For more than 20 months now that I am working with an ‘Alliance’ project, I still could not understand the ‘Innovation Culture’. This culture creates more questions on my part than answers that I could find.
IMHO, ‘Innovations’ created during the ‘Alliance’ project implementation, are not true innovations by themselves but should be part of a “Standard Engineering Design”. Innovations to be called that way should be unique improvements from an existing design and not omissions. They way I see it, ‘Innovations’ in the ‘Alliance’ culture are similar to ‘Service Packs’ issued by software manufacturers because they failed to implement them before the release of their products. Personally, I believe that the ‘Innovations in Alliance Culture’ will even make the Total Cost of the project more expensive rather than cheaper as even during detail design, innovations are still introduced.
Another frustration I have working with the ‘Alliance’ is the culture that if an innovation is being suggested by an ‘ordinary’ individual, even how good the innovation, is just falling on deaf ears. On the contrary, if the innovation is coming from the ‘elite’ group, even if it is just a ‘service pack’, it gets recognition. This sentiment is shared by most people that I have been talking with about innovations. I even came to a thought that if I have a good innovation but possibility is that it may not be recognised, I need to share it with the ‘elites’ to be implemented.
As this is my first time to work in an ‘Alliance’, it may take time for me to be able to understand their culture, if that will ever come.