Teamwork for innovation – the 'troika' of promotors

The management of innovation requires 'champions' or 'promotors' who commit with enthusiasm to the new product or the new process idea. More complex innovations will require more than one promotor. Division of labour becomes an essential success factor. According to the promotor model, at least a dyad of a 'power promotor' and a 'technology promotor' is necessary to overcome the barriers of unwillingness and of ignorance. With growing complexity, additional problems of communication and process management will occur. This will demand a third team member, the 'process promotor', who is needed to 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 in the German plant construction and engineering industry. The results strengthen the hypothesis that the level of success of an innovation depends on the existence of a 'troika' of promotors.