Co-Research
It is becoming increasingly urgent for German companies and institutions to build a sustainable innovation culture to take part in the rapid developments shaping the future. The "Trans-Nation Co-Creation" project was established to help innovation drivers support new ideas within their organizations. It aims to foster innovation through the building blocks of research, further education, and cooperation:
Trans-Nation represents an active transatlantic knowledge transfer between the innovation hotspot Silicon Valley and locations in northern and southern Germany. This approach aims to promote collaboration and knowledge exchange among diverse participants, benefit from international perspectives, and help organizations identify global trends early. Collaboration at a transnational level opens new opportunities for developing innovative solutions and accessing different markets.
Co-Creation stands for the interaction of participants with scientific experts and their integration into innovation, development, and learning processes. By acting as an interface between academia and industry, this approach operates at an intersection often associated with consistent innovation. This framework further develops potential success factors by fostering an innovative mindset, making the processes of innovation more tangible and teachable, and guiding participants through targeted learning experiences toward their own innovative contributions.
Peer Learning represents the exchange of knowledge between companies and institutions of varied sizes and industries, established companies and startups, as well as exchanges with the scientific community. Participants learn from each other, reflect on their own position through a change of perspective, and test innovative forms of collaboration. This is complemented by intensive personal dialogue and interactive work in small groups. Participants thus gain practical insights and are brought together with innovation drivers facing similar challenges.
The overarching goal of this project, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), is to systematically convey the Innovation Mindset necessary for developing an innovation culture, to make innovation tangible and learnable, and to guide German companies and start-ups through targeted learning processes, enhancing their contribution to their organization’s innovation.
In addition to cultivating important future competencies, the project aims to enhance technology and innovation transfer, assisting participants in supporting each other’s innovative ideas and implementations.
These objectives are enhanced by closely linking the project with Silicon Valley, a region known for fostering innovation.
In the Trans-Nation Co-Creation project, topics and insights from innovation and leadership research play a central role. Research results from Leuphana’s Institute for Performance Management (IPM) and further form an important basis for the content and structure of the project. The participants themselves become actors in the research process and contribute to expanded insights into innovation-promoting framework conditions and processes, as the project is accompanied by research.
Innovation and Futures Literacy are core themes of IPM's research and are integrated into a broad field of research approaches and methods. Here are some selected findings:
Innovation Culture
A specific "Innovation Mindset" is important in companies for the development and implementation of innovations: A corporate culture in which innovative thinking is valued and a constructive failure culture exists, in which agile and flexible responses to new challenges and changing framework conditions occur, and in which important information is shared openly and transparently, supports innovative action and organizational success.
Ambidextrous ("two-handed") Leadership and Innovation
Ambidextrous Leadership contributes to companies strengthening their innovative power ("Explore") while not losing sight of traditional corporate goals ("Exploit"). "Explore" includes encouraging new ideas and independent, creative thinking, supporting risk- taking and accepting mistakes. The more innovation-promoting leaders perceive their corporate culture, the stronger "Explore" behavior they show and the more they encourage their employees to "Explore" behavior. A corporate culture that promotes innovative action is more pronounced in start-up companies than in established companies.
Innovation and Purpose
Leadership quality, company success, and innovativeness also depend on a shared awareness of meaningful common intentions, goals, and values in a company - the Purpose. The more strongly leaders perceive the Purpose of their company and express it in their leadership behavior, the higher the innovativeness, market success, and employee satisfaction, commitment, engagement, and cohesion of their employees.
Hybrid Work and Innovation
Instead of office work and fixed working hours, more mobile and results-oriented work (e.g., in home office) has become established in recent years. Leaders feared a growing detachment from work as a negative consequence. However, no negative effects regarding innovativeness in companies were observed - but under the prerequisite that leaders make stronger and more conscious efforts in remote leadership to support and maintain a connected, innovation-promoting corporate culture.
Digitalization, Artificial Intelligence and Innovation
A high degree of digitalization is an essential basic condition for cooperation and innovative action, especially under hybrid working conditions. Artificial Intelligence offers new and additional opportunities here: Leaders recognize a clear connection between the use of Artificial Intelligence and the successful implementation of innovations in their companies.
Innovation and Sustainability
Sustainability and innovativeness are compatible. The more leaders consider sustainability aspects in their leadership actions (Sustainable Leadership), the more innovations are developed and successfully implemented in companies. The positive correlation between sustainable leadership and innovativeness is independent of the extent to which leaders consciously and purposefully support innovations.
Innovation and Futures Literacy
Higher Futures Literacy among leaders is not only associated with a stronger interest of their companies in developing innovations in numerous activity and process areas, but also with their successful implementation. Leaders with stronger Futures Literacy also show more effective leadership behaviour overall and have more satisfied, creative, and enthusiastic employees.
Footnote on the source (Manager Barometer)
The research results outlined here were obtained as part of the Manager Barometer, an extensive survey of German- speaking executives, which is conducted annually by the management consultancy Odgers Berndtson. The survey aims to capture a current mood picture from the executive floors of companies. For six years, the IPM has been a cooperation partner of the Manager Barometer and participates in the survey with its own partial study. All reported results are statistically significant.