Growing Strategic Innovation at Dimensys

Growing Strategic Innovation at Dimensys

Soto Camacho, G.

Buijs, J.A. (mentor)
Kleinsmann, M. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Product Innovation Management

Master of Science Strategic Product Design

2013-12-13

Today, making business, and more importantly, staying in business is becoming more and more complex for companies. Organizations are aware that if they want to survive they have no longer the option of carrying on doing today what worked yesterday. Innovation seems to be the shared answer among companies for responding to the fast-changing environment that we live in, and following that promise, many companies embark in the journey of pursuing innovation. This project was done in a similar context for the company Dimensys, an IT consulting company. A group within Dimensys decided to pursue an innovation initiative over a year ago, aiming to cope with market challenges like the maturity of their software solution, the saturation of their target market and the reduced new projects due to the financial crisis, among others. However soon after they began they noticed they had not been able to bring everybody on board, starting by the senior colleagues who showed opposition and the rest of the colleagues who remained neutral and did not seem enthusiastic to get involved. The approach to the problem was made with the design thinking methodology. The complex problem as perceived initially was framed as an unshared need for innovation and for the vision of innovation. The problem of different perceptions in regards to innovation seemed to be exacerbated by the age gap between the newer or younger personnel (around 30 years old) and the personnel who had more experience in the company (around 50 years old). These groups not only had different personal and professional interests to keep learning and innovating, but they also had different perceptions of the competitive world in which Dimensys operates. A vast research was performed to grasp the problem, using as pillars the innovation theory and organizational behavior. To support understanding the problem various research methods were followed, a literature review, an external analysis of the best practices, an internal analysis of possible organizational barriers related to norms and practices or employee’s behaviors, and a participatory session with the employees. Several internal barriers were detected such as the unawareness of their own issues existing among employees and impeding collaboration, a lack of understanding of the vision of the company and its input for innovation, and intergenerational barriers to collaborate, among others. By the end of the project the aim was to provide Dimensys with strategic advice on how they could build a culture that fosters innovation. For that goal, the knowledge and insights gained throughout the project research were used as input for creating something that fit the situation of Dimensys. A step approach was formulated to provide Dimensys with guidance on the practices that they could work on to overcome their barriers. Design tools were selected to be the means that Dimensys could use for further working on addressing their internal barriers because they provide a way to understand abstract situations and provide tangible means for people to express their ideas better. A participatory approach was also recommended to Dimensys to as a way to integrate employees in the ideation and some extent of the decision making to generate more involvement and ownership of the improvements to their practices. The logic behind the proposal is creating new practices that actively show that innovation is a priority of the company, so that individuals and groups can undergo the process of learning what are the expected behaviors and norms for working in Dimensys. Gradually, with discipline and leading by example, the norms and behaviors of people are expected to align to the new designed norm to become the new organizational culture.

innovation
organizational culture

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:bbe147a1-662d-486a-a8e1-d29425bb3c9a

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2013 Soto Camacho, G.