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Module 1: Building the ability to work with people from different communities, disciplines, and functions |
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Michael Wildt, Sandra Hogeforster, Anna-Maria Czarny, Christian Wildt |
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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. |
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Upon completing this module, you should be able to: |
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Different Cultures in Your Team: Obstacle or Opportunity
One way to bring different views and backgrounds together is to employ and work with team members from different cultures. In general, multicultural teams are regarded as beneficial, but only if the team members are willing and able to work in an environment with different cultures, values and backgrounds (Peyrols Wu & Ng, 2021).
Important first steps to consider are:
- Avoid a single-culture bias – be aware that your team members might have different holidays, eating habits, and religions.
- Consider team structure and use subgroups – smaller teams can be more efficient in working together.
- Avoid stereotypes – sometimes being aware of cultural differences leads to following stereotypes. Address preferences by keeping an open channel of communication with individual team members
- Handle feedback and criticism with care – Public criticism is improper and offensive in most cultures – give feedback directly or indirectly on a one-to-one base.
- Clarify expectations – How will decisions be reached? Who decides ultimately? Who can voice criticism? What are the deadlines across time zones? Setting clear expectations early on will appease any instances of mutual incomprehension.
- Diversify leadership – Diversity of sex, race, ethnicity, age, sexuality, language, and educational background at a board level can ensure best practices are applied.
- Hire experienced multicultural leaders.
- Invest in language training for non-native speakers – Investing in language training can allow for more confident communication among non-native-speaking employees.
- Actively improve awareness and educate teams on cultural intelligence – The ability to relate and work effectively across different cultures is measured by the cultural quotient, more on that on the next screen.