Presented at ISPIM 2008 Conference, Tours, France together with Anu Suominen, co-writen with Heli Aramo-Immonen and Kaj Koskinen. Received Best Student Paper Award.

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REQUISITE VARIETY OF EXPERTISE WITHIN
A GROUP IN IDEA GENERATION
ANU SUOMINEN MSc., PhD-student
JARI JUSSILA MSc., PhD-student
Co-writers:
Heli Aramo-Immonen, PhD
Dr. Kaj U. Koskinen, docent
Industrial Management

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Pauling:
”The best way to have a
good idea is to have lots
of ideas…”
Industrial Management

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INTRODUCTION: TERMS
CREATIVITY
• Individual’s capability
• Within every person
• Involved in all human activities (with problem solving etc.)
• Prerequisite for organizational innovation
INNOVATION by OECD
“...the implementation of a new or significantly improved product
(goods or services), or process, a new marketing method, or a
new organisational method in business practices, workplace
organisation or external relations.”
IDEA GENERATION
• The 1st phase of innovation process
• Without any ideas, no innovations will emerge
Industrial Management

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CREATIVITY AND IT’S LINK TO INNOVATION
Resources Management
practises
Creativity feeds
Innovation innovation
Work Organizational
Motivation
Environment
I
IM
PA
PA
CT
CT
Task
Expertise
S
S
Motivation
Creativity
Individual/Team Creativity
Creativity Skills Amabile CTC, CTOCI (1997)
Industrial Management

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REQUISITE VARIETY
Asbhy’s Law of Requisite variety:
• the internal complexity of a system should correspond to the multiplicity and
complexity of the environment; otherwise the system will not function
effectively enough in its environment
Innovation requires Requisite variety:
• diversity is necessity (Florida)
• value of diversity (Martins & Terblanche)
• diverse range of skills; Hybrid nature of people and managers (Trott)
• team diversity (Farr et al.)
• Requisite variety of information (Nonaka & Takeuchi)
• Leveraging diversity: seeing differences as richness, being able to benefit
from different viewpoints and opinions
• Requisite variety: employment of range of people with different
backgrounds and skills
Industrial Management

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EXPERTISE
Professional expertise:
• includes the mastery of job-related knowledge: technical, professional, or
managerial
• the motivation to use, develop, and share work-related knowledge with others
• Expertise & Challenges => Flow (Csikszentmihalyi)
Self-development
• different levels
• most basic level: used to sustain the current professional and technical expertise
• higher levels: extending knowledge beyond the current work tasks or current field
of expertise
Creative tension (Senge)
• is generated by the difference between a vision and a clear picture of current
reality (where we are relative to what we want) - a force to bring them together
Industrial Management

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METHODOLOGY: CASE STUDY
4 TEST GROUPS:
Test persons from many industrial branches
Technically oriented people
GROUP 1: Experienced experts with higher level technical
education
GROUP 2: Experienced experts with lower level technical
education
GROUP 3: Less experienced, young experts
with higher level tehcnical education
GROUP 4: mixed group with bothh young and older experts
with both higher and lower level technical education
• Expertise minimum: 5 years in project work
• Higher education minimum: BSc or MSc or corresponding
Industrial Management

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METHODOLOGY: CASE STUDY
TWO TEST SETTINGS:
1. Individual test
• Four types of innovations were studied:
• 4 P = Product, Process, Position, Paradigm
• paper and pencil
• look at the video
• simultaneously capture as many ideas of four innovation types as
possible
• write them down
2. Pair test
• Same procedure with pair
• Conversation allowed (and encouraged)
Industrial Management

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RESULTS
Quantity Quality
GROUPS 1 SETTING 2nd SETTING 2nd SETTING
Average amount ideas per group
of ideas
1 (4+7) EXPERIENCED Average: 51,6 Group 1 50 %
EXPERTS ideas per group generated Position & Paradigm innovations
WITH HIGH altogether most (especially in the Test setting 2)
EDUCATION ideas: 77 pcs
2 (11) EXPERIENCED Group 2 generated 44 % of just Product innovations
Average:
EXPERTS only 3,45 ideas
WITH LOWER 15 % more with
per person pairs
EDUCATION
3 (7) YOUNGER 40 % Position & Paradigm
EXPERTS WITH innovations
HIGHER EDUCATION
Group 4 generated
4 (7) MIXED 65 % of Product & Process
most ideas:
innovations
10,42 per person
Industrial Management

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RESULTS
Test setting 1:
• ideas by individuals: 0 - 31pcs
• 12 ideas on the average
Test setting 2:
• with pairs 15 % more ideas on the average
• people generate even more ideas while working in
pairs than as individuals.
Industrial Management

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RESULTS
• the mixed age structure and variation of expertise and
experience also influenced on the capability to capture the ideas
from the video (group 4)
• the lower the education level of the test group was => the less
new ideas were generated (group 2)
• the higher the education was, the higher the quality of ideas
was (group 1 and group 3); process and paradigm innovations =>
more complex ideas
• the highest number of new ideas was generated by the
homogeneous group of highly educated expertise in the
second phase as working in pairs (group 1)
• both the expertise group (group 1) and mixed group (group 4)
were able to generate over 70 pieces of different ideas in two
times 13 minutes sessions
Industrial Management

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RESULTS
• people of all backgrounds generate ideas
• requisite variety of expertise adds both to the
quantity and quality of idea generation in a group
• working additionally with pairs adds considerably
to the quantity of the generated ideas
 pair working causes stimuli to idea generation
and also pairs learn from each other while
generating ideas together
Industrial Management

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CONCLUSIONS
The requisite variety of expertise
• important feature in idea generation within a group
• grows the quantity of the generated ideas
• expertise generate more complex ideas, but
 Innovations require a lot of new ideas – and especially different types of ideas
Working in pairs:
• Two people working together generate greater number of ideas than two individuals
accumulated singularly
• people learn from each other during idea generation
Working in a project work context:
• working in mixed groups conducts more new ideas => fruitful to have mixed aged
groups
• expertise is partially based on experience
• variation in individual’s capability to idea generation creates a risk of failure in innovation
process, whereas working in teams reduces the risk significantly
Organizations should build up groups with people having various types of expertise and
ages; also working as pairs or within a group should be encouraged, in order the idea
generation to flourish in organizations
Industrial Management

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THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION
CONTACT INFORMATION
Tampere University of Technology at Pori
PL 300, 28101 PORI, FINLAND
Anu Suominen
E-mail: anu.suominen@tut.fi
GSM: +358 40 556 2303
Jari Jussila
E-mail: jari.j.jussila@tut.fi
GSM: +358 407178345
Industrial Management