How can innovation management be used in a culturally diverse team to improve

company development: a case study of a Chinese international trading company

Executive Summary
The present study tries to explicit why and how cultural diversity drive innovation,
especially product innovation. The reader will find first an extensive literature review
covering different themes relevant to the subject at hand: cultural diversity, innovation
management, top management.
Here is a definition of cultural diversity:
Michael D. Lee (1981) conducted diversity is nothing more than a difference from the
majority. In any culture there is a majority and many minorities. Culture is a set of norms that
set standards for a society of what is acceptable behavior. Every ethnicities or countries have
their own culture; this culture shows different ways by different behavior and has carried over
in their inner groups. The expressions of cultural diversity not only on variety of culture form,
but also involve creation, production, spread, marketing and consumption through every type of
techniques. The typical example is international firm.

Here is aFollowing is a definition of innovation management:

Innovation management is a combination of innovation processes management and
change management, which involves product, business process and organizational innovation.
Kelly, P; Kranzburg M. (1978) indicated that innovation management provides a set of tools
that allows the organization to capture external or internal opportunities, and drive new ideas,
processes or products by using its creativity.

The innovation management part of the literature review is aims at understanding better
the factors influencing companys reactions to internal and external changes, including
opportunities and challenges. Free and respectful corporate culture and working environment
plays a defining role in managing diverse team and stimulate team members creativity.
Managers are the ones in charge of defining how their relationship with their employees will
be and how to achieve development with successful innovation.
 The literature review highlighted the lack of current work on qualitative firm-level
evidence to innovation management and culturally diverse company development, leading to
this papers research question: How can innovation management be used in a culturally
diverse team to improve company development: a case study of a Chinese international
trading company.

Here are the three hypotheses that the authors feel will provide support to the research
question:
H1: Innovation management in product, business process or organization helps a
company to manage internal and external changes;
H2: A free and respectful working environment helps optimize the creativity of a
culturally diverse team;
H3: Managers with positive attitudes towards culture diversity and the good command of
innovation management tools (IMTS) can stimulate culturally diverse teams creativity for
sustaining development of the company.
In order to verify the hypothesis and research question, a case study of a Chinese
international trading company was made. This case study contained two different interviews
with a manager and four employees from different positions and cultural backgrounds,
including Chinese, Indian, and Laotian.
For H1, many international companies hire local people and build a culturally diverse
team to help develop overseas markets. Compared the answers of interviewees, we learned
that a culture diversity brings both advantages and disadvantages. In some degrees, local
employees have a deeper understanding of local markets and have quicker reaction to local
market needs. However, internally, culture diversity brings culture conflicts and
misunderstandings. To take its advantages and overcome the barriers, new techniques or new
changes in product, business process or organization is required.
Regarding H2, all the interviewees appreciated the free atmosphere in the workplace.
They felt free and safe to contribute their ideas, and sometimes they are giving the strong
supports and decision-making authority by the company. These made them motivated and
release their full innovative potential.
 For H3, we tried to analyze the role of top management in innovation management. We
targeted to the top management attitudes towards culture diversity, innovation management as
well as the application of innovation management techniques.
All in all, in our case study, it appears that a good command of knowledge and
techniques of innovation management among a culturally diverse team helps to improve
company development. It is useful for reasons: it brings awareness to of the importance of
innovation management, but also contribute a successful innovation management case to
other similar companies.
 I. Introduction
Nowadays, it is a common phenomenon in the world that cultural diversity exists
and becomes popular along with the internationalization and the development of firms.
More and more companies set up factories or branches in overseas markets but most
of them run into the problems caused by cultural differences. To deal with those
cultural differences, a lot of companies choose to hire local labors to work with the
origin employees, and then a culturally diverse team comes into being.
By building a culturally diverse team, companies expect it can bring out different
ideas from different values and thoughts, then comes into innovation and finally help
companies better adapt the working environment and improve the internationalization
and the development in overseas markets. Gareth Morgan, a famous expert of
innovation, indicated the importance of diversity to the innovation and the
development of companies:
Innovation only could be developed a multiplex basis on diversity.
Some regional-level and firm-level evidence, and recent researches proved that
cultural diversity has impact on firm innovation. Ceren Ozgen, Peter Nijkamp, and
Jacques Poot (2011) in their Dutch firm-level analysis of previous works,
demonstrated the positive impacts of cultural diversity on innovation:
we find that firms on which foreigners account for a relatively large share of
employment are somewhat less innovative. However, there is strong evidence that
firms that employ a more diverse foreign workforce are more innovative, particularly
in terms of product innovations.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Melinda Marshall, and Laura Sherbin in their research of
inherent and acquired diversity, found out how diversity can drive innovation and
finally affect companies performance and development:
we learned that companies with 2-D diversity out-innovate and out-perform
others2-D diversity unlocks innovation by creating an environment where
outside the box ideas are heardA team with a member who shares a clients
ethnicity is 152% likelier than another team to understand that client.
Most researchers and managers convince the positive impact of cultural diversity
on innovation, and they also believe innovation management plays an important role
in the development of companies, for instant, helping company to unlock product
innovation, to capture a new market, to drive a growth in market share. However,
innovation management not only involves product innovation, but also business
process and organizational innovation. Schumpeter (1984) proposed a form of holistic
innovation, the dimensions includes new product, process, markets, sources, etc. Most
literatures investigated and discussed about the product innovation, but few analyzed
other dimensions of innovation in firm-level.
This paper first objective will be to provide an insight into the relationship
among cultural diversity, innovation management and company development. Instead
of bring something new, this part will mainly act as a review and integration of
diversity and innovation, and as a theoretical analysis for further study.
Additionally, this insight or theoretical analysis will form the foundation for our
second objective, investigating the relationship among cultural diversity, innovation
management and company development practically, and provide firm-level evidence
by case study. We chose a Chinese international trading company, which has
established a culturally diverse team to better develop overseas markets of India, Laos,
etc. We conducted two different interviews with a Chinese manager and 4 employees
from different local markets. The interviews included 5 parts: personal information,
current situation, views on cultural diverse team, views on companys innovation
management and their suggestion for further development under the background of
Belt and Road Initiative. There will be ana presentation of our findings by
observation and comparison among the answers of interviewees.
The final objective will be to reaching practical consequence and offer practical
reference or suggestion to culturally diverse company to manage innovation and
positively influencet the development of the company. We will discuss the findings of
our case study with existing literatures and practical implication of this study.

II. Literature Review

1. Diversity
 Diversity topic becomes to a typical study according to many researches. The
genesis of diversity starts from the management of USA and UK; and the scope of
diversity includes ethnicity/ nationality, gender, function, ability, language, religion,
lifestyle and tenure. The corn theory is whether people who come from different
countries with different background could get the opportunities for applicable works,
do them cooperate with each other well and find their value in diversity group of an
enterprise.
The definition of diversity starts from the management of western country; the
corn theory is whether people who come from different countries with different
background could get the opportunities for applicable works, do them cooperate with
each other well and find their value in diversity group of an enterprise. Some authors
analyzed diversity in two different fields, inherent and acquired. Inherent diversity
represent to the traits you are born with, includes gender, ethnicity and sexual
orientation. Acquired diversity more indicates the traits you obtained from experience,
for example working in other countries which bring you cultural differences.
Meanwhile, more authors divide diversity in other two fields.
Diversity, or pluralism, Anne Marie Francesco & Barry Allen Gold (1998)
indicates that there are two types of diversity which are surface diversification and deep
diversification. Surface diversification is the visual representation, such as gender,
appearance, educational level etc. Deep diversification is peoples internal value and
experience, such as cultural difference. Some of the surface diversification could be
changed easily, but deep diversification does not. This research is formulating cultural
diversity.

2. Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory

There is an interesting and valuable academic article about culture index, called
Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory. Hofstedes cultural dimensions theory has been
published in 1984 and it has been refined in 1991. The five dimensions indexes are
PDI, IDV, UAI, MAS and LTO.
Power Distance Index (PDI) is distance of power among people in the country. It
means the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and
institutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.
Under the culture of power distance, the followers have strong dependency on leaders,
peoples idea leader is an open-mind dictator; in the culture of small power distance,
employees participate in decision-making are more than in culture of big power
distance.
Individualism vs. collectivism (IDV) is degree to which people in a society are
integrated into groups. Individualism is disparate social structure, hypothesize people
only care about themselves and closed family members; collectivism shows people is
divided internal group and external group in a compact social structure, people expect
the internal group will take care of themselves, meantime people are absolute loyal to
this internal group.
Uncertainty avoidance index (UAI) is a society's tolerance for ambiguity, the
threat of uncertainty and ambiguity in a society seeks to protect occupational safety,
develop more formal rules, reject deviant views and behaviors, and trust absolute
loyalty and professional knowledge to circumvent the situation.
Masculinity vs. femininity (MAS) is a preference in society for achievement,
heroism, assertiveness and material rewards for success. It refers to the extent to
which male values predominate in society, namely, self-confidence, pursuit of money
and material, no concern for others, and emphasis on the quality of personal life,
while the opposite is the value of "women".
Long-term orientation vs. short-term orientation (LTO) This dimension associates
the connection of the past with the current and future actions/challenges. A lower
degree of this index (short-term) indicates that traditions are honored and kept, while
steadfastness is valued.

a. The practical applications of theory

Hofstede's five models bring insights to other culture, when it comes to business,
promoting cultural sensitivity will help people work more effectively when interacting
with people from other countries, and will participate to make sure transactions are
successful. There are four important factors will be concern in cultural business as
below:
- International communication
Communication is one of the primary concerns in business; it is the bridge to link
peoples interacting while in different countries and cultural background. The
language, communication tools, even the words organization need to be concern when
you create a conversation with each other, that is the first step and it its most
important factor which affect the process in business.
- International negotiation
Varied factors are interacting with international negotiation compactly.
Communication style, expression, expectation and precedence order will be change
depends on the negotiators countries of origin. Western people and Eastern people are
apparently different, western people are straighter to the point on expressing, while
eastern people are used to euphemistic expression. Different countries are not the
same even in the Eastern. For example, Chinese are more reactive and euphemistic
expression compare to Indian, and Japanese are more straightstraighter on expression.
- International management
In international companies, management need to provide training for employees,
enhance their sensitivity about different culture, meanwhile, management need to
constitute specific and suitable administration management system through different
policies of original countries.
- International marketing
Strategy of marketing is according to the culture of country. For example, we
need to focus on safety in the country with high index of UDI; you may conduct a
group experience if you want to sale mobile phone in China, but you could show
individuals experience while in USA. There are more examples can be explained
through Hofstedes theory.

b. Country comparison in Asia

The comparison in different asia countries through Hofstedes index as below:
 This table shows difference index in each Asia countries, China, India, Indonesia
and Thailand. Through the index we could see PDI score is similar high, it illustrates
people are following with power organization in these four countries; it is less
opportunities for employees to participate in decision making. For IDV, other
countries are more similar except India, it indicates Indian is more individually
compare to relying on group society. China has highest score than other three
countries both MDI and LTO, China is on high economy developing and focus on
long term developing, the whole high competitive environment is fast and tense; on
the contrary, Thailand is more relax and develop slowly. Compare to high competition
in China economy development, the secure system in China is lowest than other three
countries, shows on UAI.
Through this table of countries difference, we recognized more about peoples
behavior in each different background. It brings big influence in group working.

3. Cultural diversity in organizations

a. What is cultural diversity?
Michael D. Lee (1981) conducted diversity is nothing more than a difference from
the majority. In any culture there is a majority and many minorities. Culture is a set of
norms that set standards for a society of what is acceptable behavior. Every ethnicities
or countries have their own culture; this culture shows different ways by different
behavior and has carried over in their inner groups. The expressions of cultural
diversity not only on variety of culture form, but also involve creation, production,
spread, marketing and consumption through every type of techniques. The typical
example is international firm.
Integration of world economy with main characters of high-technology, IT,
e-commerce and diversity became a hot topic since 1990. Come along with
internationalization of the firm's, workforce trend to diversify during the time, it shows
mainly these aspects as below:
1) Abroad students back their home country. For exampleexample, in china,
abroad students increasing 13% per year, these abroad students cluster bring back
different ideas of pluralism;
2) Increasing foreigners explore their career in other countries. The statistics of
example in shanghai (economic city of China), there were 65459 people from 112
countries came to register for working in 2004, it was increased 51% than 2003; it
increased more than 55% until 2008.
3) The frequency float of employees. During 2004-2005, the average rate of
unemployment reaches to 16.7% in Chinese foreign companies, which is more than 15%
of international average.
4) The structure changed of labors. More and more companiescompanies set-up
factories or branches in other countries. They hire local labors to mix origin employees
works together.
All the data indicates the workforce has been coming to diversify. The fact of this
tends is more and more diversity employees need to work and cooperate with each
other. Not only big international companies but also new small companies would like to
create diversity team to improve innovation.
Workforce demographics in the United States and many other nations in the world
indicate that managing diversity will be on the agendas of organizational leaders, and
leading scholars, and consultants point out that a well managedwell-managed diverse
workforce holds potential competitive advantages for organizations (Cox & Blake,
1991). This research is not only expounded the dual character of diversity workforce
which is positive and negative effects, but also mentioned management of diversity
team is one of the critical factor which could help to drive innovation.

b. Why cultural diversity? [What are the impacts of cultural diversity

(positive & negative)?]
Positive effects
Managers would like to accept that employers could bring more benefit from the
diverse workforce. They expect that intercultural team could bring out different ideas
from different value and thoughts; it could be the amount of wealth for enterprises.
There is an evidence of researching indicates that a diversity team could increase the
discretionary quality. The famous experts of innovation Gareth Morgan says:
innovation only could be developed a multiplex basis on diversity. This article
indicates a critical idea that diversity could improve the market share and capture a new
market during compelling evidence. Obviously, diverse group not only brings different
ideas, it also incentive employees promote themselves consciously to keep their
competitions in the business career.
Researchers found that in organizations, diverse workforce could promote
creativity, innovation and problems solutions. Team members from different culture
background with different education type drive more creativity; it unlocks innovation
and drives more market growth. Employees at these companies grew over the market
share in previous year and captured more new markets.
Companies launch diverse businesses in foreign countries prefer to hire local
people to develop business. First is language issue, employers from local countries
could understand each other better than foreigners. And for the communication way,
understanding and behaviors, local employers have more advantages on it obviously.
They can understand the local market better and improve it more smoothly than
foreigners. For example, there are many foreign companies wanted to do business or
set up branches in China, but it is not so easy to operate it without any local person.
All the policy or the hiding rules are affect the process of business development; they
will not notice or find it out if there is nobody knows it well. In addition, language is a
big problem in China, the data of English learning for Chinese study is 93%, but only
15% people who can communicate in English simplify, so most of the companies will
hire local Chinese to do business if they want to develop Chinese market.
Above all, the positive effects are the main expectation from employees, but not
all the diverse workforce brings advantages only.

Negative effects
Meanwhile, different people have different views as the same topic. Some
researchers found that employers from different culture increase more cost. For
example, group coordination costs, such as increased communication time,
accompanied with increase diversity. Same as recruitment cost, to build a diverse team
undermine minority-rich recruitment sources, evaluating recruitment and retention
effectiveness, eliminating workplace characteristics and so on.
Furthermore, it brings more conflicts in groups. People's behaviors are unlike
with each other, especially from different countries or different cultural background.
Their working habits, communication style and mode of thinking have big discrepancy
even on the same work stage. Some researchers conducted that diversity not always
drives innovation and creativity; in contrast, it may be become less productive and have
lower team cohesion because of inherent tensions and relational conflicts arising from
member differences. Diversity could becomesbecome to the potential problem even
intensify team conflict if it does not manage well. To manage it positive, using the
advantages of diversity contributes to enterprises development, which is the point of
this research article.

