Toward a Professional Community for Workplace Innovation Catalysts

by  Adam Frye  and Thomas Carey

In a previous post in this series, we highlighted the activities of impacts of a ‘first-generation’ program to develop employees’ capabilities as workplace innovators, the Innovation Catalyst program offered by WEtech Alliance in the Windsor-Essex region of Ontario from 2018 to 2021. One of the insights emerging from that program – and a follow-on project on Inclusive Workplace Innovation for Quality of Work – was the importance of the emerging professional role of Workplace Innovation Catalyst at the program and organizational level.

In this post, we will discuss some of the challenges which arose in sustaining the program as an ongoing offering and in integrating research-based  insights into the participants’ practice-based knowledge. We will also describe our work-in-progress plans to address those challenges with a new project aiming to better integrate Workplace Innovation into the regional innovation ecosystem in Windsor-Essex, which includes an innovative knowledge-practice network to support the work of professional Workplace Innovation Catalysts.

Opportunities and Challenges for an Innovation Catalyst v2.0 Program

The Innovation Catalyst program’s success was interrupted by the Covid pandemic. Post-pandemic, our exploration of possible enhancements and of long-term scale-up and sustainability, identified the following opportunities and challenges:

Scaling up

a)      The scope and reach of the program were limited by the special expertise required and thus the availability of the program leaders. Scaling up to engage workplaces across the Windsor-Essex region – and beyond – will  require a more diverse program team, some ‘train-the-trainer’ type activities, and the involvement of postsecondary education or other training providers (especially to help address the “every employee” level of workplace innovation capability).

Enhancements:

b)      There was no explicit training within the Innovation Catalyst program to support the emerging professional role as a catalyst for workplace innovation at the program or organizational levels or as a coach and enabler of innovation projects initiated by other employees.

c)       Innovation Catalyst participants had expressed enthusiasm for ongoing networking to exchange insights and experiences with other workplaces. Reliance on internal knowledge sources alone could limit the complexity and novelty of innovation projects, (as documented in a graduate thesis on  which analyzed motivations learning, and outcomes of workplace innovation in two healthcare contexts, one an Innovation Catalyst site.

d)      As mentioned in a  previous post, we had observed that interest in adaptation of research insights and exemplary practices for workplace innovation was enabled by a sense of professional identity around supporting workplace innovation at the program and organizational levels.(Research is also beginning to emerge about exemplary practices for networks of workplace innovation catalysts, either sector-specific (e.g., Putnik, Oeij, Dhondt et al 2019; Dessers & Mohr 2021) and across sectors (e.g., Exton & Totterdill 2019).

Our Road Map toward an Enabling Workplace Innovation community of practice

(a) To address the need to scale up the development of workplace innovation capability, we are now developing a two-level approach to workplace innovation capability development:

  • a regional network level for Enabling Workplace Innovation Catalysts at the organizational level across or within sectors. This will also include strategy development to target and assess workplace innovation goals, game plans and outcomes, in partnership with other leaders and managers.

  • a secondary level of capability development for Employee Workplace Innovators in understanding and applying workplace innovation, offered largely within organizations, sectors or postsecondary education (to be discussed further in a future post in this series)

(b) To address the need for explicit professional development as an enabler of workplace innovation teams, activities, plans and programs, we are partnering with an Ontario post-secondary institution and the eCampus Ontario’s Open Library to create an initial set of learning resources and activities on Enabling Inclusive Workplace Innovation. Here are some examples of the initial topics, as discussed in past blog posts:

(c) To address  the opportunity to develop professional identity and foster sharing of local insights and expertise, a key element of the development plan for the Enabling program is a self-reliant ongoing network for sharing insights and challenges. The base model is a professional Community of Practice, adapted from (Wenger-Traynor et al 2023). We are also incorporating elements of the Innovative Knowledge-Practice Networks model for collaborative learning in emerging professions, where professional identity is evolving and both practice and research knowledge are rapidly developing (Hytönen et al 2019; Russell 2019; Van Waes & Hytönen 2022).

(d) To address the opportunity to accelerate workplace innovation impacts through adaptation of research insights and exemplary practices, we are extending our past work on the role of undergraduate students on Experiential Learning placements as research-to-practice intermediaries. In the planned work placement extensions, undergraduate students taking post-secondary courses including the Enabling topics above will assist and support professional roles of Workplace Innovation Catalysts. (Indeed, part of the emerging value proposition for the professional community of practice includes ‘first access’ to these future work placement students).

A final note: Integration into the regional innovation ecosystem

Previous efforts to integrate workplace innovation into regional innovation ecosystems have demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainability as well as the challenges of connecting the key stakeholders in support of an emerging capability (Totterdill 2017; Pomares 2019). In a future post in this series, we will explore how we intend to build on the success of the Innovation Catalyst program as an effective foundation for a sustainable regional strength.

For now, we will note that beginning to think in ecosystem terms has already shifted our focus:

  • from Scaling Up: “What Stakeholder organization(s) should be responsible for ongoing development of  Workplace Innovation within Windsor-Essex workplaces”.

  • to Integration: “What strategic interventions in the regional innovation ecosystem can integrate and leverage Workplace Innovation to increase ecosystem innovation productivity”.

References

Dessers, E., & Mohr, B. J. (2021). A Prototype for Designing Workplace Innovation Within a Care Ecosystem Context. The Palgrave Handbook of Workplace Innovation, 597-616.

Hytönen, K., & Kovalainen, A. (2019). Vocational education goes to industry: Future skills at work derive from novel models of cooperation. In Digital Work and the Platform Economy (pp. 77-95). Routledge.

Pomares, E. (2019). Alternative learning frameworks: Workplace innovation programmes and smart specialisation policies in the Basque country. IJAR–International Journal of Action Research, 14(2+ 3), 17-18.

Putnik, K., Oeij, P., Dhondt, S., Van der Torre, W., De Vroome, E., & Preenen, P. (2019). Innovation adoption of employees in the logistics sector in the Netherlands: The role of workplace innovation. European Journal of Workplace Innovation, 4(2), 176-192.

Russell, R. G. (2019). Exploring Knowledge-practice Networks in US Academic Health Centers (Doctoral dissertation, Tennessee State University).

Totterdill, P. (2017). Workplace Innovation as Regional Economic Development: Towards a Movement? IJAR–International Journal of Action Research, 13(2), 129-153.

Totterdill, P. & Exton, R. (2014). Defining workplace innovation: The Fifth Element. Strategic Direction, 30, 12-16

Van Waes, S., & Hytönen, K. (2022). Looking back and ahead: A social network perspective on workplace learning and professional development. In Research approaches on workplace learning: Insights from a growing field (pp. 179-199). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Wenger-Trayner, E., Wenger-Trayner, B., Reid, P., & Bruderlein, C. (2023). Communities of practice within and across organizations: a Guidebook. Available from the authors at: https://www.wenger-trayner.com/cop-guidebook/