Grassroots Innovation: A Promising Innovation Paradigm for Pharmaceutical Companies - Innovation and Marketing in the Pharmaceutical Industry - page 124

Grassroots Innovation
Program Mechanisms

Idea
Sourcing

Participants' Innate
Psychological Needs

Team
Formation

Competence

Intrinsic
Motivation

Innovation
Output

Team/Idea
Selection
Training and
Coaching

Autonomy

Relatedness/
Networking

Management Support

Resource
Allocation

Extrinsic
Motivation

Visibility of
Involvement

Tangible
Incentives
Organizational
Support
Tolerance for
Failure

Fig. 4.1 Grassroots innovation: drivers of innovation success

suffi cient managerial autonomy to propose new business ideas and, (4) who are
given, conditional on predetermined strategic fi t and market opportunity criteria,
suffi cient resources to take those ideas to market.

4.2.2 Designing Grassroots Innovation Processes:

A Conceptual Framework

Our conceptual framework (see Fig. 4.1 ) builds upon self-determination theory
(Ryan and Deci 2000 ) to relate the mechanisms behind grassroots innovation pro-
grams (e.g., participant selection, formation of innovation teams, the possibility for
employees to receive training and coaching) to basic human needs of competence,
autonomy, and relatedness and to the key drivers behind probability of success,
namely, intrinsic motivation.
In addition to adequate design of the grassroots innovation program's mecha-
nisms, management support is crucial to the success of grassroots innovation pro-
grams. We focus on key management support drivers of successful corporate
entrepreneurship efforts synthesized by Hornsby et al. ( 2002 ): (1) resource alloca-
tion , (2) visibility of involvement , (3) tangible incentives (or rewards), (4) a structure