In general, team innovation should be integrated with enterprise innovation, and its innovation process goes hand in hand with enterprise innovation. The innovation process is mainly the process of transforming a design idea and scheme into some practical technology or product. By summing up the experience of many successful enterprises, the innovation process should include five stages: discovering innovation opportunities, putting forward innovation ideas, determining innovation technologies, implementing innovation schemes, and displaying and diffusing innovation achievements.
Looking for innovation opportunities
The so-called innovation refers to the denial of old things and the exploration of new things. The reason why enterprises want to deny the original things is because the internal and external environment for their survival and development has changed, resulting in disharmony and some kind of threat. It is this disharmony and threat that provides opportunities for innovation, and then promotes the emergence of innovative ideas.
The disharmony and threat of enterprises can exist both inside and outside the system.
As far as enterprise teams are concerned, there are two possible factors that lead to the disharmony and threat of innovation:
(1) Various obstacles in production and operation. This stuck link may be that the texture of a certain material is not ideal, and no substitute can be found all the time, or a certain processing method is not perfect, or a certain distribution policy is unreasonable, which may affect the enthusiasm of workers or the improvement of labor productivity, thus constantly plaguing enterprise managers.
(2) The success or failure of an enterprise accident. Unexpected success and failure of enterprises often drive enterprises out of the original mode of thinking, thus becoming an important source of enterprise innovation. For example, the old products have been carefully improved, although theoretically the structure is more reasonable, the performance is more perfect and the quality is better, but the sales volume has not achieved the expected satisfactory growth; For another example, the sales of derivative products unexpectedly exceed the main products of enterprises, which will guide enterprises to produce innovative ideas and provide opportunities for enterprise innovation.
Externally, the factors that cause the disharmony and threat of innovation are: market environment, macro-policy, social and humanistic environment and political and legal system. For example, changes in market consumption demand, market capital flow, market competition degree, various policies formulated by the government to guide and restrict enterprises, competitive situation of competitors, social cultural atmosphere, folk customs, improvement and implementation of laws and regulations and other factors or aspects may become the source of enterprise innovation, directly or indirectly providing enterprises with innovation opportunities. Thirdly, finding innovation opportunities is the first stage of enterprise innovation.
Put forward innovative ideas
The search for innovation opportunities is mainly in the cognitive field, which is an innovative consciousness and concept formed after the original order is broken. In fact, any innovative ideas or concepts should be transformed into innovative blueprints and innovative practical ideas.
At this stage, enterprise managers need to start from three aspects if they want to make innovative ideas clear from vagueness:
(1) On the basis of discovering and observing disharmony, analyze the causes of disharmony through phenomena, analyze and predict the future trends and threats of disharmony, estimate the positive or negative consequences they may bring to the enterprise organization, and make efforts to make use of opportunities.
(2) Evaluate the resources involved in innovation, including technical aspects (equipment, technology and know-how), commercial aspects (users, characteristics, expectations, sales channels and potential markets) and organizational aspects (internal decision-making procedures and institutions of enterprises affected by innovation), which are the guarantee to realize innovation.
(3) Formulate appropriate innovation evaluation criteria, so that innovators can correctly analyze the necessity and effectiveness of their own innovation projects.
Identify innovative technologies
Creating a new idea and finding a concrete way to realize it is to identify innovative technologies. As far as team innovation is concerned, there are two main ways to determine innovative technology.
(1) Innovation depends on its own strength. This method requires considerable scientific research and development capabilities, a strong scientific research team and various talents. This method is more suitable for those enterprises with large scale, abundant funds and strong scientific research ability.
(2) Introduction and learning. Refers to the introduction of domestic or foreign advanced innovative hardware or software, through learning the innovative ideas and behaviors of pioneers, absorbing and summarizing successful experiences and lessons of failure, purchasing or deciphering the core technologies or secrets of pioneers, and improving and perfecting them on this basis, and then further developing. The adoption of this innovative technology requires not only strong financial strength, but also strong imitation and reference ability.
Implement an innovation plan
The important stage of innovation is the implementation of innovation scheme. The problem it wants to solve is not the problem of thinking, but the problem of means and methods, that is, how to turn the budding innovation blueprint into operable innovation technology and innovation results, and its target output is concrete plan task book and concrete samples.
At this stage, innovative enterprises should not only invest a lot of intangible assets, such as scientific knowledge, practical technology and creative implementation, but also invest a lot of tangible assets, including innovative knowledge workers, financial and material resources.
