How Individual Characteristics Promote Experimentation in Innovation

Abstract

Individuals are at the heart of innovation, and their innovative behavior is influenced by their ability and willingness to be innovative. Experimentation is a key activity in innovation. An individual's experimentation behavior - the behavior towards designing, executing and learning from experiments - can be seen as a subset of innovative behavior. Yet, previous research has largely overlooked the level of an individual when studying factors influencing experimentation. This paper investigates how characteristics of an individual promote their experimentation behavior. To understand experimentation on the level of an individual, 18 individuals working in five short-term innovation projects adopting experimentation were selected for this explorative study. Data was collected from multiple sources, through action research. The results of the study suggest 12 characteristics of an individual that promote the experimentation behavior of individuals who are involved in experimentation for the first time, in specific ways at the different stages of the experimentation cycle.

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