Line and Staff

13 Nov 06

What do these three innovation tools have in common with each other?

·        Employee suggestion programs

·        Internet discussion groups

·        University Alliances

We’ve been doing more work on the results of Babson’s POINTT Survey to try to understand why some tools seem to work better than others.  One early distinction appears to be between “Line” and “Staff” kinds of innovation tools.   The three tools above would all be “staff”-type innovation tools.

As an example, take employee suggestion programs.  Babson professor Tom Davenport, who has been studying employee suggestion programs over the past several years, observed recently that these programs require a high degree of management involvement to succeed.   They take work and they require decisions and discussion.  You might have to hire a couple of people to administer a program like this.  

The same observation could be applied to university alliances and internet discussion groups.  All three require resources, and have unknown paybacks in unknown timeframes.

In contrast to the “staff” tools discussed above, there are a number of innovation tools which have more “line-like” characteristics.  Consider, for example: 

·        Periodic Prototyping

·        Platform mapping

·        Cross-company licensing

These tools, rather than being used by “staff” in large programs, have more to do with the “line” activities of the business, like new product or new business development.  The investment required to use them is generally lower, and payback is quicker – it can usually be justified in a project budget.  

Here are a few characteristics that distinguish “line” and “staff” innovation tools:

Innovation tools: Staff vs Line

It turns out that these tools have different attraction for users and non-users, as this bar chart shows (apologies to those who don’t get the chart, email me if you’re interested in a pdf version…):

Hope vs Experience: Non-user Interest vs User Enthusiasm

The chart shows that, of the 7 most used tools, the top 3 for those who had not yet used the tool were staff tools.  They were the bottom three for those who had had experience with them!

Interestingly, tools that had the highest enthusiasm scores from experienced users generated the least interest from those who hadn’t used them yet.  As the chart above demonstrates, tools like periodic prototyping and cross-company licensing were rated low by those who had never used them.

There are a number of explanations for these differences in outlooks.  Whatever the reason, one takeaway:  be wary of early enthusiasm for large “staff” programs – hope needs to be tempered by experience. 

More Information:

1. The 23 Oct 06 Update on innovation tools is here.
2. Definition of Line and Staff from Wikipedia