Wladislaw Rivkin
“In light of severe concerns about the replicability of management research, I am really proud of the open science practices we implemented when designing and evaluating the focal interventions of the DINNOS project.”
Professor Wladislaw Rivkin
Project Name: The Diversity Innovation Support Scheme (DINNOS)
Problem addressed by the research
Given the aging workforce in European countries, organisations are facing the question of how to manage an increasingly diverse workforce. In particular, how can age diversity be utilised to foster innovation?
Project description
The Diversity Innovation Support Scheme (DINNOS), an EU-funded research project, examined how to leverage age diversity to enhance innovation and performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Professor Wladislaw Rivkin was the Principal Investigator of the project, which involved academic (e.g., Aston University, and the University of Wuppertal) as well industry partners (e.g., Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and the Kienbaum Institute @ISM) from the UK, Germany, and Ireland.
The research team developed and tested the effectiveness of an innovation support scheme combining leadership and cognitive training in a randomised, controlled trial across Germany, Ireland, and the UK. Their results suggest that the support scheme improved individual and team level innovation by fostering SME owners’ servant leadership practices and team members’ cognitive abilities.
Project outcomes so far
Findings were disseminated at academic and practitioner conferences, and through industry networks. The publicly accessible training materials from the project have been integrated into executive education programmes and informed EU policy discussions. Between 2019 and 2023, over 170 SMEs in Germany, Ireland and the UK have benefited from the DINNOS project through receiving leadership and cognitive training. Materials and benchmarking tools are freely available online, enabling SMEs and policymakers to foster innovation beyond the project’s formal end in 2023.