4. Innovation management
a. What is innovation management?
 European Commission (1995) defined Innovation as the renewal and
enlargement of the range of products and services and the associated markets; the
establishment of new methods of production, supply and distribution; the introduction
of changes in management, work organization, and the working conditions and skills of
the workforce.
As a combination of innovation processes management and change management,
innovation management involves product, business process and organizational
innovation. In other words, it provides a set of tools that allows the organization to
capture external or internal opportunities, and drive new ideas, processes or products
by using its creativity (Kelly, P; Kranzburg M., 1978). Schumpeter (1984) proposed a
form of holistic innovation, which determined dimensions for innovation. The
dimensions include a new product, process, markets, sources, etc.
Based on the perspectives given by the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter,
innovation was regarded as a remarkable element in economic growth (Scocco, Daniel,
2006).
Creativity is the basis of innovation management, which aims to change the
services or business process. Imitation and invention drive to innovative ideas (Godin,
Benot, 2008). It involves employees at every level in contributing creatively to a firms
product development, manufacturing and marketing.
By utilizing innovation management tools, top management can cause and
arrange the creative abilities of the workforce for the sustaining development of a firm
(Clark, Charles H., 1980). The process of innovation can be viewed as an evolutionary
integration of organization, technology and market, which includes iterating series of
activities: search, select, implement and capture (Tidd, Joe; Bessant, John, 2009).
There are five main theory of innovation management: technology push theory; market
pull theory; the chain-link theories; technological networks theory; and the social
network theory. Driven by the challenge to transform information into knowledge, the
evolution of innovation management took place from technological network
perspective to social network perspective (European Commission, 2004). And the
evolution leads to the collaboration under effect of network when managing
innovation.

b. Why innovation management?

The world is changing constantly and global network enhance competitions.
Porter (2009) said globalization level, high volatility, hyper-competition, demographic
changes and explosion of knowledge gave rise to discontinuities, which means
organizations need adaptive growth. Moreover, nowadays affecting by the
knowledge-driven economy, innovation has become a significant contribution in
surviving in the increasingly competitive business world, and knowledge plays a
crucial role in improving innovation (European Commission, 2004). The media
continuously faster changing the business climate and it is more remarkable that
organizational learning and knowledge management, as well as innovation, are
preconditions to face the global trend (Easterby-Smith, Burgoyne, & Araujo, 2001;
Nonaka & Takeuchi, 2008). The product lifecycle is forced to get shorter because of
increased competition. This forces companies to reduce the time to market. Innovation
managers must therefore decrease development time, without giving up quality or
meeting the needs of the market ( Trott, Paul, 2005).
The goal of innovation management within a company is to cultivate a suitable
environment to encourage innovation. The suitable environment would help the firms
get more cooperation projects, even the take-off platform for business ventures
(Rickne, Annika; Laestadius, Staffan; Etzkowitz, Henry, 2012).
Innovation became a determining factor for the continuity of business (Wang et al.,
2008; Forsman, 2011). Innovation management is a contribution to the companies for
making them more competitive in the market through the use of new concepts or
improving existing concepts in the organizational context.

c. What is the relationship between (cultural) diversity and innovation?

i. Diversity can drive to innovation
In the report of Forbe Insights (2011), it revealed three main points: diversity is a
key driver of innovation; a diverse workforce attracts top talent; and diversity and
inclusion efforts are a given. Frdric Roz, chief executive officer of LOral USA,
said Diversity fosters creativity. We need to generate the best ideas from our people
in all levels of the company and incorporate them into our business practices.
Hewlett S. A., Marshall M., Sherbin L. (2013) pointed that diversity unlocks
innovation and drives market growth, top management should think highly of the
power of differences and strive to embody and embrace it. By learning the correlation
between diversity in leadership and market outcomes, it shows that companies with
two-dimensional diversity (inherent and acquired) out-innovate and out-perform others,
which was led by creating an environment where outside the box ideas are heard.
With inherent diversity, employees can better understand the unmet needs in
underleveraged markets. For example, a multicultural team with a Chinese member is
much likelier to understand a Chinese customer than another member who comes from
other country. Moreover, acquired diversity help create a speak up culture in which
all employees can unlock their full innovative potential and contribute ideas.

ii. Innovation & cultural diversity

The impacts of cultural diversity on innovation can be positive and negative.
Cultural distant companies may also have access to a diversity of perspectives and
knowledge, and new product discoveries and innovations may provide a potentially
positive effect (Nielsen & Gudergan, 2012). Ozgen, Nijkamp & Poot (2013) studied
from Dutch employer-employee micro dataset on firm innovation, considering the
amount of immigrant employees and their cultural diversity, and found that firms with
a more diverse foreign workforce are more innovative. And the impact of immigrants
on innovation could within firms and within community. Cultural diversity can drive
knowledge spillovers, new ideas and practices, trade facilitation. Whats more,
cultural diversity enhanced availability of ethnic products and services in the
community, as an amenity. However, sometimes cultural diversity cannot bring
positive impacts or even cause negative impacts on innovation when cultural
background differences become barriers and multicultural management is not
well-performed.

5. How to manage innovation in a culturally diverse team?

a. How to manage diversity workforce?
Management of diversity means organize planned and systematic engagement for
employees of different background in recruitment and employment, it specializing on
increasing the management practice of organizing different human resources. Steven
John says people are different individually, diversity means to reject any stationary
point, treat every employee's differences fair and develop individual potential is the
most important issue for every diversity firms.
On the other hand, diversity employees reflect the aspect of comprehensiveness of
enterprise for cultural pluralism. The comprehensiveness contributes to the structure of
fair organizational cultural, furthermore, this organizational cultural more incentive
employees enthusiasm and development of enterprises. And the firms also request to
cooperation under the cultural pluralism background. Thus, managing cultural
pluralism of employees and organizational culture of enterprises is a critical key for
every diversity workplace. Efficient management could measure differences between
each other and make it cooperative, but there are also some risks of diversity workforce
if it was not managed well.
At first, conflicts existed in diversity easy because of cultural pluralism. One of the
effects of diversity on employees behavior is individual identity. Identity threats can
lead to decreased individual performance (Steele, 1997), decreased self-esteem (Taylor
& Brown, 1988), and decreased desire to take on leadership positions (Davies, Spencer,
& Steele, 2005); deliberate attempts to block organizational change efforts (Nag,
Corley, & Gioia, 2007); non conformancenonconformance with company rules
(Elsbach, 2003);entrenchment of identity conflicts between workgroups (Fiol, Pratt, &
OConnor, 2009); voluntary employee turnover (Trevor & Nyberg, 2008);
stigmatization (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999); and sex-based harassment (Berdahl, 2007).
All these research analysis identities affect individual behavior in teamwork. Some of
the employees are signed in a different word, such as abroad, native, personal
and public etc. Employees play different roles after their identity affected by those
sign in the workplace.
Secondly, salary, promotion, also anther benefits are different in the same position
or same department in diversity group; it could not avoid the impact of management
structure and organizational operation. The difference of benefits (include salary)
drives Employees to focus on comparison and contradiction. These negative factors
bring enterprises develop on the opposite way.
Thirdly, cultural pluralism of team-building is difficult for general management. It
will become to a sharp of conflict. There is conicting evidence as to the extent to
which diversity can deliver competitive advantage. Advocates of social identity theory
(Ely and Thomas, 2001; Ibaarra, 1993; Kanter, 1977; Tafjel, 1982) are more
pessimistic. They argue that diversity damages cohesiveness reduces communication
and produces ingroups and outgroups. This result in discord, distrusts, poor quality and
lack of customer focus and market orientation.
The beneficial management could incentivize diversify workforce output
contribution maximizing. By democracy work environment, freedom of speech of any
novel ideas, giving efficient feedback, divide different type of authority for making
decisions, sharing success achievement. All above approaches could help team
connection establishment between each other and make everyone feel important in the
team.
For improve the competitive advantage, the interrelationship among diversity,
creativity and innovation is the key to open the door. Creativity is a necessary
precondition for successful innovation; it contains four themes which are creative
person, creative process, creative product and the creative environment. Creative
person is the first step that propose novel and different ideas from different vision,
which demonstrates that diversity team from different backgrounds could contribute
more conceptions. But alsoalso, there is conflict between optimistic and pessimistic
shows that a well managedwell-managed diversity team could increase commitment,
job-satisfaction and better interface in markets; and the contrary result is diversity
damages cohesiveness, less communication and separate group orientation. Then the
appropriate human resource management is quite important for incentive the positive
effect of diversity.
Building an effective HRM sub-system is the main principle of management, with
both vertically integrated and horizontally integrated management pattern. To consider
different types of work and context is important as same as functional competence,
which incentives employees enjoy work within their job roles. Furthermore, it helps
awareness of their individual responsibilities while they are satisfied about their jobs.
Also, it shows that how functional diversity increase potential conflict by Garvin (1998)
theories, because of an absence of tools to reconcile differences of perspective.
Besides, combined with reward systems to implement employee ideas could help
create the supportive infrastructure necessary to deliver results. To formulate efficient
reward systems to make employees be aware of successful sharing. And it is also
necessary to build a personal relationship with each individual or group member by
establishing emotional intelligence and commitment.
Above all, diversity facilitates the process of innovation, improvement, and lead to
competitive advantages when managed well.

