Even though estate agents are used as an example, there are other businesses which can be considered, the suggested focus in on those who yield a very high selling price per transaction in the current economic climate. Whoever offers sponsorship to this project, it is certainly possible to use healthy rivalry to stimulate innovation without disrupting a culture of collaboration.
N.B. MaKing Murals paid casual workers (family and friends) £10 per 100 charms for joining a pendant to a pre-made decorated strap, which took up to one hour to complete. A time and motion study fairly assessed this amount.
The slideshows provided on Making Murals’ hosting website gives more detail of what is offered by ‘Crystalis Fostering Creativity’, but for clarification some additional information on paragone is provided below.
Rivalry is an important but often over-looked lever for catalyzing innovation’
Mark Little
Head of General Electric’s Global Research Group, Senior vice president (GE)
Source:
www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Using_Rivalry_to_spur_innovation_2599?pagenum=3
Mark Little sees that the adoption of paragone is:
- infrequently discussed , often plays second fiddle to collaboration as a cultural norm.
- gives people space, stretches goals, encourages diversity
Little encourages the notion of ‘cooler ideas’, where people can dream up their own ideas independently and say ‘let’s look at this idea’.
LITTLE’S PARAGONE - seen benefits are as follows:
- pools of money for seeding ideas..
- get ideas to blossom to a point of interest, pick them up, fund them, and turn them into products.
- It’s not people sitting around having a lot of free time to do whatever they want to do.
- access to money, which gives people flexibility to do more.
Mark Little recognizes that this is how we get new ideas and that there are no winners or losers, when we make rivalry work.
Supporting notions:
GUEVERA‘S PARAGONE:
- forces a kind of creative thinking and manoeuvring that leads to new/better ideas.
- Leaders must provide ample room for collaboration once the initial winner emerges
- Competitive teams create prototypes knowing only one will be selected as the winner.
- By bringing the competitors together as a single team after the initial set of competition, a leader can give all the chance to be part of the larger creation even for team was not the initial winner.’
‘using teams.. to create healthy rivalry affords everyone an opportunity to win.’
Jonathan Guevera, CEO,
Community College of District of Columbia, Washington DC, USA
SHARMA’S PARAGONE:
- extract the best out of a class/group by dividing it into teams and make them compete.
- create a form of peer-evaluation within each team to arrive at the best contributor.
- inter- and intra-team rivalry excites.. and spurs them on to the path of excellence’
‘comparison with Europe of the Middle Ages.. is novel‘
Sham Sharma, Visiting Faculty, Merut, U.P. India
HAZAPIS’ PARAGONE:
- Dependent on levels of investment in innovation to generate new processes/operations, new products/technologies, new ventures and new business models.
- technology enables innovation.
- people + processes + technology that foster business opportunities
- innovation is innovation if valued is attached. It is that value that generates revenues.
‘Rivalry to spur innovation’
Gearge Hazapis, Senior Exec, Business Support Services,
Dbai Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Dubai, UAE
PURSUING INNOVATIVE PARTNERSHIPS
It is possible for business leaders to pursue innovative partnerships through better education and workforce training. MaKing Murals is open to partnership support and uses McKinsey’s recent insights from an article entitled ‘Breaking the US impasse’ (August 2013) as possible indicators of the next step/s:
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JUMP START MOMENTUM
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via new standards and partnerships plus focus on local innovation
PROGRESS NEEDS:
- a willingness to stretch for new opportunities
- a fresh mind that looks beyond this quarter's results or the next election cycle
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4 PRIORITIES
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- i) co-operate in developing industry standards
- ii) build new types of partnerships
- iii) drive local change
- iv) step out of your comfort zone
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NEW TYPES OF PARTNERSHIPS
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- new forms of collaboration e.g. creating more competitive workforce
-some employers forming industry associations to develop joint training programmes with agreement to protect participants from talent poaching
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DRIVE LOCAL CHANGE
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- local innovation is key to realizing game changers on national level
- local business leaders set the direction for these innovation hubs (and) sustain them through start-up incubators, co-ordinating organisations, venture capital ..’
- ‘industry leaders can work with city/state officials to build on local capabilities’
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McKinsey 'Breaking the US growth impasse' August 2013
Susan Lund, Principal with MGI (Washington DC); James Manyika, Director MGI (San Francisco); Scott Nyquist, Director MGI (Houston)
Source: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/growth/breaking_the_us_impasse
Crystalis Fostering Creativity is ready to shift! Are you?
click below for our Fostering Creativity slideshow
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