"Pathways to Social Change" key event on social innovation Workshop Social Innovation & Workplace Innovation.

Transcription

1 "Pathways to Social Change" key event on social innovation Vienna, November, 2015 Workshop Social Innovation & Workplace Innovation. Organizer/session chair; Peter Oeij (TNO, Leiden, Netherlands) ) Day 1 Wednesday, November 18, 2015; Recently, Eurofound has published a 51-case study research into workplace innovation across Europe.* This research will be a stimulus to explore how workplace innovations and social innovation can inspire each other. In this session a discussion will be held about four questions: - 1] How can we design workplace innovation in such a way that this will enhance the capabilities of both the employees (and employee representatives) and the (innovative) capability of the work organization? - 2] How can employees play a role in designing such workplaces? - 3] How can organizations and employees be supported to develop workplace innovation? - 4] How can we link workplace innovation within organizations with social innovation in the environment of organizations?" * [download: pdf ] Program Introduction Peter Oeij (TNO, Leiden, Netherlands). Examples from the Eurofound study as examples of the 4 questions (above) Eurofound published a report exploring workplace innovation practices in Europe. Workplace innovation measures (WPI) are emerging as a strong driving force to transform workplaces to make better use of human talents and skills while sharpening innovation and improving competitiveness. However, there is a need for greater clarity about what policymakers can do to stimulate WPI. Eurofound s report on workplace innovation in European companies provides an understanding of why and how WPI is implemented in companies and organizations Getting the right people to innovate Katharina Lochner, presenter (PhD., cut-e GmbH, Hamburg, Germany); Achim Preuss (PhD., cut-e GmbH, Hamburg, Germany). Questions 2 and 3

2 Social innovation is defined as new ways of achieving a goal that change the direction of social change, that are able to better solve problems than previous practices, and that are therefore worth being replicated and institutionalised. Such a process requires a certain environment and certain circumstances. Moreover, within a given environment that facilitates social innovation there need to be people who foster and facilitate social innovation. Social innovation, like innovation in general, happens in several phases: detect a problem; develop solutions for the problem; implement the solutions; communicate the solution. Each stage requires different abilities and personalities and research shows that individuals are usually not equally strong in all stages. For organisations this means that they need to make sure they select and develop the different types of innovators and assemble teams accordingly. Practically this requires organisations to assess who their innovators are and which stage they are most likely to be strong at. Based on this insight organisations can decide which roles and responsibilities to assign to their employees and how to assemble teams so that employees can use their strengths in the best possible way. For example, an employee who is particularly good at communicating the benefits of a new process that was implemented should be in a position where they have an interface with as many different departments, should be teamed up with others that are good at other stages of the innovation process, and should receive training that strengthens their strengths. Thus the focus of the session is to help companies and employees find out where their strengths in terms of innovation are and how to use them in order to foster workplace innovation Social Innovation and Employment Services Ka Lin (Professor, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China; Longfei YI, presenter (PhD Candidate, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China). Questions 1 and 4 In this paper we discussed three kinds of the employment services from social innovation approach, encompassing the services from business companies, social enterprises and the government agents. This study provides the empirical basis of analysis by conducting the surveys and case studies and covers three cases including honeycomb-base project by the company, the Xiezhi hotel a social enterprises project and a Sailing Project by the Zhejiang Foundation of Young Entrepreneurs. Through these case studies we attempted to analyze the effect of these social innovations on the roles of social actors, the beneficiaries of these services, and the mechanism of the service provision, as well as the evaluation and their effect on policy outcome and efficiency. Thus this study deals with highlighting the issue of social innovation pertaining to the business and social sectors and evaluating the meanings of these innovative projects on promoting services for the labor market and for the public Social innovation via IT companies; the case of Dream Oval Henry Sampson (CEO of DreamOval and DreamOval Foundation, Accra, Ghana). Deborah Akuoko, presenter (DreamOval Foundation, and student at GIMPA, Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, Accra, Ghana). Questions 4

3 The question addressed is how can we link social innovation through organizations (namely by DreamOval) with social innovation (iteach) in the environment of organizations? This paper is about DreamOval Foundation(DOF). This is a Non-Governmental organization under DreamOval (DO) Limited, a software development company in Ghana. One major activity of DOF is iteach. iteach is an educational system facilitated by Dreamoval that focuses on giving teachers of rural schools the needed skills in ICT for free. The outcome of iteach is improved ICT literacy of teachers of rural schools which positively influences their teaching methods and knowledge base. Rural schools benefit from iteach as they get qualified ICT literates to impart on the students. iteach started from the year 2011 and is run every year in Ghana since then, in different regions. One way you can adopt DOF innovative knowledge sharing system is to identify underprivileged areas that need such resources and copy our approach. And as Nike always puts it Just DO I.T Challenging workers beyond their normal boundaries Audrey Chia, presenter (Associate Professor, NUS Business School and Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore); Lim Yee Wei (Associate Professor, NUS Business School and Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore). Question 4 A potential advantage for companies that engage in social innovation is that when seeking to solve a social problem, employees are challenged beyond the normal boundaries of their work. The context, clients, assumptions and constraints are changed, leading to opportunities to think, design and act differently. For example, employees working in a company that chooses to create products to address the needs of the poor or near-poor face constraints of affordability and have to consider the needs of their new customers. There is a push towards low-cost innovation that can in return benefit the organisation by suggesting new ways of working and operating. In our presentation, we consider examples from workplaces based in Japan and India Leaders enabling workplace innovation bottom-up Peter Totterdill, presenter (Professor, Chief Executive of the UK Work Organisation Network (UK WON), Director of Workplace Innovation Limited, Visiting Professor at Kingston University London, London, UK); Rosemary Exton (Director UK WON, Founding Director of Workplace Innovation Limited, London, UK). Question 1 Workplace innovation researchers have highlighted the importance of internally consistent policies and practices. Likewise partial change has been identified as an important cause of failure in workplace innovation because underlying structures, systems and management behaviours are often grounded in contradictory values. Organisations with mutually reinforcing workplace practices achieve superior performance as their collective impact is greater than the sum of individual

4 measures. Key practices include work organisation, organisational structures and systems, high involvement innovation and improvement, and workplace partnership. The concept of The Fifth Element has been designed as a means of conceptualising the interdependence of these practices and their cumulative transformational effect. The presentation will explore the concept further by drawing on two cases of transformation (a medium-sized freight forwarding company and a hospitalbased maternity unit) leading both to employee empowerment and the enhanced innovative capability of each organisation.

5 Bio Peter Oeij Peter Oeij is a senior researcher at TNO, Netherlands. Peter is fascinated by what happens at the crossing border of organisations and people. His projects are in the field of innovation management, workplace innovation and social innovation. He for example studies the dynamics of teams responsible for innovation, and helps teams to become more innovation resilient. Peter leads the WP Employment in the SI-Drive project; he recently finished a European research on workplace innovation in Europe, together with six EU institutes. Website: peter.oeij@tno.nl