Best paper award for speed of innovation research

31 August 2007

An Australian School of Business academic, Dr Salih Zeki Ozdemir, has been honoured with the prestigious Stephan Schrader Best Paper Award from the Academy of Management (AOM).

The paper, co-authored by Strategy and Entrepreneurship academic Dr Ozdemir and Xing Zhong, a former visiting academic to UNSW from the University of Chicago, was judged the best paper in the Technology and Innovation Management Division at the annual AOM Conference in August.

Dr Ozdemir and Ms Zhong’s paper Structure, Dynamics, and the Rate of Innovation, examined what factors affected the speed of innovation between groups of employees or firms, or ‘actors.’

The study also investigated the benefits and costs of maintaining the type of social structure found in collective innovation groups, and the effect that actors with high learning capability had on the innovation process.

“We found that, when costs are not included, it is best to potentially connect every actor to every other actor, and to make sure that all the actors in the group are high learning capability actors,” Dr Ozdemir said.

“However when costs are included, we have observed that a system with low capability learning actors may surpass the collective innovation performance of another system with many high learning capability actors, if the social structure is designed appropriately.”

Dr Ozdemir said the study had implications for managers who want to increase innovation but do not know where to start.

“These findings give managers much better control of the innovation performance of their organisation,” Dr Ozdemir said.