Innovation management in audiovisual production organisations in Malta

Abstract

Creativity and innovation are two separate yet inherently interconnected concepts. Innovation cannot exist without the impetus of creative ideas; nevertheless, an abundance of creative ideas does not predispose an organisation to be innovative. Innovation management is understood as the efficient and effective management of the innovation process (Tidd et al., 2001) which involves the identification of innovation opportunities and the facilitation of their implementation. The purpose of this study is to examine how audiovisual production organisations in Malta harness creativity and manage innovation. The research endeavors to investigate the following questions: Which organisational factors need to be considered in innovation management? What strategy can be used to measure creativity and innovation in organisational settings? How do audiovisual production organisations in Malta manage innovation? Are there any trends in innovation management in the audiovisual sector in Malta? Audiovisual production organisations were chosen as to date no research has been conducted in Malta nor abroad on innovation in this sector. Five organisations were identified to be researched, their selection was based on the following criteria: the organisation provides audiovisual production services; more than 30 members of staff are employed on a full-time basis and the organisation is Maltese owned or partnered. The organisations involved in the research account for five out of a total of seven organisations that meet the established criteria. The literature review indicates that innovation management on an organisational level is concerned with six factors: strategy, leadership, structures and systems, resources, skills and knowledge, culture and climate and barriers to innovation. The research elicits qualitative and quantitative data. The quantitative data was gathered by distributing an anonymous focused questionnaire to all full-time members of staff employed by each organisation (n = 109). The qualitative data was collated from five managers from each organisation (n = 25) and feedback was also sought from a contact person in each entity. The six organisational factors identified in the literature review were translated into a framework of six scales and twenty-four constituent sub-scales which served as the structure to code the questions for the questionnaire and the interview. The actual question items were drawn from two tried and tested audits, namely KEYS (Amabile et al., 1996) and TCI (Anderson & West, 1996) with the aim of attaining higher validity and reliability in the data collated. The findings indicate that although each organisation has its own unique way of managing innovation, common strengths and weaknesses were identified. The results suggest that sufficient skill pool, space to innovate and role-modelling for innovation are the organisational factors least well managed by the audiovisual sector in Malta. Whereas the sector's ability to alleviate fear of failure, manage knowledge, foster open communication and encourage risk-taking behaviour appear to be well managed.