Innovation Trauma - Case Study Example

Name Class Title: Critically appraise the view expressed by the authors of the article that “Innovation Trauma” largely contributed to the failure of Sun Ray. To what extent could major management errors explain this innovation failure? Introduction Innovation is vital in an organisation and is a major aspect for success. Innovation involves coming up with new ways of doing things (Kao, 2007). An organisation is expected to engage in continuous innovation to ensure that there is sustained competitiveness (Tushman, 1997). Research have emphasized that learning from failure is a vital step in ensuring success in an organisation. It has been argued that organisations are able to learn from failures more than from success. Despite this, not all organisations are able to learn systematically from their failures. Learning from failures is sometimes very hard due to the costly outcomes associated with the failures. This essay critically reviews a journal article on why learning from failure is not easy and what to do about it. The article focuses on innovation failure and the trauma associated with it. The article claims that previous failures in an organisation can lead to innovation trauma. This is based on assertion that failures in previous innovations can lead to more failure on upcoming projects. The article primarily focuses on sun microsystems and shows how innovation trauma led to failure of Sun Ray which was a project carried out after the failure of Sun Microsystems (Välikangas, Hoegl & Gibbert, 2009). The essay will critically appraise that view by the authors that innovation trauma led to failure of Sun Ray. It will show the extent in which management errors led to the innovation failure. Article summary The article is based on the case of Sun Microsystems during the innovation of Sun ray. Sun Ray is a thin computing innovation which the company was producing in their Sun Labs. The product was closely associated with the previous innovation known as Java Station which was a failure and had high publicity. The failure of the Java Station was a source of innovation trauma for those involved in the project (Välikangas et al., 2009). The article main focus is on overcoming the innovation trauma which is an area which is overlooked by the companies. For sun microsystems, continuous innovation is an important aspect for them to gain a competitive edge. When an innovation fails, the article asserts that the employees are affected emotionally. The article looks at the needs for the managers to act as mediators when workers are traumatised with serious innovation failures. This helps in sustaining innovations after failures. Innovation trauma effect on employee at Sunmicrosystems Despite the opportunity that failures present to the employee for learning, learning from the failure may not occur. This leads to a double loop failure where the organisation suffers from failure and the employees fail to learn. The organisation loses the resources and efforts while the employees fail to benefit from the failure (Storey & Barnett, 2000). When the employees at Sunmicrosystems failed in Java Station, they were unable to learn from the failure. The management did not put efforts to ensure that the employees learned from the project failure. In this case, the management integrated the employees into a new project without ensuring that they had learned from the failures of the previous project. While the Java Station project failed, all those involved in it were integrated into the new project (Välikangas et al., 2009). This was a major contributor for the employees failing to learn from the failure. The authors’ argument that the failure of the first project led to innovation trauma is credible. There are various factors that lead to employees not learning from failures projects leading to innovation trauma. These factors support the authors’ assertion that workers at Sun Microsystems did not learn from the failure of the first project. The factors are psychological, technical, social barriers and contextual factors (Teece, 2006). These factors interact with each other making the failure to learn from the mistakes more complex. Psychological factors This involves the thoughts, cognition feelings which have an effect on the attitude and decisions. When a project fails, there is a negative emotional response and cognitive bias. This impedes learning from the failure. Workers who had been in the first project were psychologically affected by the failure (Baumard & Starbuck, 2005). The failure of java system led to negative emotional response. Those working on the project felt dissatisfied with the failure leading to trauma. The negative emotions interfered with the workers attention and ability to process information in the next project. The employees who had engaged in the first project could not properly commit to the new project as evidenced. This is due to the severe disappointment that they had from the previous innovation. The trauma led to lack of lack of personal and emotional requirements for the new project. It’s evident as the authors claims that trauma bleeds disillusionment. The workers from the previous project were