Talking Tom has a case study (Outfit7)

Posted on by Miha Škerlavaj

In less than a decade, Talking Tom and friends have become a household name around the world with number of downloads exceeding the global population. A fascinating story of how Outfit7, the company behind the scenes of Talking Tom has been started up, scaled up, how founders exited and how it is developing recently as one of rare entrepreneurial unicorns under the new ownership. Many thanks to my co-authors Spencer Harrison (INSEAD) and Žiga Vavpotič (Outfit7 member of the board), all the contributing interviewees including Iza Login (the founder of Outfit7), Xinyu Qian (CEO), all the participating leaders and employees from Outfit7 as well as dedicated staff from the INSEAD to get the story out in the open. Three-part case study is now available from the INSEAD case publishing, the Case centre and now also from the Harvard business school publishing. Our greatest hope is that it will spark fruitful discussions and learning in the educational institutions around the world.

Abstract:
 Outfit7 is a digital entertainment firm that develops and publishes animated video games for mobile phones, tablets and desktops. It’s flagship product is a series of mobile apps called “Talking Tom and Friends”, with close to 8 billion downloads globally. Outfit7 is one of only 46 European unicorns, i.e., privately held companies valued above $1 billion, topping the global ranks of most downloaded mobile games. In 2017, according to App Annie, a leading app-ranking platform, Outfit7 was the sixth most downloaded mobile publisher, and My Talking Tom was the second most downloaded mobile game globally, putting it in the company of tech giants like Facebook, Google, Tencent and Alibaba. Part A describes the growth stage from 2009 to 2014, along with the story of founders Samo and Iza Login. The focus is on setting up the startup and developing a unique organizational culture, leaving the hiring decision (fit or misfit) to students. In Part B, from 2014 to 2017, the start-up moves into scale-up phase after the founders’ exit/appointment of a new management team, the focus is on entrepreneurial leadership. In Part C, as tensions emerge from scaling up a unicorn, students must decide what to keep and what to change (how to balance continuity and renewal) as expectations for growth soar.

Pedagogical Objectives:
To facilitate discussion of entrepreneurship, leadership, human resource management, change through growth, and organizational culture.

Keywords:
Start-Up, Scale-Up, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Human Resource Management, Organizational Culture, Unicorn, Founders’ Exit, Change Management, Family Entertainment, Growth, Learning from Failure, Organizational Values, Teamwork

Book to celebrate 75th anniversary of BI Norwegian Business School

Posted on by Miha Škerlavaj

BI Norwegian Business School is celebrating 75th anniversary. Many of our colleagues have therefore contributed to the book At the forefront, looking ahead to link our recent research hoping to address the challenges of the present and future.  The whole book is available for free as open access, my five cents From Creativity to Innovation: Four Leadership Lessons about Capitalizing on High-potential Ideas in Chapter 11. Below is the chapter abstract:

Creative ideas fuel modern organizations and are increasingly salient in times of change. However, novelty—one defining characteristic of creative ideas—is associated with risk. That being said, highly creative ideas tend to represent the most potential, relative to the value they add to organizations and their members. How can leaders increase the odds of successfully transforming high-potential creative ideas into innovative realities? This chapter reviews the most current research findings on optimizing high-potential creative ideas to render the innovation advances they promise. It summarizes and exemplifies the following four leadership lessons: 1) change agents, 2) supportive leadership, 3) integrating multiple perspectives from assorted stakeholders, and 4) facilitating creative employee behavior in the workplace. Research suggests that effectively capitalizing on high-potential ideas in organizational settings requires active leadership that involves a mastery of the competencies of relevant change agents, as the development of new ideas requires rigorous in-context management of the change process. Leaders need to show two-dimensional support of tasks and individuals, not only to provide resources and assistance as needed, but also to facilitate proactive behaviors by challenging employees to depart from the status quo. The successful leader, above all, recognizes that capitalizing on creativity is a social process that requires contributions from multiple viewpoints, and that various stakeholders need to be involved.

 

 

Riding two Horses at Once: The Combined Roles of Mastery and Performance Climates in Implementing Creative Ideas

Posted on by Miha Škerlavaj

Innovation paradox is a reason behind much of trouble within and around innovation processes. What works on the front end of creative process, does not necessarily contribute to the innovation outcomes. Continuing our work that started with exploring role of perceived supervisor support and more extensive Capitalizing on creativity book project, we now present finding from Chinese and Slovenian employees on the role of motivational climates for innovation. Below you will find the abstract of our recent publication in the European Management Review:

Not all creative ideas end up being implemented. Drawing on micro-innovation literature and achievement goal theory, we propose that the interplay of two types of work motivational climates (mastery and performance) moderates a curvilinear relationship between the frequency of idea-generation and idea-implementation behavior. Field studies in two non-Western countries (China, with a study of 117 employees nested within 21 groups, and Slovenia, with a study of 240 employees nested within 34 groups) revealed a three-way interaction of idea generation, performance climate, and mastery climate as joint predictors of idea implementation. Specifically, results of random coefficient modeling show that when combined, mastery and performance climates transform the relationship between the frequency of idea generation and idea implementation from an inverse U-shaped curvilinear relationship to a positive and more linear one. These findings suggest that ideas are most frequently implemented in organizational contexts characterized by both high-mastery and high-performance climates. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Source: Škerlavaj, M., Černe, M., Dysvik, A., Nerstad, C. G. L., and Su, C. (2017): Riding two Horses at Once: The Combined Roles of Mastery and Performance Climates in Implementing Creative Ideas. European Management Review, doi: 10.1111/emre.12151.

