VOIS - Area 2 - Module 1

  1. MODULE TITLE

Module 1: Building the ability to work with people from different communities, disciplines, and functions
  1. AUTHORS

Michael Wildt, Sandra Hogeforster, Anna-Maria Czarny, Christian Wildt
  1. SHORT DESCRIPTION

Open innovation requires working with people from outside of your organization. Often these people come from different cultures, backgrounds, and communities. Working with such diverse teams is a crucial component for success in innovative teams. To prevent diverse backgrounds to be an obstacle, certain aspects must be considered.

After reading this module the reader will receive an overview of different aspects of cultures, how to work with them, and use diversity as an advantage. In addition, different psychological concepts will be explained that facilitate working in teams and reaching the maximum potential of each co-worker. Certain features of your organizational structure will be questioned. To ensure the success of any open innovation strategy with workers from outside of your company cross-functional teams have to be built and work well together. Lastly, setting the right goals and the right long or short-term focus must be thought through when applying any innovation strategy. Especially when it comes to open innovation strategies supervisors must be ready for new perspectives. The ability to work with people from different communities, disciplines, and functions can be learned or enhanced and is the fundament of any open innovation strategy.
  1. LEARNING OBJECTIVES

    Upon completing this module, you should be able to:

  • A general understanding of the concept of culture and how to treat other cultures.
  • How to create cultural synergy
  • Which way is the best to build and work with a cross-functional team
  • How can SMEs cooperate with large companies or Universities
  • How to benefit from multiple people working on a project and when a group starts to work inefficiently
  • How to set goals that will increase the performance of a team without creating pressure and causing distress among team members.
  1. Training Content
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Challenge one – Different Communication Styles

Arjun, who recently migrated from India, is starting a new job as a greenhouse production specialist in Germany. After a couple of weeks, he notices his co-workers are not approaching him much and he feels like he doesn’t fit in. He decides to bring it up with his manager to see if he has any feedback for him. His colleagues think he is not friendly or doesn’t like them because he avoids eye contact when speaking with them. That makes it uncomfortable for everyone else to have a conversation with Arjun.

How should the company react?

Arjun behaves like this because direct eye contact can be considered aggressive or rude in Muslim or Hindu cultures. Now that the other employees know about this, they feel much more comfortable with him.

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