Teamwork for innovation - the 'troika' of promoters

The management of innovation requires 'champions' or 'promotors' who commit with enthusiasm to the new product or the new process idea. More complex i nnovations will require more than one promotor. Division of labour becomes an essential success factor. According to the promotor model, at least a dy ad of a 'power promotor' and a 'technology promotor' is necessary to overco me the barriers of unwillingness and of ignorance, With growing complexity, additional problems of communication and process management will occur. Th is will demand a third team member, the 'process promotor', who is needed t o overcome the barriers of non-responsibility and non-communication between the organisational units involved and to act as navigator of the process. In this article, we present an empirical investigation of 133 innovations i n the German plant construction and engineering industry. The results stren gthen the hypothesis that the level of success of an innovation depends on the existence of a 'troika' of promoters,