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Innovator resilience potential

  • Any innovation process naturally goes hand in hand with a strong potential for failure. Up to as many as 90% of all innovation projects fall to termination before their successful completion, with even higher termination rates in the pharmaceutical industry. Such terminations can have detrimental effects on the project members involved. Yet, surprisingly, as project members make up the most important reason for the success of innovations, research has hitherto scarcely noted the human side of innovation project terminations. Consequently, this study aims to analyze how to retain the innovative functioning of project members after such setbacks. This dissertation develops a framework to study the processes involved and analyze the influence of termination characteristics on project members. Resilience, or positive adaptation despite adversity, serves as the dissertation’s underlying framework and is adapted to the innovation context. To measure the resilience of project members after termination and to analyze the influence of termination characteristics on resilience, this dissertation develops the resilience construct innovator resilience potential (IRP), embedded in the innovator resilience (IR) framework. Herein, IRP stands for the potential in individuals for future innovative functioning and coping with future setbacks. The IRP construct consists of six malleable facets: self-efficacy, outcome expectancy, hope, optimism, self-esteem, and risk propensity. This dissertation theoretically develops and tests this definition and operationalization of IRP in a qualitative and a quantitative study. The qualitative study was conducted in a world-wide operating hospitality company that underwent a large-scale innovation project termination. The quantitative field study took place as an online questionnaire that 238 innovators completed entirely (180 innovators had experienced an innovation project termination). A total of 326 innovators completed the first part of the questionnaire regarding IRP. After developing IRP in the qualitative study, it became operationalized, tested, and validated in the quantitative study. Furthermore, the quantitative field study tested the relationship of IRP with future innovative functioning, which has great importance for the success of future innovation projects. A second step identifies factors influencing IRP. The outcomes of the quantitative field study show that IRP strongly relates to project commitment, which represents future innovative functioning of project members, as project commitment is important for the success of innovation projects. The strong relationship hinges on having experienced a termination beforehand. Therefore, IRP is important in the ongoing work of innovators following an innovation project termination. It is thus important to strengthen IRP after a termination, as this has a strong relationship with project commitment and as such future innovative functioning. Furthermore, this dissertation identifies social support as an influencing factor on IRP. More precisely, emotional support of the leader and organizational support provided through a climate of psychological safety strongly relate to IRP. In contrast, the support from family and friends does not relate to IRP. The dissertation found only work-related social support to strongly influence IRP. These findings result in theoretical and practical implications on how best to support project members during and after an innovation project termination. In addition, the general practical discussion of this dissertation presents five steps leading to IRP and guidelines for a post termination debriefing to provide leaders with practical advice. The theoretical findings suggest that IRP can be used to measure the influence of innovation project terminations on project members and that IRP is important for future innovative functioning and for future coping of project members. The findings build the basis for future research in this nascent research field.

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Metadaten
Author:Gisa Mönkemeyer
URN:urn:nbn:de:hbz:992-opus4-1522
Subtitle (English):an investigation of the human side of innovation project terminations
Place of publication:Vallendar
Referee:Martin Högl, Holger Ernst
Document Type:Doctoral Thesis
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2016/06/20
Publishing Institution:WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management
Granting Institution:WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management
Date of final exam:2012/11/30
Release Date:2016/06/20
Tag:Arbeitsverhalten; Bewältigung; Gaststättengewerbe; Innovationsmanagement; Multinationales Unternehmen; Persönlichkeitspsychologie; Projektmanagement
Page Number:173
Licence (German):Copyright this PhD thesis