Key Players

Five kinds of individuals have been identified to play key roles in recognizing the potential of an innovation and exploiting it:

• Idea generators
• Gatekeepers and boundary spanners
• Champions
• Sponsors
• Project managers.

The more effective these individuals are, the better their organization will perform.

Idea generators: these individuals who have the ability to sift through jungles of market and technological information to find ideas that lead to new products or services. They possess the talent and knowledge to find new cost- or time-effective procedures, approaches, or problem-solving strategies for problems. They possess T-skills: deep expertise in one functional area combined with broad enough knowledge in others to see and exploit the linkages between the functional areas.

Gatekeepers and boundary spanners: the idea generator’s idea can originate from outside his/her institution or can be greatly complemented by ideas from the outside. Gatekeepers link the local organization with external information sources. They act as transducers between their organization and the outside. They understand the idiosyncrasies of the organisation and those of the outside, and they can take internal questions, translate them into a language that the outside world can understand, obtain answers, and translate them to the organizational localized language. They also function as a repository of some kinds of knowledge for their organizations. Sometimes all they do is steer individuals to the right sources of information. While the gatekeeper is the transducer for inter-firm information, the boundary scanner is the transducer for intra-firm information.

Champions: take an idea for a new product or service and do all they can within their power to ensure the success for the innovation. In the process they risk their positions, reputation, and prestige. They actively promote the idea, inspiring others with their vision of the potential of the innovation. Despite frequent opposition, especially in the face of radical innovation, champions persist in their articulation and promotion of their vision of the innovation. They usually emerge from the ranks of the organization and cannot be hired and groomed for the purpose of being champions. By evangelically communicating the vision of the potential of an innovation, a champion can go a long way in helping an organization to better understand the rationale behind the innovation and its potential.

Sponsors: also called a coach or mentor, a sponsor is a senior-level manager who provides behind-the-scenes support, access to resources, and protection from political foes. Such support and protection serves two purposes: a) sends a signal to political foes of the innovation that they a messing with the senior manager and sponsor; b) reassures the champion and other key individuals that they have the support of a senior manager.

Project managers: while champions are leaders with a vision of the potential of an innovation and the ability to communicate that vision to the rest of the organization, project managers are the planners with an accountant’s discipline who carefully and methodically plot out who should do what and when. The project manager is to meeting schedules what the innovation champions is to articulating his or her vision of the potential of the innovation. She/he is the ‘one-stop shop’ for decision making, questions, and information on the project.