The HR Department: Bringing Creativity and Intrapeneurship
The HR Department: Bringing Creativity and Intrapeneurship
CREATIVITY
Creativity is the ability to find new solutions to a problem or new modes of expression; the bringing into existence of something new to the individual. Creative productivity requires a unique juxtaposition of the person's mastery of the domain of knowledge in which creativity will be elicited, the person's ability to think beyond the current limits of that domain, and the perseverance and willingness/proclivity to take intellectual produce something new and transformational within a community or context that is amenable to the transformational idea or product.
INTRAPRNEURSHIP
A process in which individuals inside organizations pursue opportunities without regard to the resources they currently control, doing new things and departing from the customary to pursue opportunities. The process by which large organizations seek to utilize, maintain or retain the edge in innovation and profit-making by asking employees to spawn businesses within the business. entrepreneurship within an existing organization.
GOOGLE: recruitment is more creative and less uniform. Encrypts its recruitment ads on outdoor bulletin boards so that only those who can decipher it will know job applications are being accepted.
MOTOROLA: Minority Report System - This allows any employee to report ideas to a higher-level manager or to another division if her idea is rejected by her immediate boss. This way Motorola can avoid losing an important creative idea just because of one persons hasty decision.
BOOSTING INTRAPRENEURSHIP IN ORGANIZATIONS WHO HAS DONE IT AND HOW CISCO - Every 6 months or so, they have best practices meetings where staff from various locations meet and discuss the best practices of their offices located all over the country.
Leverages the strengths of their employees creativity by creating a common forum for exchange of ideas.
If an employee has found a cool way of doing a particular process he transfers this knowledge to his virtual team and gets credit for his idea. The Virtual Team of the related technology group, then discusses this idea in regular place ware sessions or through teleconferences and if the idea is sound, it is sent to the product manager for approval.
General Electric Emphasizes communicating openly and candidly. This helps in bringing out the hidden talents of its employees and encourages generation of new ideas through a company wide brainstorming.
GTE's Information Systems Division Parts of the organization are divided into self- contained teams. Extensive counselling to the volunteer employees in new way of thinking and working. From the initial group eight new projects were proposed and a number of them funded. A number of employees have defined totally new career paths for themselves. This program has totally redefined how GTE does business.
Make the workplace one where questions are not only welcomed but also encouraged. Asking questions is vital for creativity to emerge. "Genius Grants- give researchers unstructured time to work on projects that pique their curiosity.
Develop a suggestion system-This suggestion system should reach every employee in every location that the company operates. After the system is in place, a team composed of employees from each department meet once month to review all new ideas and to report back on the development of past creative ideas. The team should also be empowered to reward those employees that develop creative ideas that make a positive impact. Develop a company atmosphere that endorses creativity as a valuable commodity
Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces
Move people around and develop communication patterns that dont put your employees to sleep. Interaction and communication are important because creative acts do not develop in a vacuum, but instead take a great deal of team work.
Do not monetarily reward the quantity of new creative ideas you receive from employees. For example, do not impose a creative quota where every employee must turn in x number of creative ideas per month in order to get a bonus. Do monetarily reward successful creative ideas and good attempts at being creative. Allow employees to take their creative ideas to other companies if your company does not have the ability to develop it. Oversight is needed to refine and strictly verify original ideas and link them to final results. This is how Gmail attained its initial success on the market. Before launching the service, Google ran a project to listen to its employees, often the companys most severe critics.
Recruiting with Creativity Home as office Encourage employees to take up creative interests Three-day weekend Rewarding the under-performer Creative Performance Management System
Alignment- ensuring the interests and actions of all employees are directed toward a company's key goals.
Self-initiated activity- allowing an employee to pick out problems they are interested in and feel able to solve.
Unofficial activity- occurs in the absence of direct official support and with the intent of doing something new and useful. Serendipity- Serendipity is the chance for fortunate accidents. Diverse stimuli- happen in the course of everyday work,and it is imptortant workers discuss the possibilities they encounter, which is the final element, Within-company communication
1. Management Support
2. Work discretion
3. Rewards/reinforcement
4. Time availability
5. Organizational boundaries
Developing a Vision
Articulating the Vision around the Companys Mission Statement and aligning it with the Core values
Encouraging Innovation
Radical Incremental
Intraprise training:
Personal Creativity: This consists of many personal creativity exercises to help participants develop a personal creativity enrichment program. Intrapreneuring: A Review of current literature on intrapreneurship as well as in depth analysis of several organizations intrapreneurial practices. Assessment of current culture: This is interactive in nature where a survey is administered to the training group for generating discussion about the current facilitators and barriers to organizational change. Business Planning: Trainees are taught the process of developing a business plan and each specific element of a business plan is explained and illustrated. An example of an entire business plan is stated and illustrated. Action Planning: requires participants to form groups and prepare action plans designed to bring about change in their individual work teams.