disillusioned. This leads to cynicism as evidenced and widespread demotivation. The individuals that were involved in the first project were not given chance to share their mistakes and knowledge gained from the first project (Argote & Miron-Spektor, 2011). The fact that the employees were immersed in negative emotions as evidenced by the article made it hard for them to learn from the failure. Cognitive bias This involves the deviating from the standard judgement due to tendency to think in a certain way. This may be due to attribution and escalation bias. Through attribution bias, one ascribes failure to external factors and fails to validate their beliefs. The employees in this case may have dismissed the failure as a random event which affected their ability to learn from it. When a worker receives negative feedbacks they tend to use self-justification (Baumard & Starbuck, 2005). This makes it hard to learn from the mistakes made. Technical and social barriers In social systems, there is stigma of failure. Those who experience failure are given a negative attitude (Schoemaker, 2011). This is proved by the article where the engineers could not be trusted to lead the new project to success due to their first failure. There was public embarrassment for the workers who were involved in the first project. Contextual factors In this case, the organisational factors made it hard for the employees to learn from their mistakes and enhanced innovative trauma. The strategy, structure and culture of Sunmicrosystems at that moment inhibited double loop learning. The organisation combined the employees from the first project with those undertaking the new project (Välikangas et al., 2009). This was done without taking measures to ensure that the psychological baggage the workers had was not transferred to the new project. The system did not provide a second loop learning where the employees would have reflected on the first project and address the errors effectively. Valikangas et al (2009) article offers very important insights on innovation trauma and explains it at length. It’s clear that innovative trauma was the main cause of failure for Sun Ray. The failure of Java Station led to change in organisation through various events. These events include cancellation of Java Station production, using the Java Station team in the Sun Ray and restructuring of the sunray team. While the Java station team was incorporated to the team undertaking Sun Ray, they led to more confusion (Välikangas et al., 2009). They team became large and unmanageable as explained in the article. This can be supported by the fact that large team are hard to manage. Team leadership cannot be able to manage a large team who are incorporated without the right procedure (Mellahi & Wilkinson, 2004) One of the major issues with incorporation was the fact that not all engineers who joined Sun Ray were interested in the project. Most joined due to lack of choice since Java Station had been removed. They felt that the project had been removed in favour of the Sun Ray project. This implies that they felt as outsiders in the Sun Ray team. Their contribution was limited in this case since they were not excited about the project. This implies that Sun Ray team received new members who were not motivated in the new project (Baumard & Starbuck, 2005). The friendship between the two teams was not close. This is due to fact that they felt that Sun Ray project was the cause of termination of their project. This means that in the new group that joined Sun Ray team, there were a large number of employees who were not ready to develop good working relations. They joined the team due to lack of another option. As evidenced, the poor relations among the team members led to the initial group leaving the project before it was completed. Another factor which supports the article is the fact that it is possible to spread demotivation within a team (Schoemaker, 2011). As the article points out, the merger of the two teams led to demotivation of the entire team. This is supported by the fact that when a bad group joins a good group, they are likely to lead to destabilisation. This led to disruptions of the working procedures for the Sun Ray team. The team had more workers who were less focused on their tasks. The members of the new team were affected by the guilt of association with the failure of the previous team. Management failures Bad management led to negative effects of innovation trauma on the new team. The management failed to address innovation trauma and contributed to its existence. Management is supposed to create mechanism that allows their workers to learn from their failures (Hlavacek, Maxwell & Williams, 2009). These mechanisms do not exist on the Sun Microsystems management. The management is supposed to set up mechanisms that allow the workers to learn from their company and other companies’ failures (Baumard & Starbuck, 2005). These are mechanisms that should be guided by the both long term and short term organisation strategy. Innovation management is a very vital aspect of management theory. Sun Microsystems was a project based firm hence the success of its projects was vital. As seen in this case, the