Do Innovation contests really foster innovation ?

We frequently hold Innovation contests in educational institutions, industries etc to promote the concept of Innovation and continuous improvement among students and industry personnel. But more frequently than not, these contests do not fetch the real benefit and fails to kindle an innovative mindset among the participants and competitors.

Are these innovation promotion contests or programmes really promoting innovation or hindering it ? What is the impact of competition in the area of innovation ?

In exciting research led by Prof. Reto Hofstetter of University of Lucerne in Switzerland and reported in HBR of July -Aug '21 (click here), it is pointed out that displaying more of innovation ideas is more often than not an inhibitor than a motivator or promoter of Innovation. The Recombinant Growth Theory of Creativity says that seeing others' ideas of innovation, motivates or stimulates new creative thinking in people in related areas or by combining ideas from one area with another idea from a different area. But what we observe is contrary.

Why does this happen ?

Intense competition often increases participant's competitive stress, impeding innovative thinking. Secondly, the thought that others are also vying for the prize diminishes a participant's motivation to be more creative.  The third reason is the fact that submission of competitors workable solutions often become a disincentive for creative thinking.

The way to face this counter innovative tendency (as per the authors) can be to 

• highlight only the top winners, 
• grouping them into four or five areas, 
• avoid jargons like "There is only one winner", 
• by downplaying or masking submitter's identities (to reduce the participants stress and fear of non-performance)  etc..  

This research result runs counter to the experience on Toyota shop floors. In Toyota plants across the world, the Kaizen system of Continuous Improvement is a great motivating tool for the workers to come up with their innovative ideas from their work environment and to showcase them for recognition and overall development of the organisation. Respect for the individual is the key to the success of Toyota system. 

In the western system the focus is on the idea and not the person who has put in the new suggestion / innovation. This could be the difference.

An understanding of this difference now points us to understand the innovation process better and try to eliminate the barriers to innovation across productive systems of the world.

George.