Barriers to Innovation and how to overcome them

Written by Lea Lemberg

“Barriers to innovation in complex systems” was the title of a paper I wrote at university about ESTIEM. Two interviews with Sunny-David Schneider, former VP of PR, and Rebekka Nagel, former VP of Activities, provided information about the past, current and future barriers of innovation in ESTIEM. The paper provided us with different categories of barriers you need to keep in mind when handling innovation inside ESTIEM.

Fostering innovation within ESTIEM is a constant challenge. Knowing the main barriers of innovation within an organisation is essential to being able to predict the success of an idea and to realise those ideas. If we know those barriers within ESTIEM, we can find strategies to overcome them and turn them into facilitators of innovation.

Organisational Barriers

The structure of an organisation can be hostile towards innovation if it does not fit the needs of the organisation. ESTIEM’s past structure developed in a direction where the system for innovations, the status of an initiative, delimited new ideas. ESTIEM’s new structure not only supports the implementation of new ideas but also helps to develop them, due to the strong collaboration between entities.

It is important that the organisational culture aids the development and implementation of new ideas. ESTIEM achieves this especially with its members’ open mindset and the active stimulation of innovation through improvement and development discussions.

People Barriers

If the leader of a team is not focussed on innovation, they often prevent the development of new ideas and their implementation within their team. Most leaders within ESTIEM are active, passionate and open to new ideas regarding their departments, projects or committees. A leader must also motivate their team and lead collaboration within the team. Good teamwork and an open attitude towards new ideas are one of the main facilitators of innovation within ESTIEM.

The need for safety often leads to a resistance against change. This resistance hindered several innovative ideas in ESTIEM even though the flexible structure of ESTIEM prevents irreversible damage to the network.

“People just have this irrational fear that ESTIEM will burn if you change something.”

Resource Barriers

Resources such as knowledge, human resources, finances and public relations are very important to innovation, especially for implementation. A lack of these resources often leads to the failure of innovation in the early stages.

A good knowledge sharing system and an effective knowledge transfer between leaders is one of the main facilitators of innovation in ESTIEM. This is one of the many reasons why maintaining our knowledge management system with its best practice documents is crucial.

Finding people who are interested in helping you to implement your idea and visibility inside the network is still one of the main problems for many new ideas within ESTIEM. Some don’t have those problems, mostly projects that have overcome organisational and people barriers. We can clearly see this effect in Lean Six Sigma in the past year.

Barriers of International Student Organisations

International student organisations face barriers that professional organisations do not face. All their members are students and not employees, which means their turnover rate is very high. Most ESTIEMers only stay in the network for three years until the end of their studies and most leaders only stay in their position for one year. This is a very short time to implement innovation.

The financial situation of most students and their focus on their studies, and not on their work within the network, also slows down innovation vastly. Having events all over Europe and international teams can lead to miscommunication and the need to for them to travel to one another. Both have become considerably easier during ESTIEM’s nearly 28 years.

ESTIEM is a playground

It is crucial for us to know our own barriers of innovation. Only then can those barriers be overcome and even turned into facilitators of innovation. ESTIEM is a fluid network, we learn from our mistakes and try to turn barriers into facilitators of innovation. Our culture of “ESTIEM is a playground” in particular supports the development and implementation of new ideas.

But many new ideas still die out sooner or later. So, if you want to help other ESTIEMers to put their ideas into action and improve ESTIEM constantly, here’s what you can do:

• Don’t dismiss ideas. Every new idea is a good idea until proven otherwise.
• Get involved in ideas and projects you find promising and interesting.
• Actively participate in discussions. Not only during the Council Meeting but all year.
• Help to maintain our knowledge management system. Write BDPs, give feedback and most importantly: Have proper handovers and follow ups.

“If an ESTIEMer has an idea they want to work on, we try to guide them and give them resources and the possibility to work on their idea.”

If you have an idea for something new, something different, something good within ESTIEM, don’t be afraid to step up. Contact the board, people will pay attention to you and they will support your idea with everything you need. Keep all possible barriers in mind, but don’t see them as a threat!

Originally published at http://estiemblog.azurewebsites.net on June 19, 2019.