Hidden Attributes of Human Resources for Successful Innovation

Abstract

Innovation is a key factor for survival of an organization in a global economy and market scenario. It exists in different formats and at different phases of life-cycle of a product at the micro level in an organization or in the society at the macro level. Human resources play the most significant role for successful innovation apart from systems, strategy and infrastructure. In every format of innovation efforts, success is less probable than failure. One major reason of the failure is poor perception about realistic and pervasive meaning of innovation at the level of promoters of an organization. One less emphasized or prioritized area in the chain of innovation studies is the identification, nurturing and monitoring of human factor. Scope exists for experimentation on their identification, empowerment, motivation and impact of social factors like racial identity, physiological features, gender, age, homogeneity in society vs. heterogeneity, migration and above all education system. CEO of the organization should ensure that interpersonal relationship and work-culture in employment space are stimulating to the extent that wheels of innovation are cohesively linked together. Multi-cultural societies in United States, Canada, Australia with a lot of inflow of migrants may be ideal test-beds for experiments on the chemistry of success and failures of applied innovations.

Keywords: Innovation, Human Resources Management, Organizational Behavior, Immigration studies, creativity

JEL Classification: O31, O32, M, M1, M5, Z1