management made decisions which hindered innovation success. As explained earlier, the decisions made did not ease innovation trauma experienced by employees from the previous team. A project based organisation depends on having an effective team that can help in attaining the objectives (Hargadon, 2002). This is an area that the team formed after combination of the two teams lacked. Since no two projects can be identical, the organisation is expected to deal with change as they move from one project to another. The organisation was shifting from the first project which had failed in order to implement Sun Ray as their new project. The management was expected to champion this change through the right mechanism (Kim & Miner, 2007). Through innovative management, an organisation is able to come up with new ideas and implement their innovative culture. The failure of the second project (Sun Ray) can be attributed to poor innovation management leading to spread of innovation trauma (Välikangas et al., 2009). For successful management in an innovative organisation, the management is expected to have a strategy. The strategy is supposed to be understood by all in the industry. A successful innovation is expected to be managed properly to attain the desired results (Mellahi & Wilkinson, 2004). The management in this case missed vital signs that could have helped them address innovation trauma. The management is expected to recognise and act on the early warnings to ensure that innovation trauma does not arise. The team working on the Java Station had failed in the project and were yet to recover from the loss. The team was embarrassed since they had failed to deliver on their promise to the market. This made them to look unreliable by the marketers and customers. The management had a role to play in ensuring that the repercussions of failure were addressed and the team did not suffer from previous failure. The authors give a discussion on the way in which an organisation can treat innovation trauma. This is the work of the management to ensure that after failure, the team members are treated on trauma. The management is expected to give the employee a chance to disengage from the past experiences. This never happened at Sun Microsystems. The team which was working on the Java Station was directly incorporated into the Sun Ray team (Välikangas et al., 2009). This is due to bad management which disregarded the impacts of directly incorporating both teams. The management failed to look at the outcome of large turnover in the resulting team as well as different technology platforms the teams had been involved in. the management failed to ensure that there was no transfer of the trauma from one project to another. The management would have used collaborative case writing as explained in the article (Storey & Barnett, 2000). This is where the organisation systematically writes down its own cases. Management have to ensure that there is management of excitement on a new project. This involves avoiding the team from engaging in ambiguous goals which can lead to early experiences of failure as explained in the article. While there are very high expectations, an organisation jeopardises their chances of eliminating feeling of failure (Kim & Miner, 2007). This is evidenced by the fact that Sun Ray expected to attain very high sales at the beginning which were not feasible. This led to an experience of failure when the target was not attained during the launch. All events that preceded the implementation of Sun Ray were major contributor of the project failure. The original team lost the control. There was poor stability in the management of Sun Ray which further made the project fail to attain the expectations (Välikangas et al., 2009). The article presents a good argument in proving that innovation trauma leads to failure in future undertakings. The article shows the need for the management to enhance their focus on effective management in managing the change. This is in response to the change brought about by failed innovations emotional perspective. In a project, employees develop a physiological ownership. This is through control, knowledge and their investment through time, effort and energy. When the Java Station failed, the sense of ownership was eliminated. The group was redeployed to the new project with the resources being deployed from failed project to Sun Ray. It’s important to note that workers have a psychological need for competence (Argote & Miron-Spektor, 2011). This occurs when an individual work is rated as high performance through feedback. Those involved in Java Station were left bitter after the failure. They lost confidence and competence from the failure. A change in group membership is also a contributor in loss of competence. This is due to diminishing identity and self-worth (Hlavacek, Maxwell & Williams, 2009). This is seen when the Sun Ray team acquired new members from the Java Station project. Towards the end of the project, only one initial member of the Sun Ray team was left. Another issue that the management failed to note is the employee autonomy. This is the personal control at work. The employees in a team have a role in decision making and