b. How to manage innovation in a culturally diverse team?

Innovation processes can either be pushed or pulled through development. A
pushed process is based on existing or newly invented technology, that the organization
has access to, and tries to find profitable applications for. A pulled process is based on
finding areas where customers needs are not met, and then find solutions to those
needs ( Trott, Paul, 2005). SoSo, to manage innovation, innovators need to discover or
deeply understand the customers needs, and finally decide to drive incremental
innovation or disruptive innovation.
Innovation is driven in two different ways: internally and externally. Internal
innovation management is driven by top management attitudes, marketing, information
technology departments and the organizations employees. External innovation
management is led by different knowledge-intensive organizations that build
knowledge as their primary value-adding process, for example, consultancies
(European Commission, 2004; Kipping.M & Engwall. L., 2001). Compare the two
kinds of innovation management, it seems that external innovation management is
more suitable for the companies that lack of the information of the market or face
with intractable problems.
To successfully manage innovation, creating multi-functional development teams
is significant to understand and solve the market and the technical problems.
(Boutellier, Roman; Gassmann, Oliver; von Zedtwitz, Maximilian, 2000). In this case,
innovation management may be work usually as a long-term project.

i. Innovation Management Techniques (IMTS)

European Commission (2004) defined innovation management techniques as a
range of tools, techniques and methodologies that help companies to adapt to
circumstances and meet market challenges in a systematic way, and applied 10 IMTs
(Table 1).
 Table1: Methodologies and tools of IMT Typologies

ii. The role of top management

To pursue successful innovation, the clear direction, endorsement and support of
the top management is crucial (Wong, Stanley Kam Sing, 2012).
Above, mentioned that innovation is driven internally and externally. SoSo, for
top management, it is necessary to consider how to manage innovation in two degrees:
internal and external.
For internal innovation management, the key is to create an ease and creative
working environment climate. Typically, Hewlett, Marshall and Sherbin (2013) gave
six suggestions to top management to make diversity drive innovation:
- ensuring that everyone is heard;
- making it sage to propose novel ideas;
- giving team members decision-making authority;
- sharing credit for success;
- giving actionable feedback;
- implementing feedback from the team.
For external innovation management, top management is suggested to pay more
attention to innovation network. Since the constantly changes and global network
enhance competitions, companies need to be more innovative to keep competitive and
to overcome challenges. Therefore, under this situation, collaboration becomes one
way to innovation. However, for top management, it requires deep understanding of
the complexity of innovation. (Xinchun Wang, Mayukh Dass, 2017).

iii. Control chaos

Quinn, D. E. (1985) highlighted the barriers to innovation include: top
management isolation; intolerance of fanatics; short time horizons; accounting
practices; excessive rationalism; excessive bureaucracy; inappropriate incentives. The
reasons that these barriers exist may be because of the team leaders or management
members are not so open-minded and the group climate is not fair or easy in some
degrees.
The process of managing innovation is internally incremental. And for
innovators, they are often not sure if the problem is easy to deal with or not. So the
incrementalist goal-oriented approach and interactive learning processes were
proposed by Quinn, D. E. (1985) help managing innovation.

iv. How to evaluate innovation management?

To analyzing the innovativeness of firms, knowledge production function (KPF)
has been the most common methodological approach (Acs et al. 2002). However,
considering the amountnumber of R&D workers and the quantity of human capital as
inputs into innovation, this approach ignores the different cultural background of
workers.
Innovation management is one of the determining factors for success and
sustainability of organizations. Many scholars tried to develop a model to study the
innovation management. However, since innovation management is intangibles, its a
challenge to measure. D, G. Dickel and G.L. Moura (2016) created a model to measure
organizational performance with a focus on knowledge management and innovation
management, with this model, companies can analyze the average performance of each
researched factor and discover which sector needs improvement. But this model
remains a limitation as its approach to the management only in the internal and
structural levels, lacks of systemic variables.
6. Conclusion
Nowadays, the world is changing fast and constantly; the global network is
increasingly strong; and the economy is more knowledge-driven. These trends
intensify the competition and shorter the product lifecycle, which drive company seek
for the ways to decrease the development time, in another words, the time to market.
Many studies indicated that diverse workforce and innovation management are
important approaches to deal with the trends.
From the above, we can confirm that a relationship existing between diversity
(culture, religion, gender, age, etc.) and innovation: diversity can drive innovation. To
further study the connection, we focused on the relationship between cultural diversity
and innovation management, trying to figure out how a multicultural/international
company improves the innovativeness by enhancing innovation management with a
cultural diverse workforce.
Above all, we tried to figure out the impacts of cultural diversity submitted by
different authors. It shows that cultural diversity can bring both positive and negative
impacts, such as innovation and increased costs. Additionally, cultural diversity does
not always drive innovation, depending on whether the cultural diversity is
well-managed or not. To make cultural diversity effectively plays a role in driving
innovation, top management is suggested to make the cultural differences matter and
work hard to lower the negative impacts (conflicts, etc.) or make the positive impacts
outweigh the negative impacts.
In addition, innovation management is a combination of innovation process
management and change management, which not only take place in products and
services, but also in business process and organization. To manage innovation, the top
management plays a significant role and there is a set of tools to manage and evaluate.
And comparing the literatures, many authors suggested that top management should
cultivate ana suitable environment for innovation, make differences matter and control
chaos.
 III. Research question and hypothesis
Hopefully, the reader has seen by now that cultural diversity also has dual
characters, not only brings positive effects, such as innovation, creation, but also leads
to conflicts and difficulties sometimes. The opposite side always comes along with the
case which we should considerate it completely. It is not an inevitability that diversity Commented [P1]:

contributes to innovation; innovation is a desirable product while diversity

management goes well. Moreover, it is according to scientific and effectual method of Commented [P2]: Xiugai

management. Indeed, people have divers perspective and different angle, especially it Commented [P3]:

will structure wild vision as they are from entirely different background and absorbed
various culture.
Literature indicates that it will be high output of innovation and creation for a
cultural team when diversity plays a positive role. On September 2016, Thomson
analyzed more than 5000 companies and chose top 100 companies which have
excellent performance through D&I Index (Diversity & inclusion index), such as
P&G, Johanson, Microsoft, Cisco etc. We found, creating or maintaining diverse
team cause to better financial performance than others he said (Thomson Reuters,
2016). Indeed, many entrepreneurs approve this perspective, they believe diverse
team drives innovation and it is helpful for company development, therefore, amounts
of companies start to create a diverse team, but not all the companies succeeded. The
previous experience on the literature review shows the important link between
innovation and diversity is good management.
Considering all that has been talked about above, the following hypothesis are
made:
H1: Innovation management in product, business process or organization helps a
company to mangemanage internal and external changes;
H2: A free and respectful working environment helps optimize the creativity of a
culturally diverse team;
H3: Managers with positive attitudes towards culture diversity and the good
command of innovation management tools (IMTS) can stimulate culturally diverse
teams creativity for sustaining development of the company.
These hypotheses support the research question:
RQ: How can innovation management be used in a culturally diverse team to
improve company development: a case study of a Chinese international trading
company

