Beyond Management: The Creative Problem Solving Process Employed by the Intrapreneurial Manager and His Team in Developing a New Product

Abstract

Due to the ever-changing demands of the market today, organizations find new ways to cater to their customers and compete against business competitors. Companies no longer settle for technological advancements to get ahead of the competition; instead they invest on the innovative mindset of intrapreneurs who create new products and services for their customers. There are few studies done regarding intrapreneurs, and they are only focused withthe skills, behaviors and environment of these individuals that help make them effective innovators. However, these studies failed to focus on how the nature of intrapreneurs comes into play in developing new products, especially in their ways of creatively solving problems in the process. Hence, there is a gap in knowledge on this main idea. For this research aimed to answer the this reason, question, “How is the creative problem solving process employed by the intrapreneurial manager and his team in developing a new product?” This research is a descriptive case study, which employed a qualitative-retrospective design, grounded on management, psychology, economic, procsssual, and communication disciplinal approaches. This study used purposive sampling to determine the number of participants who would be involved in data gathering. The participants included one intrapreneurial manager and eight team members ofa large manufacturing organization who recently developed a new product Furthermore, the tools used for data gathering included an interview schedule (to gather information onthe profile of the intrapreneurial manager and the team, the nature and description of the product that was recently developed, their creative problem solving techniques employed in the stages of product development) and use of company documents (to substantiate the data gathered from the interview schedule). This study employed a thematic analysis in analyzing answers elicited from the respondents and the documents. The results of this study revealed that the New Product Introduction teamofthe manufacturing branch of X organization, assigned to create physical and working DCDC power supplies was in-charge in the stages of Design Verification Test (DVT) preparation (scheduling of tasks, target schedule, and background check of product), DVT build (accurate and clean designis set, testing and refinement, and production ramp-up), and DVT build report (document all the designs, tests, changes that happened in the process development). The new product that was recently developed was entirely new for the organization that resulted in minimal malfunctions, specifically over heating, which required another build in February 2008. The problems encountered by the team in product development were categorized under simple, moderately critical, and very critical, and in every phase, the team used procedures to organize ideas and solve problems (creative problem solving techniques) that were used by either an individual orthe group. In the DVT preparation, members who had direct participation with the design team in Hong Kong used evaluative thinking, brainstorming, criteria, feasibility, and arrived at a fiat decision, while the entire NPI team used a Gantt chart to elaborate the background of the product and anived at consensus decision to start building the product. As for the DVT build, which was the most dynamic stage ofall, the creative problem solving techniques used by the individual were evaluative thinking, and individual decision, while the team used brainstorming, criteria, feasibility, performance dashboard, unanimous, fiat, and consensus decision. For the DVT build report, the team used the performance dashboard to review and clarify everything that occurred during the build, and arrived at a unanimous decision to request for another build due to malfunctions. The creative problem solving techniques used by the team in the process of product development were similar to the common face-to- face communication techniques like metacommunication for evaluative thinking, group structuring for Gantt chart, while the creative problem solving techniques of brainstorming, unanimity, fiat, and consensus were regarded as common communication techniques. Performance dashboard and feasibility were the unusual creative problem solving techniques. As a whole,it can be concluded that the creative problem solving process was employed by the intrapreneurial manager and his team by applying various creative problem solving techniques, such as Gantt chart (to determine what was needed to be resolved), individual thinking ,brainstorming, performance dashboard, criteria, feasibility (to generate and evaluate solutions), individual decision, consensus, fiat, and unanimity (to choose the best solution), on necessary phases of each product development stage forfaster problem resolution. The team did not generate as many novel ideas in the process of creatively solving the product since they have a criteria to fit into and the technicality of the team resulted in distinguished solutions to problems. Still, unique ideas were welcomed by the team especially when the problems could not be solved by usual solutions.