Managing digital employee-driven innovation: The role of middle-level managers and ambidextrous leadership

This chapter examines the success and failure factors related to the implementation of an Idea Management System (IMS) to manage employees’ ideas about future products and services. The authors discuss an illustrative case involving two different geographically separated sites – South and North – belonging to the same Swedish subsidiary of a global IT firm. The introduction of IMS was a success at the South site, but not at the North site. Both sites had implemented the same IMS, which allowed analysis of the success factors and the differences. It would seem that successful management of digital employee-driven innovation activities using an IMS depends on the ability of the leaders to incorporate the tool into daily work routines and existing structures to stimulate employee exploration; that is, it requires ambidextrous leadership.