Understanding your people: utilizing innovation talent
Developing the processes for innovation and building a culture where innovation can flourish are said to be the foundation for innovation teams to flourish. However, how can organisations successfully create and support their people when it comes to innovation? Compiling a team of creative thinkers with hard-working people, is not enough for innovation to succeed. Organisations should understand personality traits, develop the purpose for innovating and need to have a leadership style which supports and encourages innovation
Recognising innovation talent: three requirements
Many large organisations are diverse, not only in gender, ethnicity or age, but also in terms of personality. Some theories like introversion and extroversion are already widely understood, but personality types can go much more in detail: do people use intuition, thinking, feelings or sensing for decision making? What is their comfort-zone and where do their boundaries lie? Understanding these personality types allows leaders to know how to support and empower their people which helps them to compile ‘A-Teams’ for innovation. Furthermore, this helps organisations to also identify which types of talent they are currently missing and tailor their HR policies accordingly.
Leading and supporting people also requires a fitting leadership style. What type of leadership is currently used our management: people-oriented, task-oriented, democratic or charismatic? While there might not be a good or wrong (extreme’s excluded) method of leadership, organisations do need to understand how their leadership style affects innovation. Does it allow mistakes, how do we empower people, how do leaders and followers contribute to creative process? Do innovation teams drive the innovation, or does it come from the top? Organisations who understand how their leadership work and how it manifests in organisational behaviour, can leverage their people (and their personalities) efficiently.
- Personality types: What types of talent do we have in our organisation and how can we combine and utilise the various types of talent for effective innovation teams?
- Purpose: What is the purpose your organisation communicates for innovation and how does this translate into innovation?
- Leadership style: What type(s) of leadership does our organisation use and how does it affect innovation (positive-negative?)
Through our expertise and work with innovation leaders, we’ve recognized that these questions need to be answered in order to recognise and support the innovation talent within the organisation.
Curious to know why that is? Read stories from:
More of an auditory learner?
Listen to our podcast on Innovation Teams – by Angelique Plugge
Leadership: The impact of corporate identity on innovation
Dr. Prof. Justin Jansen, Professor of Corporate Entrepreneurship at the Rotterdam School of Management, talks about the relationship between corporate identity and achieving innovation success and elaborates on the role for leadership to successfully shape an innovative identity.
(In)formal culture: the importance of engaging people
Angelique Plugge, Former Innovation Driver at ING talks about the crucial role of innovation drivers in driving the innovative culture. Why do innovation drivers need to support (senior) management and how can leaders recognise helpful/unhelpful descriptors for innovation?
Understand your organisation’s innovation talent
To help organisations understand the personalities of their people (and how to support them) and the leadership styles which complement innovation, we’ve developed the Module 3: Developing Entrepreneurial People. The academic programme is specifically aimed towards innovation-professionals to allow them to learn, understand and support their employees within their organisation by combining the latest academic insights with best practices from industry leaders.
Module 2: Developing Entrepreneurial People
The programme focuses on giving you the skills and tools needed to understand, support & engage your human resources for innovation. It dives into the topic of ambidextrous human resources, how human resources affect both your leadership style as well as your relationship with (top) management. Furthermore, you’ll learn different personality types and learning styles which help you attract, engage and compose the most effective innovation teams.
A glimpse of our current and past client portfolio:
About us
Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship
The Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship is the leading centre for entrepreneurship in Europe with the mission to embed entrepreneurship into the DNA of people to drive innovation excellence. The Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship is part of the Rotterdam School of Management (RSM), Erasmus University Rotterdam. The RSM belongs to the top 1% of business schools world-wide to be awarded the Triple Crown Accreditation, which is awarded by the three largest and most influential school accreditation organisations world-wide. (AACSB, AMBA, EQUIS).
We stimulate entrepreneurial behaviour by using the renowned faculty of the RSM to teach educational courses on Bachelor, Master and MBA level through our various open and customised programmes. Our executive programmes are tailored to helping large organisations increase their level of innovation excellence.