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have decided to go ahead, I delegate the implementation activities to my employees. I am too dominant and my employees would not dare to object to my opinion.
There is consistent empirical support for a positive linkage between delegation and both idea generation and application behaviour. In a study among German middle managers, Krause (2004) investigated whether leaders can influence the innovation process by granting their subordinates freedom and autonomy. She found that granting freedom and autonomy was positively related to various types of innovative behaviour, including the generation, testing, and implementation of ideas. In an early study among NASA scientists, Andrews and Farris (1967) concluded that providing subordinates with more freedom to explore, discuss and challenge ideas was associated with higher innovation performance. Other studies carried out in different contexts point in a similar direction, these studies include work by West and Wallace (1992) in primary care teams, by Frischer (1993) in product development departments, by Nijhof et al. (2002) in a transport firm, and by Judge et al. (1997) in the biotechnology sector.
4.7 Support for innovation
Our interviews indicated that support could motivate employees in both phases of the innovation process. Experiencing support was believed to be helpful in creating and generating ideas. An innovative respondent stated that: “People knowthat I just love new ideas.That’swhy they come upwith suggestions every day. I amalways excited by them.” The way in which leaders dealt with mistakes seemed to be a key driver in the implementation stage. Most respondents from our group of front-runners, but also some in the non-innovative subset, indicated that mistakes should not be used to punish subordinates but instead should be considered a learning opportunity, for example:
“You can really discourage innovative behaviour by being unreliable. When you do not support your subordinates when problems arise, you can forget successful innovation.” Various studies relate support for innovation to individual innovation (both to idea generation and application behaviour). Olham and Cummings (1996) examined the influence of personal and contextual factors at work on employee creativity and found that a supportive supervisory style is one of the drivers of excellent creative performance. Krause (2004) focused on influence-based leadership, defined as changes in the behaviour of a person due to the actions or presence of another person. A leader’s support for innovative efforts was a predictor of idea generation and implementation efforts of middle managers. Barnowe (1975) investigated the impact of “leader assistance behaviours” on the performance of employees in an R&D organization. Leader assistance behaviours appeared to be positively related to R&D workers’ scientific and applied research outcomes (an output-based measure of individual innovation). Basu and Green (1997) also studied leader-members dyads in a manufacturing plant and demonstrated that employees are more likely to deviate from the ordinary, engage in unconventional behaviour, and implement innovative ideas if they are sure that they will not be penalized for it.
4.8 Organizing feedback
The innovative participants felt that organizing feedback is relevant and that this should be done as soon as the decision to go ahead with an innovative idea has beenmade. Leaders can provide feedback themse