IV. Methodology
Along with the Belt and Road Initiative, the intercultural connectivity and
cooperation becomes tighter and tighter. For international companies, in order to gain
a better development, they believe that building or developing a culturally diverse
team drives innovation, which helps company to adapt the changes or development of
external environment and internal situation. Innovation management of a diverse team
plays an important role for companys development; it is also the original intension to
start this research.
To discover the changes brought by the Belt and Road Initiative and the actions
companies take to manage innovation, and finally understand the impact of innovation
management among a culturally diverse team on companys development, we chose a
typical Chinese International company, Lucky Power Asia (Hong Kong) Ltd, to do a
case study and we interviewed the Chinese top management and 4 employees from
different countries and different culture. Through collecting and analyzing these
interviews to know the reason and results of this case, and to explain how it has
happened.
In order to gather the data for this case study, an interview was conducted as a
qualitative research method; it is created in English and distributed through
employees and management in the case company. Furthermore, the interview was
divided two different types, one interview is for employees and the other one is for
management. The purpose to separate it in two typetypes is analysis the results from
different angle.
Referring Robert.K Yins theory of case study research, we generalize the steps
 of methodology as blow:

Phase Step Activity

Decide the research question and find a
Start
possible construct
Be unlimited between theory and
Research design and chose a
Preparation hypothesis, researching on target group
case
specifically
Collection of information both quality and
Research tools and Methodology
quantity
Collection of information and interviews,
Collection of information and include interview note and recollection,
interviews re-analysis all the information and
interviews
Exclusion Within- case analysis combine with present
Analysis of interviews
policy and environment
Continuing confirmation for all the data
Hypothesis towards construct, find the proof of how
question behind the relationships
Comparison with conflict literature
Comparison with literatures
Comparison Comparison with similar literature
Conclusion Saturation
Table2: The step of research

1. The case study

a. The general introduction of the case company Lucky Power Asia
(Hong Kong) Ltd.
Amounts of companies build a diverse team in China since China joined in WTO,
being intercultural and international is one of the targets for these companies. But
cultural diversity does not drive innovation without good management; we chose one
of these companies - Lucky Power Asia (Hong Kong) Ltd as the case to study the
relationship between innovation and cultural diversity. It is a Chinese international
company which is doing international business with a culturally diverse team. As
many other companies, Lucky power experienced a whole process from creating
diverse workforce to failure, generalized problems and re-built diverse team again.
During this process, we found it a typical case for this research, from fell to manage
the culturally diverse team to successfully achieve innovation through good
management of diversity and innovation, Lucky Power shows the relationship
between culturally diversity and innovation management.
Lucky Power is a company, providing main equipment, spares and technical
services for South East Asia market. The markets include India, Vietnam, Thailand,
Pakistan, Lao, Indonesia etc. We studied and analyzed the current situations, the
cultural diverse team, the innovation management of Lucky Power and discovered
how its innovation management influent its development under the background of
Belt and Road Initiative.
The general introduction of Lucky Power as below:
Lucky Power Asia (Hong Kong) Ltd

Founded Feb. 2009

Business Type International trade and project
Business Scope Providing equipment and technical service to thermal power plant
Main Market India, Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan, Lao, Indonesia etc.
Team Number 20 members
Function department Administration, Marketing, Commercial, Technical, Finance and
Project department.
Turn over 12 million US dollars in average
Strategy Gain 50% more market share in existing market by setting local
operating center
Expand overseas markets in Middle East and Eastern Europe
under Belt and Road Initiative
Table 1: the profile of company

b. The opportunities and challenges to Lucky Power under Belt and Road
Initiative
Belt and Road Initiative is conducted by Chinese government. The intention of
this policy is cooperatecooperating with the countries along the old Silk Road, build
trust and good relationship with these countries, create a community and develop the
economy together. The Belt and Road includes four lines:
North line:
West of North American (US, Canada) North Pacific Ocean Japan, Korean
Russian China Mongolia Russia Europe
Middle line:
Beijing Urumqi Afghan Kazakhstan Hungry Paris
South line:
Quanzhou South Sea Hanoi Kuala Lumpur Jakarta Colombo Calcutta
Nairobi Athens Venice
Core line:
Lianyungang Zhengzhou Xian Lanzhou Xinjiang Middle Asia - Europe

- External changes:
After Belt and Road Initiative is conducted, projects increased over than 3000,
Chinese enterprise invested 49 countries directly, and the amount of investment
increased 18.2%. In 2015, China signed related contracts amount to 17.83 billion US
dollars, preformed projected totaled 12.15 billion US dollars, which the growth rates
were 42.6% and 23.45% respectively. Until June 2016, ChinaEurope train operated
1881 lines, and the export and import volume was 17 billion US dollars.
Obviously, Belt and Road Initiative brings more business opportunities. In this
period, companies doing international business play an important role. External
ecosystem brings more chances, and it is a good moment for Lucky Power to develop
more overseas markets with the political supports.
Although under the background of Belt and Road Initiative, companies have
more opportunities to develop their business, they also face with stronger rival. Commented [P4]:

- Internal changes
Belt and Road Initiative covers some countries of Southeast Asia and Middle
East, both of which are the two potential markets for Lucky Power. It is a huge
opportunity, MsMs. YE said:
 Yes of course, we will develop more new markets later on, like Middle East and
Africa countries, so yes, we will think about hiring more local person to join us.
The first is to analyze the potential markets, then we will hire local people to
develop them. We have already started it this year, so next step is to develop Middle
East markets, Africa markets and maybe East Europe, like Turkey.
Lucky Power tries to catch this good opportunity to expand their market and
improve economic development by hiring more local employees and enlarge their
culturally diverse team. Therefore, they need to manage the changes in not only the
marketing strategy, but also the company structure.

2. Sample
For the interview of employees, there were five employees contributed to the
interview but only four interviews are usable, the one interview we abandoned
because of unfinished questions and could not be summarize. Among the four
interviews, two interviews are from Indian Karthick and Ranawat, one is from
Thailand Shuilin and other one is from Laos - Douang dao. Four samples are in
charge of different job responsibly and from department.
For the interview of management, one interview was done with a Chinese -
Shaohua YE, who is the general manager in charge of the whole management of this
company, and also the creator of Lucky Powers innovation management.
Below is the key information of the interviewees:
Description Management Employees
Name Shaohua YE Karthick Ranawat Shuilin Douang dao
Nationality Chinese Indian Indian Thai Laos

Position General Deputy Technique Foreign trader Marketing

Manager Manager Engineer assistant
Work period 4 years 5 years 2 years 2 years 3 months
Work Company Project After service Foreign sales Marketing
Responsibilities operating planning & of technique in for oversea development
 controlling India market markets
Table 2: interviewee information
3. The interview
We designed two different contents of interview, one was for top management,
and the other is for employees. The interviews mainly consisted with five parts:
personal information, information of the job and company, diversity of the team,
innovation of the company and interviewees suggestions for companys management
and development.
For top management, we interviewed the Chinese general manager of Lucky
Power. In addition, we interviewed four employees from India, Thailand and Laos,
who are working in different positions and having different working years in Lucky
Power.
a. Personal information
The first part of personal information includes interviewees name, gender,
nationality, work experience and responsibility in this company. Refer to literature
review, peoples behavior expressexpresses differently under different background.
All the personal information helps to analyze the cultural differences, by applying
Hofstede cultural theory.

