Lesson 2.4 Understanding Yourself as a Workplace Innovator
Your capability to engage with innovation in the workplace – and in your other roles as a community member and global citizen – includes Skills, Knowledge, Mindsets and Experiences. The previous Lesson focused on what you can do as a workplace innovator, reflecting on the Skills and Knowledge you have developed from your innovation experiences (in this course unit of elsewhere).
In this Lesson we will be focusing on the notion of Innovation Mindsets, with specific reflection on the innovation roles where you see yourself as best contributing and on what motivates you as a workplace innovator.
We’ll be using innovation resources about these topics from Australian and Canadian workplaces. In addition to your own self-reflection, these topics can be added to your resumé and discussed in job interviews.
Which innovation roles are a good fit for you?
If our goal is to “Encourage Every Employee to Play a Role” in workplace innovation, we need to recognize that “there are many roles and contributions people make, which are of equal value. That means that most, if not all, employees in your organization can have a role to play, which is why innovating really can engage and inspire everyone in your workplace. We’ve identified some of the important roles. Any one person may be a combination, depending on the situation.”
Understanding which roles fit you best can help you in mapping out your future innovation experiences. The reflections in this lesson can also help prepare you to answer potential questions about your innovation roles in future job interviews or discussions with workplace colleagues. This section contains a simple thought experiment to help you in reflecting on how you would answer such questions.
The quotes in the previous paragraph come from one of the leading Australian knowledge sources on workplace innovation, the Hargraves Institute for Innovation. Here are some of the roles they have identified and typical comments to indicate that someone has taken on the role:
Opportunity Finder: Wouldn’t it be good if…
Ideas Person: Why don’t we…? Why can’t we…?
Connector: Have you talked to? l know someone who…
User: How would we use it? What would it cost?
You can see the other workplace innovation roles they suggest in the What’s Your Role section of their Innovation Mindset webpage (Hargraves n.d.). Any such list of roles will likely describe many, but not all, of the roles which emerged in your individual and team innovation projects (either for you or for someone else)
Application of Concepts What additional roles in workplace innovation have you observed in your innovation projects?
Prototyper: I can build a low-fidelity model for a quick walkthrough test.
Presenter: I can put together a persuasive case for investing in the next prototype stage.
Tester: Here are the key issues that we need to test for Feasibility as soon as we can
Reflection Exercise: Now think about how you would answer the following two role-oriented interview questions:
- Which roles from your expanded list are you keen to take on? Why?
- Which roles from your expanded list are you not keen to take on? Is that because they don’t appeal to you, or you don’t feel prepared to take them on, or because you have found in past experiences that other team members were better suited to that role?
What motivates you as an innovator?
This is another important question for you to answer to help you “know yourself” as an innovator, which you may also be asked in a job interview where workplace innovation is an important topic (for you and/or the interviewers). You will also want to think about the other extreme: what kinds of situations or experiences are likely to restrict or reduce your motivation as an innovator.
In this section, we’ll be exploring some new Canadian research (Soleas, 2022), that surveyed responses about motivating and demotivating factors from a broad spectrum of workplace innovators (as identified by their employers and work colleagues, not just themselves!). Unlike much of the past research on innovation, the development of this Motivation to Innovate Inventory included “a diverse, heterogeneous sample comprised of individuals of many culture and faith groups, balancing gender, and spanning many disciplines, thus enabling it to more accurately reflect the demographics of Canadian and global society”(Soleas 2020, p. 19).
Here are the four key factors identified in the survey research as influencing Motivation to Innovate. The first three are positive factors for proficient innovators, who indicated high levels of agreement with these statements; the fourth factor is a negative factor, i.e., proficient innovators generally expressed low levels of agreement with these statements. The example survey questions used as illustrations for each factor can help you to think more deeply about how your own reactions to various internal and external events could lead to more – or less –motivation to innovate.
Expectations for success in innovation
Example survey questions in this area to which workplace innovators responded positively:
- I am skilled at solving problems in novel circumstances.
- My capacity to innovate has improved over time.
It was interesting to note that past innovation roles influenced Motivation to Innovate more from their impact on future expectations than from the degree of success of the innovations themselves.
Intrinsic value from innovation experiences
Example survey questions in this area to which workplace innovators responded positively:
- I find the process of innovating personally rewarding (regardless of the outcome).
- I take pride in innovating.
As with the previous factor, the intrinsic value perceived by the innovators seemed to be more important than the extrinsic value generated by their work.
Extrinsic value from innovation experiences
Example survey questions in this area to which workplace innovators responded positively:
- Being innovative is important to how I am perceived by my peers.
- Innovation helps me stay a step ahead of the competition.
- To be successful in my job, I must innovate.
Costs associated with innovation experiences
Example survey questions in this area to which workplace innovators responded negatively:
- I am afraid to try out novel ideas because of the implications if I fail.
- Innovation can be difficult for me because it involves challenging the status quo.
Researchers are investigating further into the ways different people experience these internal costs (how it made them feel) and external costs (the impact on others). This is an area of research that has only come to prominence recently, as our thinking about innovative capability has shifted from a perception of innovativeness as an innate trait to a view of innovative behaviours as a learnable capability. This makes the Motivation to Innovate Inventory a good illustration of research that can inform how we think about ourselves as innovators…even when that research is at an early stage.
Optional reading: If you want to learn more about these factors affecting employee motivation for innovation, you can see an application of this research in a workplace setting in two blog posts on recent Canadian research ( (Soleas & Carey 2022) and (Carey & Soleas 2023) in the References section below).
Application of Concepts How would you respond to these sample questions?
Select at least two sample questions from the eight questions above.
Explain your level of agreement or disagreement in the box below, for both of your selected questions, and if possible sketch a story excerpt which you could cite in an interview as an illustration.
You might also select questions that are most difficult for you to answer, and explain why you found this challenging.