Roles
- There are three key roles in invention and innovation, which can be shared by one or more people.
- These are the lone inventor, the product champion and the entrepreneur.
(Lone) Inventor
- An individual who is the first to develop or manufacture something.
- An inventor may invent something totally from scratch or may build upon an already established foundation.
Profile
- Individuals with a goal of the complete invention of a new and somewhat revolutionary product.
- Have ideas that are completely new and different.
- May not comprehend or give sufficient care to the marketing and sales of their product.
- Are usually isolated.
- Are having a harder time to push forward their designs, especially in a market where large investments are required for success.
- Their ideas, because of how different they are, are often resisted by other employees and workers.
Product Champion
- An influential individual, usually working within an organization, who develops an enthusiasm for a particular idea or invention and “champions” it within that organization.
Profile
- Is familiar with all types of customers; is not too close to a single type of customer.
- Has business experience in the domain.
- Can speak intelligently about the issues.
- Acts as a good facilitator.
- Works and plays well with others.
- Accepts responsibility for the product.
- Defends the team’s ability to produce the product.
- Treats the team as knowledgeable professionals.
- Sets reasonable performance expectations.
- Is willing to make hard decisions about scope.
- Can say “No”.
- Communicates with the team, the customer, management, sales, and marketing.
- Has a willingness to learn from everyone.
- Doesn’t trust everyone; trusts the right people.
- Don't think they know more about the market than they really do.
- Performs ongoing market analysis.
Entrepreneur
- An influential individual who can take an invention to market, often by financing the development, production and diffusion of a product into the marketplace.
Profile
- Business acumen
- Self-control
- Self-confidence
- Sense of urgency
- Comprehensive awareness
- Realism
- Conceptual ability
- Status requirements
- Interpersonal relationships
- Emotional stability
Shared Roles
- On occasion, the inventor needs to act as both entrepreneur and product champion due to various reasons:
Their product or idea is too novel or ‘out there’ for a company to take a risk on.
Can’t find a backer or company to produce it.
The inventor will have to ‘champion’ their product to different companies.
- The adoption of these additional roles requires a significant amount of learning to take an idea from the mind, realize it and then diffuse it successfully into the marketplace.
Multidisciplinary Team
- Design teams are multidisciplinary groups composed of many design members. Each designer comes from a specialist discipline, such as electronics, manufacturing, thermodynamics etc.
- Effective design draws from multiple areas of expertise, and this can be utilised at different stages of product development.
Advantages
- Wide range of knowledge that others may not have considered.
- Wide range of expertise and/or backgrounds that foster cross-fertilization of ideas.
- Wide range of expertise and/or backgrounds meaning that people look at ideas through a different lens.
Disadvantages
- May not want to share ideas for fear of losing ownership.
- Individual may not be used to working in teams.
- Different working styles and speed.
- Chance of miscommunication.
- Additional costs paying salaries, compared to lone inventors.
Purpose of Stakeholders in Innovation
- Collaborative generation of knowledge and high efficiency information flow allow for diversity, increased resilience, reliability and stability within an organization.
- By participating in the research, stakeholders can make full use of the resulting innovation and invention, by transferring findings relevant to the sector in which they are positioned.
- A designer’s increased awareness through shared industry knowledge enhances profitability and policy.