control the project. In both teams, there were high levels of autonomy. The management as well as the organisational process leads to team members’ satisfaction of autonomy. When project fail, members’ autonomy is lost. When the management terminates a project, it’s perceived as a termination of team self-control (Kim & Miner, 2007). This occurred when Java Station was terminated. It’s important to note that the employees had come to identify with the project as their own. This led to loss, frustration and stress. The management practices that were in place failed to address the loss of autonomy. Innovation trauma as explained by the authors interferes with the ability to learn from failure. This is through interfering with the processing of information which is a vital aspect in learning. Negative emotions lead to narrowing the information being scanned. The team members from the first project had negative emotions which made it hard to cope with the new project. The management failed to ensure that employees learned from the failed project. The employees could not adapt to change leading to poor perfoamcne in Sun Ray. The management had a role of ensuring that team members from the Java Station developed positive psychological capital (Välikangas et al., 2009). From the article, it is clear that Sun Microsystems had adequate capital to carry out the projects. The company had adequate number of engineers for each project. The human capital in the first project had managed to carry it out despite the failure (Edmondson, Dillon & Roloff, 2007). Sun Ray team was composed of well-trained engineers who could have carried out the project successfully. Human capital relates to skills, knowledge and the capabilities of the workers. This is a proof that the failure of the projects was not associated with low level of human capital. The company combined human capital from the failed project with the Sun Ray team (Välikangas et al., 2009). Both teams were highly experienced. When the teams became large, it was hard to manage them. The combined team had different levels of motivation which affected the project. The management have a role to ensure that the firm innovative culture is maintained (Getz & Robinson, 2003). This is an area that Sunmicrosystems failed in. Top management empowers those involved in a project. This helps in increasing commitment of the team members. The management was also supposed to ensure that there was adequate marketing support for the new project. This would have eliminated the overestimated demands forecasts and overcome known pitfalls. Management failed to foster team work that would have led to better results. This is through ensuring that there is a participative approach in solving problems. When the Java Station team joined the Sun ray team, there was poor participation. The management did not address the poor forming process evidenced leading to lack of organised teamwork (Edmondson, Dillon & Roloff, 2007). The management has a critical role in development of ideas and implementation (Barsh, Capozzi & Davidson, 2008). In this case, there was need for the management to support the development of Sun Ray. This could have been done through effective time and personnel management. The management ought to have made the new team formed more effective (Cannon & Edmondson, 2005). Human resource management is the main drive towards effective team work. This would have involved cooperation of the different departments. As explained in the case, the marketing department had lost hope in the engineering departments. This meant that there was low support to the engineering team working on the Sun Ray project. The management failed to make the team work together as required. This is through the right team building approach (Davilla, Epstein, & Shelton, 2006). The team working on Sun Ray was characterised by poor relationship which could have led to members being less focused. This supports the authors’ research that the combination of the two teams contributed to the failure of the project. The workers who joined the new team had high expectations of failure and low expectations of success in subsequent projects. The workers become also more risk averse leading to low creativity (Baumard & Starbuck, 2005). There are also high turnovers and slowdown in work. The team lacked social cohesion and allocation of resources was poor (Luthans &Youssef, 2004). The article claims that the team had to change their routines after the incorporation of new members. The self-determination theory (SDT) supports the assertion by the article that innovation trauma led to failure. SDT looks at the psychological processes that lead to optimal functioning (Nooteboom, 2000). An employee is only motivated in a project that has the capability to satisfy their psychological needs (Cannon & Edmondson, 2005). This leads to higher level of intrinsic motivation. Workers in this case lacked intrinsic motivation due to innovation trauma. As explained in the article, innovation trauma is contagious (Välikangas et al., 2009). Workers from the previous project affected the workers in Sun Ray project. A project success will depend on the ability to satisfy the psychological need