b. Information of the job and company

In the interview, this part is trying to know employees original intention to work
in this company, it includes the job position, specific work scope, their expectations.
As per the literature review, management affects employees behavior in positive way Commented [P5]:

when the management system is suitable for them. Therefore, the question of
employees ideas about management and intention of the company conducted in this
part. Interviewees need to explain whether they like or dislike this job and company,
what the reasons are. Commented [P6]:

c. Diversity of the team

 This part emphasizes the consequence of diversity drives in four questions.
Diversity brings both positive effects and difficulties. We tried to gain more
information about the conflicts between cultural differences and to find the reasons
from the interviewees. Analyzing the results connect with present academic theories
precisely through the consequences and reasons.
Expect the reasons of conflicts; the solution of conflicts is the other important
data needs to know apparently. The method to solve the problems shows the
connection between practice and theories. Furthermore, we can find if there is new
method we did not discover in the present research. Commented [P7]:

d. Innovation of the company Commented [P8]:

According to the literature view, there is several management tools listed in

research paper. Diversity drives innovation is the main point need to be defining
through this research. Cultural distant companies may also have access to a diversity
of perspectives and knowledge, and new product discoveries and innovations may
provide a potentially positive effect (Nielsen & Gudergan, 2012). There questions
comprised the existence of innovation, the environment of innovation and suggestions
of innovation. All the questions link to the appearance of innovation and the reasons
behind it.

e. Interviewees suggestions for companys management and

development
Interviewees suggestions isare employees expectation. To avoid and correct
the mistakes or failure is making good start for success. This part concludes the
original intention from employees and supplement data.

V. Results
After done all the interviews with employees and management in Lucky power,
first, we transcript all the information to summarize every interviewees perspective
for comparison on the table as below:
 Analysis of interviews with employees
Questions Similarities Differences
Part 2- The information about the job and the company
Q2- Why do you - The job is related to the education - The location is perfect for
choose to work for background. taking care of the family.
Lucky Power? - The company offer opportunities - The will of staying and
to learn/develop the relative skills and working in China.
competences. - Life experience in China or
- 3 employees chose to work for the mastery of Chinese.
company because the job corresponds - The corporate culture and
to employees career/professional management style both are
developments. impressing.
- It is a leading company in its
field, with a bright prospect.

Q3- How do you - The management is efficient. - One employee feelfeels

feel about the - Employees can get timely and
company and the strong supports from company.
job? - The company culture and the
atmosphere are very nice, employees
feel comfortable and satisfied.
- Working in the company is full of
challenges.
comfortable working in the
company as she can balance her
career and her personal life.
- One employee hopes that the
management or maintenance of
office facilities can be more
improving and efficient.
- One new employee knows little
about the industry but desires to
learn more.

Q4- What does - All the employees feel incentive, - Employees always get
the top but with different reason. technical supports and financial or
management/HR social stimulations from
do that management
makes/cant make - Company offers new
you feel incentive? challenges or opportunities to
Why? employees,employees; which
employees can develop themselves.
Top management encourages and
inspires employees to find an
solution and willing to hear their
minds.

Q5- Why you Like: Like:

like/dislike your - Employees enjoy facing new - Employees are disponible and Commented [WA9]: Check spelling

job? challenges and learning new things. authorized.

- Employees obtain a sense of
achievement.
- Employees enjoy communicating
with different people and exchanging
ideas.
Dislike:
- Company lacks of
technological innovation and one
employee concerns about the future
of the company.
One employee suffers the climate
of the location and related
problems.

Part 3- The diversity of this company

Q6- What are the Advantages: Advantages:
advantages and - Diverse team is more creative and - High productivity
disadvantages of it brings more ideas, which may be - Diverse team helps improve
working in the innovative. members interpersonal skills.
diverse team? Disadvantages: - Diverse team improves the
- Conflicts arise since employees confidence of individuals when
from different cultural backgrounds they work.
have different communication style
and working habits.
 - Implementation is not efficient
when coming out too many ideas and
spending too much time to reach a
final agreement.
- It is hard to manage a diverse
team in the beginning, which often
needs to spend more time and money.

Q7- What are the - Four employees all appreciate the

good parts freedom in expressing their minds and
bringing to you doing their job.
during your - Diversity team helps individuals
work? to work efficiently with strong
supports and teamwork spirit.

Q8- How did - Company or groups organize Any discrimination (cultural,

you/did your discussion: regular meeting and open national, racial, etc.) is not allowed.
company help you meeting.
overcome the - Management is creating a free
difficulties bring environment for speaking and always
by the takes employees ideas into
disadvantages? consideration.
Do you have any
good ideas to solve
the existing
problems?
Part4- The innovation management of this company

Q9- What do you - Product/service: Company offers One employee thinks that company
think is innovative top-class services. is not innovative in product since it
in your company? - Business process: combination of is a trading but not manufacturing
trading and technical supports. company. While the engineer highly
 - Organizational: One Company, admires that company is innovative
Two Systems, company use two in the business mode, which
different systems depend on different combine trading and technique
markets to manage the diverse team, support.
which makes the management being
flexible and stimulating the
employees.

Q10- How do you - Four employees all agree that

feel about the they are encourage to express
freedom of themselves freely.
speaking? Does - Management always willing to
the team/top listen their minds and take into
management glad consideration.
to listen to and
consider your
ideas?
Q11- Please talk - Three employees agree that One employee thinks it depends on
about your ideas diverse team drives innovation by the working conditions and the
about diverse creativity and nice working supports provided by company.
team drives environment.
innovation?
Q12- Under the - Four employees all agree that it is One employee indicate that it is an
belt and road an opportunity for the development of opportunity but not for the business
initiative company. with the countries that are not in.
strategy, what do - The strategy may offer
you think about preferential business policies, which is
how it is good for company to develop overseas
affecting/will market, especially the market along
affect the the Belt and Road.
development of - The communication and
your diverse team connection between company and
and the markets that with different cultural
innovation? backgrounds may become easier with
the political supports.

Part 5- Your suggestion

Q13- What - Developing more professional Most employees insist to work in
are your future skills. the same domain while one
career plans? - Reaching a higher position. employee has the mind to try
working in a new domain and
change working location from the
local market to Chinese operation.

Q14- What - Creating an environment that One employee suggests to build a

are your culturally diverse employees enjoy the stable and well-cooperated team
suggestions for freedom and equality for expression with a good management system
diversity and creativity. and after-work events that helps
management and - Listening to employees voices employees better understand each
innovation and giving supports in time. others culture and narrow the
management? distance.

