Stimulating employee-driven innovation - Exploring enablers for employee-driven innovation and the contribution of formal and informal innovation activities - a qualitative single-case study

Abstract

Innovation is a concept that has received an increased amount of attention in recent years. The concept of innovation has also developed to include a wider range of participants, including for example both open innovation and customer-oriented innovation. However, this thesis focuses on yet another group of innovators and the involvement of employees in innovation. Employees which are argued to hold in-depth and contextual knowledge valuable for innovation. This thesis adds to the growing interest in exploring the involvement of employees in innovation by further exploring the field of inclusive innovation and more specifically employee-driven innovation (EDI). The concept of employee-driven innovation refers to the involvement of employees, often referred to as front-line employees or ‘ordinary’ employees, in contributing to innovation. The thesis accounts for further exploration of contextual organizational conditions when exploring enabling factors for employee-driven innovation by focusing on the consultancy industry. The purpose of this study is to explore how employee-driven innovation can be stimulated, by exploring what enabling factors there are for stimulating employee-driven innovation and the contribution of formal and informal innovation activities. The study is performed qualitatively with a total sample of 15 company employees and four expert interviews. The company interviews include 11 employees and 4 managers at the company Beta which, as the expert interviews, were conducted with a semi-structured approach. In addition, a literature review is conducted to gain insight from prior research within the field of employee-driven innovation. The empirical findings are analyzed using thematic analysis, in relation to the developed theoretical framework, to answer the proposed research question and related sub-questions. The thesis findings highlight how there is no one way to stimulate employee-driven innovation in consultancy firms. There are enabling factors for employee-driven innovation, which also can be experienced as disabling factors, which include the organizational culture, management support, formal organizational factors and customer orientation. These factors are in turn present through, or experienced by employees through, both formal and informal innovation activities. The thesis adds organizational structure, innovation education as well as internal communication and language as enabling or disabling factors for employee-driven innovation. Finally, the thesis identifies several informal innovation activities which can be difficult to identify within organizations.