ARE CHAMPIONS DIFFERENT FROM NON-CHAMPIONS

Research on the innovation process has shown that the presence of an i nnovation champion-someone who takes a personal risk to overcome organ izational obstacles to innovation-is an important part of the new busi ness development, new technology development, and organizational chang e processes. Champions play six valuable roles in the innovation proce ss. They provide autonomy from the rules, procedures, and systems of t he organization so that innovators can establish creative solutions to existing problems. They gather organizational support for Me innovati on by building coalitions between managers in different functional are as of the organization. They create loose monitoring mechanisms that a llow innovators to make creative use of organizational resources. They establish mechanisms for making consensus decisions on innovations. T hey use informal methods to persuade other members of the organization to provide support for the innovation, and they protect the innovatio n team from interference by the organizational hierarchy. Some, but no t all managers believe in the desirability of these championing roles. Existing research suggests that managers willing to serve as champion s differ in many ways from those who are not However, almost all of th e existing research on championing has been conducted in Me United Sta tes. This raises two fundamental questions: First, do champions and no n-champions differ in their preferences for championing roles? Second, are these differences universal or limited to American culture? This study attempts to answer these questions by comparing the preferences for the six championing roles of individuals with championing experien ce and those without across 43 organizations and 68 countries. The stu dy shows that individuals with championing experience have significant ly different preferences from individuals without championing experien ce for five of these championing roles-building cross-functional ties, establishing autonomy from organizational norms and rules, enabling i nnovators to circumvent organizational hierarchy, using informal means to persuade others to support the innovation effort, and building a d ecision-making mechanism that includes all organization members. These differences exist after controlling for differences in the national c ulture of the respondents, the companies in which they work, and demog raphic characteristics. The results of this study suggest that differe nces in the preferences of champions and non-champions for the behavio rs that champions adopt are consistent across cultures.