Innovation as a Motivator

Motivation, an important concept in management theory, can be defined as: “the reasons people do the things that they do” (Zenisek, 2009). A company that effectively motivates its employees will often perform better than one that does not. One motivation technique is innovation time: giving employees the freedom to work on their own projects as a portion of their normal workload. These projects are entirely self-directed, and rely heavily on the employee’s creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. Innovation time is an advantageous policy for two reasons: it can facilitate the creation of new revenue streams, and it exemplifies the positive aspects of academically accepted motivation theories, in particular the job characteristics model (JCM). Google and 3M, two highly successful companies, attribute much of their success to their use of this motivation technique. Allowing employees time to innovate and work on projects not directly assigned to them by management is an effective way to motivate staff in today’s competitive economy.

Before examining the advantages of innovation time, it is important to understand the fundamentals of the theory. At its core, the idea of giving employees time to self-direct themselves in the pursuit of creative projects involves supporting the innovator’s personal interests and entrepreneurial spirit (Dackert, Looke, & Martensson). The technique seeks to reduce employee turnover and increase productivity. The idea for innovation time is attributed to an incident that occurred at 3M. A 3M engineer received a direct order from a manager to stop working on a personal project during company time. The employee ignored his manager’s demand, and as a result, invented what would become one of 3M’s ...

... middle of paper ...

...ction/06/feature/24/34/83/index_printer.html

• Girard, B. (2009). The Google Way. United States of America: No Starch Press.

• Google. (2009). Google Financial Reports. Retrieved October 21, 2009, from Google Investor Relations: http://investor.google.com/fin_data.html

• Google. (2009). The Engineer's Life at Google. Retrieved October 21, 2009, from Jobs at Google: http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page=about.html&about=eng

• Govindarajan, V. (2002). Case Study: 3M Corporation. Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Dartmouth College.

• Langton, N., Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2010). Organizational Behaviour: Concepts, Controversies, Applications (5th Edition ed.). (K. Pruesse, Ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ, United States of America: Pearson Prentice Hall.

• Zenisek, T. (2009, October 1). Lecture 4 - Motivation & Trust. Ottawa, Ontario.