Through the comparison of all the five interviews both management and employees, we found
that all the employees enjoy the free and relax working environment and atmosphere.
Employees explained how they feel to work in this company include the management process
and their future plans. For further research of this case, we analyzed all the data specially, there
are the precise results support hypothesis:

H1: Innovation management in product, business process or organization helps a company

to mangemanage internal and external changes;

After doing five interviews with the top management and employees and studied their
personal thoughts, we found that the culturally diverse team has driven innovation to the
company. Therefore, it promotes the innovation management of the company.
Innovation management includes innovation process management and change
management in product, business process and organization. For Lucky Power, it is mainly
reflected in three aspects: products innovation, organizational innovation and service
innovation.
- Product innovation
First of all, from the interviews with the general manager and the engineer, we learned the
products innovation of the company.
The general manager, Shaohua YE told that they are planning to conduct new products
by importing advanced Germany technique:
We imported the advanced Germany technique to our company for renovation of energy
saving, we will build a new company with this advanced technique and create our own product
which will be used by power plant.
And this idea came from their Indian engineer, Ranawat, and finally adopted by the
Chinese top management:
My idea has been accepted by the company too, it is about that we need to have our own
patent of technique solution, about the renovation of energy saving of Fan system, which is
more suitable for Indian market, it is on the processing. I am super excited that we can have
more new ideas!
In some degrees, local employees have a better understanding of the market demands.
Hiring local employees and let them feel free to speak out their ideas may inspire product
innovation and therefore improve companys development.
- Organizational innovation
Internal management of a company covers organization structure, company policy,
recruitment and management of employees. From all the interviews, we learned that the
organizational system of Lucky Power is more complicated than other companies in the same
scale. This organizational innovation is called One Company, Two Systems. According to the
existing problems among their culturally diverse team, the idea of One Company, Two
Systems began to germinate in the beginning of 2015. Led by Ms. YE, the top management
efficiently made a decision to develop and formally carry out this idea in one week. After the
implementation, the top management keeps updating and improving it according to current
situations and problems at all times.
Ms. YE described the implementation of One Company, Two Systems:
Also, I have developed the One Company Two Systems policy in our company, it means
we dont need to force them (other foreign employees) to accept our Chinese management
(system), I have instituted a special management system for them, let them choose it freely, it
works, we gain more output after(implementing) it.
Employees own the freedom to choose the system which is more adaptive to their cultural
backgrounds, and they do not have to abide by the organizational system for Chinese
employees. Instead of the old unique system, the management innovation gained a great
success in managing the culturally diverse team.
Different organizational systems introduced relevant policies in different aspects, such as
working hour, holidays, salary standard, etc. Douang Dao (from Laos, working as a marketing
assistant in this company for 3 months) said:
AlsoAlso, because we have different management policies, it makes us feel like at home.
For example, we have our local festivals. Normally, other companies they do not give you extra
holidays for your own festivals, because there are not so many holidays in China, but our
company allows us back to our countries to celebrate our local festivals, it makes me feel
warm!
Allowing employees to have extra holidays celebrating their local festivals, obviously it is
attractive for employees. Additionally, it even motivates employees to have more passion for Commented [P10]:

their works and strengthen their loyalty to the company.

These policies highly respect the diverse cultures and customs and may lead to the
reduction of conflicts. Ms. YE described the advantages brought by this organizational
innovation:
First of all, the communication cost reduced. There are less conflicts and
misunderstandings, the cooperation and support among the teams are better than before. As a
result, we cost less time in managing the bad and non effectivenon-effective communication
among employees and raise the efficiency of communication between employees and clients.
 Additionally, the stability of the team has been enhanced. Currently, most employees have
been working for our company for over 2 years. However, the turnover rate has hovered
around 40%, which meant the overseas employees left the company in several months. It was
hard to keep the stability of overseas employees, and the worst situation was that some
employees joined the rival companies or sat up their own business, which affected our
company greatly.
The demission rate decreased and the employee stability of Lucky Power enhanced as
below: Commented [P11]:

Year Total Members Nationality Demission rate (%)
2008 5 3 Chinese 0%
2009 5 5 Chinese 0%
2010 7 5 Chinese, 2 Indian 14%

2011 10 5 Chinese, 4 Indian 34%

2012 7 5 Chinese, 2 Indian 48%
2013 6 5 Chinese, 1 Indian 61%
2014 8 6 Chinese, 2 Indian 23%
2015 11 7 Chinese, 4 Indian 11%
2016 14 8 Chinese, 5 Indian, 1 Thai 0%

2017 15 8 Chinese, 5 Indian, 1 Thai, 1 Laos 0%

Table : The demission rate of employees
The table shows that during 2012 to 2015, the total amounts of employees demonstrated a
strong fluctuation, especially in 2013; Lucky Power suffered the biggest change and instability
of employees. These internal changes caused additional time cost, employment cost, training
cost, etc., which may against the sustainability of the company. Nonetheless, since 2015, One
Company, Two Systems the organizational innovation was carried out and has been
implemented, we found that there were less or even no demission and more new employees
joined the company. Here is the clear explanation on curve diagram as below:
 100%
90%
80%
demission rate %/year

70% highest
60% demission
rate
50% Factual
Demission
40% rate
lowest
30% demission
20% rate

10%
0%
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Figure: the curve diagram of demission rate

This chart illustrates Lucky power experienced team building to high mobility of
employees from 2008 (the establishment of company) to 2013, it even reached a peak 61% on
2013. But the demission rate decreased since 2014, from 61% to 23% while the policy of one
company two system has been adopted. Apparently, the organizational innovation helps
company to face and deal with the internal changes of employee successfully.

- Service innovation
The purpose of building a culturally diverse team is to improve the development in the
local markets. Local employees share the same culture background and speak the local
language, which help with effective and efficient communication. Moreover, they are more
familiar about the local working habits and local market, so that the business process is likely
to be smoother. Although many companies have already hired local employees as a good
solution for local market development, what Lucky Power do is still innovative in its field
since it operates it in different way:
After we hired local person to work for us, we can do very good after-sells for our clients.
Our employees do not have a stable office, they are visiting different power plants to help with
the engineering and operating. They are local persons, so it is easier to communicate with
clients, every problemsproblem they have will be collected (by local employees and send to us
(Chinese operating office), we will consult the superior Chinese engineer to solve those
problems. Local communication plus Chinese techniques, we solve problems efficiently. It helps
to expand our markets and gain good reputation.
There are others company that trading equipment to thermal power plants, but it seems
none of those trading companies provide technical services. It has been a trouble for clients.
But Lucky Power recognized this considerable market demand. Lucky Power applied the
marketing innovation to each market, and the special combination of equipment trading
together with technical after-sales services for oversea markets, satisfied the market demands
and gain high reputation.
In general, the cultural diversity in Lucky Power has drivedriven innovation in product,
service and organization. Not only the company and employees, but also the clients benefit
from these innovations. Ms. YE shared some of the client evaluation of their innovations:
Our clients appreciate that our products and services become diversified. Except
providing our high-quality products, we also offer after-sell service, which help clients to solve
the supply and technique problems. Our clients become more confident to our product quality
and the later guarantee. Whats more, the confidence to our company is strengthened.
For the business process, we manage the order as a project, which improve the efficiency.
And we hire local people to communicate with local clients to improve the credibility and
appetency, so that the clients enjoy our professional and excellent business service.

H2: A free and respectful working environment helps optimize the creativity of a
culturally diverse team;
In the previous section, we talked about the product innovation. Lucky Power hires local
people to develop overseas. In some degrees, local employees have a better understanding of
local market and are more sensitive to local market demands. By encouraging employees from
different cultural background to speak out their ideas freely, hearing and considering the
constructive ideas. Therefore, employees may share their minds boldly, which finally helps to
optimize the creativity of a cultural diverse team and drive innovation to company.
I feel very free to speaking, I can say everything if I have any idea, and management
will take my suggestions if I am right, otherwise they will consider it at least. said by Ranawat,
Diversity of talent provide more ideas, everybody know more people create more new ideas,
especially we are from different background. My idea had accepted by company too, about we
need to have our own patent of technique solution, about the renovation of energy saving of
Fan system, it is on the processing, I am super exciting that we can have more new ideas!
I am so pleased that we could use our freedom of speaking by encouraging by our
managers and of course our team has lot of discussion and the managers are willing to listen
to different ideas. It is quite differdiffering from the situation in other company I believe. said
by Shuilin.
I feel free of speaking, like what I said, we are very free to explain our ideas; sometimes it
is even too much. Freedom of expression in business will brings benefit to listening, collecting
everyones idea and finishing the job better, and yes, senior managers will listen to our
opinions, we talk about our works a lot. Said by Douang dao.
All these information shows that employees are feel free of speaking and expression,
management will listen to their ideas no matter it is acceptable or not. They appreciate the
working environment in Lucky Power, where they own the freedom to express their thoughts,
gain respect and get strong support. ThusThus, it can be seen free and respectful environment
is significant for team members, it released employees marginalization of diversity, meanwhile,
it stimulatestimulates employees creativity and innovation ability.
H3: Managers with positive attitudes towards culture diversity and the command of innovation
management tools (IMTS) can stimulate culturally diverse teams creativity for sustaining
development of the company.
At the beginning, Lucky Power suffered from the problems brought by cultural differences
when doing business in overseas markets. One of the biggest problems is communication. When
doing business with local clients, sometimes misunderstandings occurs and the Chinese team
needs to spend more time to understand or adapt the way local clients used to communicate.
In the beginning, we have few Indian members, there are two colleagues joined earlier
before me. I was watching them be depressed during the day because of uncomfortable
communication with management and other Chinese colleagues. Said by Karthick, sometimes
they even dont understand what we are talking about, maybe because of our pronunciation, I
was ok because I lived in China for 2 years already, but they couldnt have smooth
communication with others, so there is a lot of misunderstanding between each other.
Another problem is that people or companies often have different working modes or habits,
and it is not easy or convenient for Chinese team to go along with.
Therefore, in order to improve the development of overseas markets and provide better
services, Lucky Power keeps developing a culturally diverse team by hiring people from local
markets for years.
Although the management of the culturally diverse team of Lucky Power goes well at
present, however, in fact, creating and managing a culturally diverse team is not an easy job for
Lucky Power. Especially at the beginning, the culturally diverse team also faced with the same
problems brought by cultural differences. Lucky Power started to build a culturally diverse team
after its establishment but fell to manage it. Ms. YE shared the communication problems led by Commented [WA12]: Check meaning of sentence

