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55 EINBLICKE
9
Kreative Arbeit: „Das Althergebrachte in Frage stellen“.
Creative work:
"
Questioning established ideas
"
Innovations are not generally
born in company boardsrooms.
Patients have been administered this vital medication as an
injection ever since it first became available. All attempts to
develop a pill form have failed. Mr. Schmidt, an employee at
a major German pharmaceutical company, refused to accept
this failure. He combed through the literature on the subject,
attended some conferences and then came up with the idea
of developing an entirely different combination of active
substances.His boss agreed to let him invest a couple of hours
a week in the idea. It was the birth of a medication in which
billions were invested to develop. It became a
"
blockbuster"
for the company.
It is not the exception but rather the rule that in large com-
panies the ideas of individuals can turn into strategically
important projects. Innovative processes in particular tend
neither to run linearly nor be strategically planned in the initial
phase.To stay with this example: almost a year passed before
the company headquarters and top management first heard
about the project. Only then did Mr. Schmidt‘s idea actually
become an official project.
There was a similar scenario at a German transport company
with a strong engineering culture.The basic idea for the project
that the company todaymarkets as strategic innovation lay at
the bottom of one employee‘s drawer for years. No one wan-
ted to listen to his idea. Years later, at an internal conference,
he met a colleague from another of the company‘s locations
who had an idea that fitted well with his own. The two men
decided to combine their inventions and worked together
to have them put into practice. They knew from painful ex-
perience how difficult it would be to have their idea turned
into an official project. So they worked on it secretly at first:
one of them simulated the entire project on his computer at
home. They communicated via email and thought about who
they could bring in on their project to increase the chances of
its being implemented. A good few people had already been
working on the project for years before it was submitted for
approval as an official company project.
Both examples demonstrate that innovations are not generally
born as strategic projects planned in company boardrooms.
On the contrary,precisely when it comes to initiating develop-
ment projects it is the commitment of individuals that plays
the decisive role. The
innovation theorist
Joseph Schumpeter
formulated an idea
along these lines at the beginning of the 20th century: in his
eyes successful innovations are the projects of individuals,and
their success depends above all on how the
"
entrepreneur"
markets his invention. Knowing how to sell an idea – from
Schumpeter‘s perspective on the free market, but in modern
companies also internally to the people who say where the