Biomedical Engineering Reference
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organization (Hofstede
2001
). For instance,
power distance
—the extent to which
less powerful members of an organization accept or even expect that power is
unequally distributed (Hofstede
2001
)—is typically much higher in Asian countries
than in Western European nations or in the United States. It may be that grassroots
innovation processes need to be implemented differently in more hierarchical societ-
ies, when compared with less hierarchical societies. The fourth author has observed
such differences in roll-outs of grassroots innovation in continents as diverse as Asia
(China), North America (USA, Canada, and Mexico) and the Middle East. But if
cross-national research could uncover such diverse mechanisms in a more formal-
ized and quantitative manner, this would be a valuable addition to the literature.
Second, our SDT-based framework focuses mostly on employee motivation as the
key success driver in grassroots innovation. Future research could study other factors
that may infl uence the success of grassroots innovation programs. In particular, it
would be important to study the antecedents and consequences of employee disap-
pointment triggered by not being selected to proceed to the next step in the process.
We have discussed Merck KGaA's strategies to manage possible disappointment
among employees whose ideas did not advance beyond a certain milestone in the
Innospire
process. Future research could identify alternative mechanisms to deal with
such disappointment and test which are the most effective ones. Interesting research
directions include framing effects in feedback communication and how to ensure that
evaluations are perceived as fair by all participants. Experimental studies or multiple
case study analyses could help highlight these issues.
Third, one of the central tenets of SDT is that competence-enhancing mecha-
nisms are pivotal to boost employees' intrinsic motivation and the success of grass-
roots innovation. At
Innospire
, innovation bootcamps played a key role in boosting
employees' capacity to transform their ideas into full-fl edged business plans. Yet,
recent research shows that coaching and training in the early stages of idea genera-
tion is also very effective in enhancing creativity and ideation (Burroughs et al.
2011
). It would be interesting for future research to test the extent to which a train-
ing program during the ideation phase can help improve the quality of the ideas
submitted. Also, would a program focused on promoting competence alone (e.g.,
customized training programs on innovation and entrepreneurial thinking) be ben-
efi cial for companies which may fi nd they are not ready for a full-fl edged grassroots
innovation process?
Fourth, despite the growing popularity of innovation tournaments and games
(see, e.g., Terwiesch and Ulrich
2009
), future research should also investigate some
drawbacks of
gaming
mechanisms in innovation. For example, in crowd-voting
mechanisms, after a few employees make their evaluations of other ideas public,
several others may tend to disregard their private information and simply
follow the
herd
(Bikhchandani et al.
1992
). Yet, more scientifi c scrutiny is needed to under-
stand the prevalence and magnitude of these effects and help fi rms improve their
voting and selection mechanisms.
Fifth, we have studied one formalized approach to grassroots innovation.
However, many of the examples discussed in this chapter depend on informal
drivers of grassroots innovation, such as a company's overall bottom-up culture
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