Display and dissemination of innovative achievements
In order to obtain a profitable relationship between quantity, quality and price, innovation achievements must be tested by relevant technical and economic indicators. The economic indicators reflecting the innovation effect include: the output index, cost saving index and market share index of the enterprise, such as capital profit rate, labor productivity, sales income, cost profit rate, material consumption reduction rate, etc. Social indicators reflecting the effect of innovation include indicators of improving working conditions and protecting the ecological environment. There are many indicators reflecting the physical and chemical properties of innovative products, such as performance, composition, life, precision, purity, appearance, style and so on. The three indicators we mentioned above are often complementary and combined.
The process of transferring, popularizing and selling enterprise innovation achievements in the whole society is the diffusion of innovation achievements. The diffusion process can not only enable the first enterprise to carry out innovation activities to gain benefits through the paid transfer of patents, technical know-how, sales of technical equipment and innovative products, but also popularize and popularize innovation achievements in the whole society, thus promoting the overall improvement of the national economy and scientific and technological level. Of course, whether the embodiment of the ultimate value of innovation results can be accepted by the market and consumers can be verified at this stage.
Organization of team innovation activities
The process of transforming design concept into practical technology is innovation. This process is also a process of organizing and implementing innovation under the guidance of innovative ideas. Managers of enterprise systems should not only innovate their own work according to the characteristics and laws of innovation, but also organize the innovations of their subordinates. The organization of innovation activities includes the following aspects.
(1) Vigorously create an organizational atmosphere to promote innovation. The birth of an innovation is due to an organizational atmosphere, in which innovative ideas can be produced and innovation can be practiced.
The best way to promote innovation is to publicize and encourage innovation in a big way, and establish a new concept of "no excessive reactive power" so that everyone can make progress, make progress and try boldly. Failure is closely related to success. One of the most important experiences in Silicon Valley is to "tolerate failure" and "it doesn't matter if you fail"; Reward those who dare to take risks, not punish those who fail because of taking risks.
Similarly, venture capitalists are willing to invest in entrepreneurs who dare to take risks and innovate, and they don't mind supporting those entrepreneurs who have made one or two mistakes and suffered failures. A good and harmonious organizational environment is an important factor in innovation activities.
(2) Make flexible plans conducive to innovation. Innovation is a denial of old things and a challenge to established rules, which means taking up a lot of unplanned time and resources. Therefore, organizers who require innovation must make flexible plans that are conducive to the development of innovation activities.
In this flexible plan, we should pay attention to the following two points:
① The time environment should be relaxed. Innovation requires thinking, and thinking takes time. If everyone's schedule is tight, it is not conducive to innovative thinking to always implement the "full-load work system". According to the book Innovator and Enterprise Revolution, successful enterprises such as IBM, 3M and DuPont in the United States allow employees to spend 5% ~ 15% of their working time to cultivate and inspire their interests and ideas.
② Equipment needed in aerospace field. Innovation needs to try, and trying needs material conditions and test sites. Requiring all departments to strictly formulate and implement plans under any circumstances will restrict innovation because the regulations are too dead. If employees want to have time to think and have the conditions to try, the plan made by the organization must be flexible.
Establish a reasonable reward system
There is such a thing in the theory of behavioral science that effective incentives must be carried out to make a certain behavior of people last for a long time. To mobilize and stimulate everyone's enthusiasm for innovation, it is necessary to establish a reasonable evaluation and reward system, otherwise, the motivation to continue innovation will gradually lose. The incentive system to promote innovation should at least grasp the following three issues:
(1) Give appropriate encouragement to individual achievements and establish a diversified and differentiated material incentive system. Material motivation is always the basic factor to attract and motivate talents. Among them, employee stock ownership and stock options, which have an important impact on innovation, are widely used in foreign enterprises.
(2) Expand the development space of innovative talents and attach great importance to the role of spiritual encouragement. For many innovators, making a living is just an incentive to enter an organization and work for a company. Only when their ideas are adopted and appreciated can they have the greatest sense of accomplishment. If employees feel that they are living in an environment of "giving full play to their talents" after spiritual encouragement, they will have trust in the enterprise and give full play to their intelligence and wisdom, and they will succeed.
(3) The reward system should not only promote internal competition, but also ensure cooperation among members.
(4) There can be failures in formulating, but there can be no incentive plan without innovation. It is important to give flowers and applause to successful innovators, but it takes foresight and extraordinary courage to encourage enterprising losers. A domestic enterprise launched the "commendation meeting for science and technology losers", and its standard is: "As long as you are striving for innovation and success, failure will still be rewarded". Soon, the "loser" became a "winner", and success stemmed from failure.