May 3rd, 2007
The Impact of Innovation-Infrastructures on Multi-disciplined Teams
Well-advised decision markers are finding that the majority of 21st century issues don’t easily fit into 20th century organizations. Decision makers are also coming to terms with the reality that junior and staff managers are often not the smartest people in the room on these new challenges. Many senior executives are finding the answer in coupling multi-disciplined teams with innovation-infrastructures that are robust and well-funded.
Innovation and competitiveness initiatives often require the efforts of ad hoc teams. Innovation-Infrastructures can be configured so that multi-disciplined team members are encouraged to participate in the kind of radical collaboration that has led to the development of the Internet and solved many hidden problems. Executive management cannot be expected to have visibility of every performance obstacle or business opportunity at every level in the organization.
We are not suggesting that the entire organization be redeployed to work on radical collaboration initiatives. This would lead to chaos. However, we are suggesting that governance policies be developed that allow multi-disciplined team members to show their initiative and act without close supervision. In this scenario, ad hoc teams will sometimes act in direct opposition to the management directives laid out by junior and staff managers. This is the price of innovation and competitiveness in the 21st century.
The IT Investment Architect®
Concepts: ad-hoc-team, governance, Innovation-Infrastructure, radical-collaboration, teams