On the face of it then, transferring people to transfer their knowledge seems to work best when an innovation is being tried for the first time. We gleaned further insights from a series of interviews with engineers and managers. It is easy to underestimate the challenge of overcoming organisational resistance to new technology. Our conversations with oil company employees showed the importance of having people on the ground who were willing to engage with innovation. This might be people who worked on earlier generations of the technology. There may also be push factors that encourage front-line employees to embrace innovation, such as a problem they could not solve with the technology already at their disposal. The oil company we studied responded to this by running programmes that linked R&D with field engineers who had relevant operational and research experience. The central team kept field engineers updated on the latest technological developments. At the same time, it rotated researchers through different field units. This created a more formal framework for promoting innovation and assessing the needs of each unit. This often resulted in the R&D team selling a different technology to that intended, depending on the unit’s perceived needs. R&D sometimes pitched new technology to numerous operational teams before finding one that was interested in implementing it. Another challenge emerged around funding innovation.
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technology that doesn’t deliver its objectives aren’t just a waste of time and money. They can also create a significant drag on performance. Making the wrong call could mean shutting down an active well, costing millions. Field units may be reluctant to risk investing in new methods when the stakes are so high. Internal innovation venture funds or grants are one potential solution. Another, more market-led option is to allow larger projects to subsidise experimentation in smaller projects that share similar challenges to their own. Both sides benefit. The ‘guinea pig’ project gets to use technology it could not afford otherwise. Meanwhile, managers at the larger project can assess the results without betting the business, allowing them to adopt new technology with greater confidence. A final observation relates to the value of a physical presence on the ground. In an increasingly virtual world, some might question whether physical redeployment is needed at all. Why can’t innovation
experts pass on experience via video conferencing? It would be cheaper and easier to scale. However, my conversations with managers in different industries make me sceptical that this would work. Structured, time-controlled, virtual communication is no substitute for the small talk and informal interaction that so often paves the way for problem solving. Our research shows that transferring experienced employees can be an effective strategy for embedding promising practices across an organisation, but companies should pay attention to numerous factors to get the best outcome from such a move. Get it right, though, and the odds of benefitting from innovation improve considerably.
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