for relatedness (Klein & Sorra, 1996). This implies that workers are more interested in a project that they are connected to and being understood by other team members. In this case, the article asserts that the new team members were not interested in the new project. Those from the Java Station felt that their project has been struck out in favour of Sun Ray. This implies that they were not committed to the new project. The team joined Sun Ray team against their will hence had no connectedness. When the original Sun Ray engineers left the project, there was loss of connectedness of the remaining members. At the end, only one engineer remained from the original Sun Ray team (Välikangas et al., 2009). The psychological wellbeing for the remaining member was low and hence poor contribution. Conclusion The article provides very insightful information on innovation trauma and how it can lead to project failure. From the authors’ research and use of supportive documents, it’s clear that innovation trauma played the major role in failure of the Sun Ray project. The article provides a great platform to look at the ways in which information trauma leads to poor perfoamcne in a project. The article gives the need for having emphasis on managing innovation trauma and ensuring that it does not affect future undertakings. There is a need to look at the emotional perspective of a project failure. This ensures that employee’s emotional well-being is taken care of. When the workers have negative emotions due to failure their information processing is affected. The team which had been involved in the first project had been traumatised by failure. They felt that their project have been eliminated in favour of Sun Ray project. From the article analysis, it is clear that innovation trauma led to the failure of the project. The group from Java Station were demotivated and less committed to the new project. Innovation trauma as claimed by the article is contagious. It’s clear that the management failed to treat innovation trauma leading to its spread into the Sun Ray team. The organisation was unable to learn from the failure leading to effect on subsequent projects. The management errors led to innovation failure in Sun Ray team since they failed to act on innovation trauma. References Argote, L., & Miron-Spektor, E. 2011. “Organizational learning: From experience to knowledge.” Organization Science, Vol.22, no.5, p.1123-1137. Barsh, J., Capozzi, M. M., & Davidson, J. 2008. “Leadership and innovation.” McKinsey Quarterly, Vol.1, p.36. Baumard, P., & Starbuck, W. H. 2005. “Learning from failures: Why it may not happen.” Long Range Planning, Vol.38, no.3, p.281-298. Cannon, M. D., & Edmondson, A. C. 2005. “Failing to learn and learning to fail (intelligently): How great organizations put failure to work to innovate and improve.” Long Range Planning, Vol.38, no.3, p.299-319. Davilla, T., Epstein, M. J. & Shelton, R. 2006. Making Innovation Work: Howto Manage It, Measure It, and Profit from It .Upper Saddle: WhartonSchool Publishing. Edmondson, A. C., Dillon, J. R., & Roloff, K. S. 2007. “Three Perspectives on Team Learning: Outcome Improvement, Task Mastery, and Group Process.” The academy of management annals, Vol.1, no.1, p.269-314. Getz, I., & Robinson, A. 2003. “Innovate or die: Is that a fact?” Creativity and Innovation Management, Vol.12, no.3, p.130-136. Hargadon, A. B. 2002. “Brokering knowledge: Linking learning and innovation.” Research in Organizational behavior, Vol.24, p.41-85. Hlavacek, J., Maxwell, C., & Williams Jr, J. 2009. “Learn from new product failures.” Research- Technology Management, Vol.52, no.4, p.31-39. Kao, J. 2007. Innovation nation. New York: Free Press. Kim, J.-Y. J., & Miner, A. S. 2007. “Vicarious learning from the failures and near-failures of others: Evidence from the US commercial banking industry.” Academy of Management Journal, Vol.50, no.3, p.687-714. Klein, K. J., & Sorra, J. S. 1996. “The challenge of innovation implementation.” Academy of management review, Vol.21, no.4, p.1055-1080. Luthans, F. &Youssef, C. M. 2004. “Human, social, and now positive psychological capital: investing in people for competitive advantage.” Organizational Dynamics, Vol.33, p.1- 22. Mellahi, K., & Wilkinson, A. 2004. “Organizational failure: a critique of recent research and a proposed integrative framework.” International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol.5, no.1, p.21-41. Nooteboom, B. 2000. Learning and innovation in organizations and economies. Oxford University Press. Schoemaker, P. J. 2011. Brilliant mistakes: Finding success on the far side of failure: Wharton Digital Press. Storey, J., & Barnett, E. 2000. “Knowledge management initiatives: learning from failure.” Journal of knowledge management, Vol. 4, no.2, p. 145-156. Teece, D. J. 2006. “Reflections on “profiting from innovation.” Research Policy, Vol.35, no.8, p.1131-1146. Tushman, M. L. 1997. “Winning through innovation.” Strategy & Leadership, Vol.25, no.4, p.14-19. Välikangas, L., Hoegl, M., & Gibbert, M. 2009. “Why learning from failure isn’t easy (and what to do about it): Innovation trauma at Sun Microsystems.” European Management Journal, Vol. 27, no.4, p.225-233. Read More