If the innovation capability of a team or company is to be increased, at the same time one also hears plenty of reports about cases where this has not succeeded. With the triangle of forces it is possible to reflect on this with the team and to derive goal-oriented actions.
If you read through the relevant literature, you will always come across the same three core requirements, which also form the pillars of the “triangle of forces for innovative capability” tool.
These three core requirements are
– people’s willingness to change
– the change competence of the people
– The opportunities for change that are given to people
If one of the pillars is missing or if there are no accompanying measures for at least one pillar, the increase in innovation capability will not succeed in the long term and the development of a lively innovation culture will also be a distant prospect.
Let’s now take a closer look at the three pillars. First of all, there is the willingness of the people involved to change, or the WANT. Only if the people involved see a sense in the generation and implementation of new ideas will they then also be open to the implicit changes that follow.
Certainly the most fundamental measure for creating a willingness to change is information, information, and more information. With transparency and a good communication policy, you take people with you on the innovation journey.
Beyond this basis, everything from individual discussions to team-building measures are conceivable to provide support here.
If, in the best case, we now have a team that is ready for change, then we should immediately work on pillar two, change competence. Here, it is fundamentally about giving people cognitive knowledge, tools and methods on how idea generation and innovation can succeed.
Even a change-ready team can’t get innovation horsepower on the road without a good knowledge foundation.
Let us now assume that the columns one and two are given. Now people still have to be given the opportunity to do it in a concrete way. In other words, the third pillar is banally about the times for idea generation and innovation work and the places and spaces where that can take place.
It is an organizational issue, so to speak, although it is clear that “it is certainly easier said than done.”
In an actually existing and lively innovation culture, people in a company have both free space for creative work and appropriately equipped rooms.
