Scientists and Engineers Journal of Applied Psychology 97 (1):
225233. Issues of adequate institutional support continue to underpin the creation of an environment which helps
maximize the utilization of human capital. See for example recent work such as Mar Bornay-Barrachina, Dolores De
la Rosa-Navarro, Alvaro Lopez-Cabrales, and Ramon Valle-Cabrera, (2012) Employment Relationships and Firm
Innovation: The Double Role of Human Capital British Journal of Management (23): 223240.
12
Interesting work is being conducted in this field and later iterations of our model may more strongly draw on this
emergent literature. For a recent example of this growing body of work see March L. To, Cynthia D. Fisher, Neal M.
Ashkanasy, and Patricia A. Rowe, (2012) Within-Person Relationships Between Mood and Creativity Journal of
Applied Psychology 97 (3): 599612. In a related vein see too Paul W. B. Atkins and Sharon K. Parker, (2012)
Understanding Individual Compassion In Organizations: The Role Of Appraisals And Psychological Flexibility
Academy of Management Review 37 (4): 524546.
13
Recent work on adaptive relationality in organizational settings and the related concepts of compassion have
heavily impacted on our work here. See for example Jody Hoffer Gittell and Anne Douglass, (2012) Relational
Bureaucracy: Structuring Reciprocal Relationships Into Roles Academy of Management Review 37 (4): 709733.
14
Richard Rawling, Michelle Miller, and Lauren Douge, (2013) Shaping the organisations internal environment to
enable innovation endeavor This paper was presented at The 6th ISPIM Innovation Symposium Innovation in the
Asian Century, in Melbourne, Australia on 10 December 2013.
15
On more recent work in this field see, for example, Gareth Edwards, (2011) Concepts of Community: A
Framework for Contextualizing Distributed Leadership International Journal of Management Reviews 13: 301312.
16
More popular work includes work includes the discussion by Eric Ries on the Lean Start Up concept. See Eric Ries,
(2011) The Lean Startup (New York: Crown Publishing Group). For more technical discussions please refer see Meera
Alagaraja, (2013) A Conceptual Model of Organizations as Learning-Performance Systems: Integrative Review of
Lean Implementation Literature Human Resource Development Review published online 30 September 2013, and
W. Timans, J. Antony, K. Ahaus, & R. van Solingen, (2012) Implementation of Lean Six Sigma in small- and medium-
sized manufacturing enterprises in the Netherlands Journal of the Operational Research Society 63: 339-353. In
addition, structurally focused work on issues of alignment with organizational culture have been instructional for us.
See Katerina Bezrukova, Karen A. Jehn, Sherry M. B. Thatcher, and Chester S. Spell, (2012) The Effects of Alignments:
Examining Group Faultlines, Organizational Cultures, and Performance Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 97, No.
1, 7792.
17
In addition to this, recent work on the structural integration and enabling of knowledge flow in organizational
contexts has been particularly useful. See Heidi K. Gardner, Francesca Gino, and Bradley R. Staats, (2012)
DESIGNING A NEW GENERATION OF BUSINESS www.synexe.com


Dynamically Integrating Knowledge In Teams: Transforming Resources Into Performance Academy of
Management Journal 55 (4): 9981022. Similarly, work on network theory and on actor positionality have contributed
to the development of our model. See for example Markus Baer, (2012) Putting Creativity To Work: The
Implementation Of Creative Ideas In Organizations Academy of Management Journal 55 (5): 11021119.
18
See, for example, Dev Patnaik, (2009) Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread
Empathy (New Jersey: FT Press). See also Anne S. Tsui, (2013), On Compassion In Scholarship: Why Should We
Care? Academy of Management Review 38 (2): 167180 and Thomas B. Lawrence and Sally Maitlis, (2012) Care
And Possibility: Enacting An Ethic Of Care Through Narrative Practice Academy of Management Review 37 (4):
641663. For an exploration of how these issues of affect can be enabled at an organizational level, see Dong Liu,
Xiao-Ping Chen, and Xin Yao (2011) From Autonomy to Creativity: A Multilevel Investigation of the Mediating Role
of Harmonious Passion Journal of Applied Psychology 96 (2): 294309 and Laura T. Madden, Dennis Duchon,
Timothy M. Madden, and Donde Ashmos, (2012) Emergent Organizational Capacity For Compassion Academy of
Management Review 37 (4): 689708. This extends through to discussions about the role that positive perception of
organizational structure and process plays in the creation of more effective organizational structures and processes.
See, for example, Erk P. Piening, Alina M. Baluch, and Torsten Oliver Salge, (2013) The Relationship Between
Employees Perceptions of Human Resource Systems and Organizational Performance: Examining Mediating
Mechanisms and Temporal Dynamics Journal of Applied Psychology 98 (6): 926947.
19
In this we draw on the substantial body of knowledge that has demonstrated that organizations that possess and
cultivate their human capital generally outperform other organizations lacking human capital. See for example: T.
Crook, Samuel Todd, James Combs, David Woehr, and David Ketchen, (2011) Does human capital matter? A
meta-analysis of the relationship between human capital and firm performance. Journal of Applied Psychology 96
(3): 443456.
20
See Gilad Chen, Jiing-Lih Farh, Elizabeth M. Campbell-Bush, Zhiming Wu, & Xin Wu, (2013) Teams as Innovative
Systems: Multilevel Motivational Antecedents of Innovation in R&D Teams Journal of Applied Psychology 98 (6):
10181027.
"#
See for example Steffen R. Giessner, Daan van Knippenberg, Ed Sleebos and Wendy van Ginkel, (2013) Team-
Oriented Leadership: The Interactive Effects of Leader Group Prototypicality, Accountability, and Team
Identification Journal of Applied Psychology 98 (4): 658667. See also Wang, D., Waldman, D. A., & Zhang, Z. (2013,
November 4). A Meta-Analysis of Shared Leadership and Team Effectiveness Journal of Applied Psychology
Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0034531
22
See Regine Teulier & Linda Rouleau, (2013) Middle Managers Sensemaking and Interorganizational Change
Initiation: Translation Spaces and Editing Practices Journal of Change Management 13 (3): 308337.
23
For an disucssion of these changes see Gerardo A. Okhuysen, David Lepak, Karen Lee Ashcraft, Giuseppe (Joe)
Labianca, Vicki Smith, & H. Kevin Steensma, (2013) Introduction to special topic forum: theories of work and
working today Academy of Management Review 38 (4): 491502.