 

Relational leadership and creativity

Posted on by Miha Škerlavaj

What kind of leader-employee relationships matter most in terms of creativity? This is the question Stine Therese S. Berg (OSM Aviation Management), Arnhild Grimstad (Google Ireland), Miha Škerlavaj (BI Norwegian Business School), and Matej Černe (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) asked ourselves in the most recent publication from European Management Journal with the title Social and economic leader-member exchange and employee creative behavior: The role of employee willingness to take risks and emotional carrying capacity .

Here is the abstract:

In the current study we explore the relational aspect of leadership for stimulating employee creative behavior. Drawing on leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, we propose that the association between two distinct types of leader-member exchange relationships (social [SLMX] and economic [ELMX]) and creative behavior is mediated by employee willingness to take risks and moderated by emotional carrying capacity. Based on two-wave data from a sample of 147 employees, we surprisingly find only marginal support for the association between SLMX and creative behavior, and, as expected, we find no support for the association between ELMX and creative behavior. We do find evidence of the full mediation of willingness to take risks in these two associations. Furthermore, we also find a positively significant interaction of SLMX with emotional carrying capacity (ECC), but no support for the interaction of ELMX with ECC in predicting employee creative behavior. We contribute to a deeper view of understanding the leadership of employee creativity as a relational process, contingent upon both employee characteristics as well as the nature of leader-member exchange.

Leading highly creative ideas to innovation (video lecture)

Posted on by Miha Škerlavaj

Skerlavaj Capitalising DISCWhat can leaders do to utilize the potential of creative ideas? A question that inspired 42 authors across four continents to go on a journey of discovery and publish the book called Capitalizing on creativity: Fostering the implementation of creative ideas in organizations . Here are my five cents on leadership of highly creative ideas to innovations from the Leadership toolbox lecture at BI Norwegian business school April 29th, 2016.

Btw. if interested in the book, feel free to use author event discount SKER35 to get it 35% off.

 

Capitalizing on creativity – New book

Posted on by Miha Škerlavaj

9781783476497-thumbProud! Happy! Excited to see our new book Capitalizing on Creativity launched! It does not happen every day to ripe the fruits of several years of work with a dream team – Matej Černe, Arne Carlsen, & Anders Dysvik. And it would not happen without dedicated support of Jana Krapez Trost, the Edward Elgar professional team as well as every single one of 42 engaged authors from four continents involved. Hope you will enjoy the read as we have been enjoying the process of making.

 

MKWCI TV 2015

Posted on by Miha Škerlavaj

Have to say this, I am really proud of my MSc students at BI Norwegian Business School for the work they have done. MKWCI TV is a BI Learning Lab project created by students of major in Leadership and change, within the course Managing knowledge work, creativity and innovation. Students assumed the role of innovation journalists and co-created 12 digital video recorded narratives about chosen concepts and ideas from the course in real-life settings. Stories of success and failure, all deep learning about what is the role of people in innovation processes. Enjoy the show!

 

 

I want to be creative but …

Posted on by Miha Škerlavaj

EJWOPDarija Aleksić, Matej Černe, Anders Dysvik and myself in European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology with couple of thoughs about preference for creativity and the creative performance at work. And the way clarity of goals and work enjoyment might matter with this regard …

Abstract

In today’s quickly changing work environment, many individuals want to be creative at their workplace, but only some of them succeed at manifesting these tendencies. In three studies, using both field and experimental data, we focused on transforming individuals’ preference for creativity, defined as an inclination for liking and wanting to be creative, into actual creativity. We first conducted a pilot Study 1 to establish discriminant validity to related constructs and provided initial evidence on predictive and incremental validity of the preference-for-creativity scale. Next, we performed a field Study 2, where we found that transforming preferences for creativity into supervisor-rated creativity is contingent upon employees’ perceptions of clear outcome goals. Clear outcome goals fostered individuals’ preference for creativity to result in higher levels of supervisor-rated creative behaviour—a finding that was replicated in an experimental Study 3. Furthermore, we explored whether work enjoyment mediated the moderated relationship between preference for creativity and creative outcomes. The results supported our mediated moderation model, whereby the manipulation of clear goals led to higher work enjoyment, influencing individuals’ preference for creativity to result in higher ratings of their creative outcomes.

Leadership Quarterly: I get by with a little help from my supervisor

Posted on by Miha Škerlavaj

LQThis time our team (Matej Cerne, Anders Dysvik and myself) banged our heads together to see how important is leadership support for innovation process (idea implementation to be precise). I am truly proud to announce that editor and reviewers at prominent management journal Leadership Quarterly found our contribution significant both for leadership and innovation scholars as well as practitioners and have accepted it for publication. Below are some details:

Škerlavaj, Miha, Černe, Matej, & Dysvik, Anders (In press): I get by with a little help from my supervisor: Creative idea generation, idea implementation, and perceived supervisor support. Leadership Quarterly.

In two studies using both field (165 employees and their 24 direct supervisors from a manufacturing firm in Study 1) and experimental (123 second-year undergraduate student participants in lab Study 2) data, we explore how perceived supervisor support acts as a crucial contingency that enables higher levels of idea implementation from creative-idea generation. First, we suggest that excessive creative-idea generation (in terms of both frequency and creativity of ideas) can lead to diminished returns with regards to idea implementation. Drawing on a resource allocation framework, we hypothesize and find a curvilinear inverse U-shaped relationship between employee creative-idea generation and implementation. Second, we examine perceived supervisor support as a moderator of the curvilinear inverse U-shaped relationship between idea generation and implementation. In line with our second hypothesis, we find that higher levels of perceived supervisor support dampen the curvilinear relationship between creative-idea generation and idea implementation. Accordingly, perceived supervisor support seems to provide employees with access to resources and support needed for idea implementation, making highly creative ideas more implementable.