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55 EINBLICKE
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Violations of the rules
guarantee survial and success.
money goes – therefore becomes a key criterion for successful
innovation.
But howdo such single-person projects turn intomajor deve-
lopment projects involving large numbers of people?With the
two innovations described above, little of this process is visible
at first.At the pharmaceutical company,Mr.Schmidt gathered
a small group of confidants around him who supported him
with their expert knowledge. Naturally in this initial phase
he confided his idea only to people he knew he could trust
entirely.Meanwhile the two employees at the transport com-
pany continued to fight for their invention.They realised that
they would have to involve company headquarters to get
someone to listen to their idea. In addition to good arguments,
considerable tenacity and staying power were required,before
company headquarters was finally convinced of the merits
of their project several years later. This is because innovation
always calls the established and long-standing into question.
Schumpeter even talks
of "creative destruction".
And the two engineers
would certainly agree:
in comparison with the strategic groundwork they had done
beforehand, the work on actually developing the product
seemed trivial.
At the pharmaceutical company, after more than a year the
group of ten people gathered around Mr. Schmidt were batt-
ling for the realisation of his idea.They faced a far more difficult
task than their colleagues in the transport sector because in
the pharmaceutical industry once certain structures have been
defined,even small adjustments are practically impossible at a
later stage.The group started off studying one compound,but
one member of the team, a Ms. Mayer, believed a different
combination was more promising. However the company
management refused to authorise a re-orientation just like
that.SoMr.Schmidt and his teamstuck to the original concept.
Ms. Mayer, however, began to conduct her own unofficial
experiments and she managed to demonstrate that her plan
worked. It didn‘t take her long to convince her colleagues – and
suddenly managerial authorisation was no longer a problem
either.The entire project took a different direction,once again
following the initiative of a single individual and bypassing
formal rules and official channels.
So do these formal rules and structures stand in the way of
constructive work? Rules and structures are without doubt
important and productive at companies, particularly large
companies. They make everyday life easier for employees
because they create routines and provide reliable frameworks.
Sociologist Niklas Luhmann calls organisational structures the
memory of organisations.They provide support and continuity.
With the help of structures and rules,organisations can ensure
reliable procedures, efficiency and not least the coordination
of different work phases. However these rules, routines and
also many formal procedures are not helpful when it comes
to innovations. Rules are characterised precisely by the repe-
Mappen als Verwahrungsorte: So manche Idee bleibt
jahrelang verborgen, bevor ihr Potenzial entdeckt wird.
Briefcases for safekeeping: Many ideas remain hidden for
years before their potential is finally discovered.