cultural differences and resulted in losing orders:

During the project implementation and the ordering process in Indian market, we did not
know each others cultural differences at work, and this resulted in the misunderstanding or
over-reading others words. This phenomenon was used to occur frequently in the cooperation
between the Chinese employees and Indian employees. The inconsistent working pace and
mismatching team work sometimes caused the failure of negotiation and capturing orders.
Ms. YE talked about the overseas employee turnover problem caused by the inadaptation of
Chinese management and Chinese working habits:
Compare to other countries, especially India, there are less holidays in China. For Indian
employees, they have many festivals to celebrate, small and big, traditional and religious.
Initially, Indian employees were required to obey the Chinese management system and working
hour, therefore they had to give up their time of rest and holidays for celebrating their local
festivals. And finally, some overseas employees left our company and gave up working in
China.
After Ms. YE, the general manger, joined the company, she tried to help Lucky Power to
build a culturally diverse team again. Finally, with efforts, she created an innovative method for
diversity management, called One Company, Two Systems, which we have already given a
concrete description and analysis in last part of the paper.
To successfully manage innovation, Ms. YE shared some innovation management tools that
the top management of Lucky Power has used as below:
- Document management
- Technology watch, business intelligence, CRM
- Group ware, team-building, supply chain management
- Tele-working, cooperate intranets, on-line recruitment, e-learning, competencies
management,
- Brainstorming, mind mapping
- Benchmarking
- Business plan
With the innovation management tools and the organizational innovation, the conflicts and
misunderstanding among the culturally diverse team decreased and the team members build
close relationships and trust, which effectively improve the development of the company.
Following is the table of company performance of Lucky Power from 2008 to 2017:
 Financial Export market Annual Market Share (%)
Year sales (USD)
Sep. 2008 India 1.25 million India100%
Dec. 2008
Jan. 2009 India 6.1 million India100%
Dec.2009
Jan. 2010 India 8.75 million India100%
Dec. 2010

Jan. 2011 India 9.8 million India100%

Dec.2011
Jan. 2012 India, Africa 8.5 million India97%, Africa3%
Dec. 2012
Jan. 2013 India, Mid-East 6.9 million India 96%, Africa 2%, Mid-East
Dec. 2013 2%
Jan. 2014 India, Africa, Mid-East 8.8 million India 90%, Africa 3%, Mid-East
Dec. 2014 7%
Jan. 2015 India, Africa, Mid-East, 10.3 million India 70%, Africa 4%, Mid-East
Dec. 2015 Thailand 8%, Thailand 18%
Jan. 2016 India, Africa, Mid-East, 12.9 million India 63%, Africa 3%, Mid-East
Dec. 2016 Thailand, Vietnam 6%, Thailand 27%, Vietnam 1%

Jan.2017 India, Africa, Mid-East, 14.1 million India 54%, Africa 3%, Mid-East
Nov. 2017 Thailand, Vietnam, Laos 7%, Thailand 25%, Vietnam 2%,
Laos 9%
 16

14

12

10

8 Annual sales (million)

Market amount
6

0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Figure 2: the curve diagram of annual sales

This chart illustrates the annual sales of Lucky Power is increased rapidly since 2008 until
2011, it reached almost 10 million on 2011 and decreased quickly to 6.9 million on 2013.
According to the previous information, it shows clearly Lucky Power was in difficult situation
with diverse team about communication obstacle and high mobility of employees. Some of
employees chose to join in competitors company or do business by themselves, it case to the
annual sales reduced massively. However, the situation has been changed since 2013, while the
new organization system has been conducted, the annual sales recovered increase until 2017, the
total amount even reach 14.1 million by now. Moreover, the market development is more
widerwider than before, the figure as below:

3%

India
India
Africa

100% 97%

Market Share 2008-2010 Market share 2012

 2% 2%

18%
India
India
8% Africa
Africa
4%
Mid-East Mid-East
70%
96% Thailand

Market Share 2013 Market Share 2015

1%
2%
9% India
India Africa
27%
Africa 25% Mid-East
Mid-East 54% Thailand
6% 63% Thailand Vietnam
7%
3% Vietnam Laos
3%

Market Share 2016 Market share 2017

Figure 3: the chart of market share

Above charts illustrate Lucky Power has developed more market and gain more market
share in other oversea countries except India. From 2008-2010, India market had developed only,
other market started developing since 2012. However, the other two market Africa and Middle
East growing slowly from 2012 to 2013 while Lucky Power was facing problems of team
fluxion and cooperation. After innovation ideas of marketing, products and services have been
conducted, the market occupancy increased in Thailand and Laos.

VI. Discussion
1. Contribution to the literature
In order to assess the relevance of the current study to the field of innovation management,
the results presented above will be interpreted under the light of Innovation Management
Techniques (IMTs) and Market Pull Theory (innovation derived from market needs), which
plays a central role to investigate the origin to products and processes development or
improvement, and takes organizational factors into account to contribute successful innovation.
First of all, we mentioned above that the product, business process or organizational
innovation helps companies to manage internal and external changes. The knowledge-driving
economy brings new opportunities and new challenges for companies. European Commission
(2004) demonstrated that it includes the external changes like more global markets, shortening
product life cycle, various and increasing customerscustomers demands and updating and
complicated technologies. Moreover, for the business under the new background of Chinese
Belt and Road Initiative, as the case company, they are facing new opportunities and
challenges too. There are certain policies which are beneficial for business, however, this may
also bringsbring more competitors and lead to a more rival market environment. To take
advantages of these external changes and capture the new opportunities, innovation management,
a combination of innovation process management and changes management, helps companies
adapt the changing environment as soon as possible and maintain their competitiveness. In our
case study, the efficient product innovation management helped the company to respond to the
new market needs and finally transformed into more output; its service innovation management
satisfied customer demands and strengthened customers trust and confidence to the company;
the organizational innovation management helped its culturally diverse team to be harmonious
and motivated, which sometimes will feed back to innovation.
Current researches demonstrated the innovation as an advantage brought by diversity.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Melinda Marshall & Laura Sherbin (2013) showed the conditions of
diversity to drive innovation and six behaviors that unlock innovation. They indicated that in a
culture that employees can feel free and safe to contribute ideas are 3.5times as likely to release
their full innovative potential. Therefore, for diverse workforce, companies with good diversity
management are likely to achieve innovation and finally benefits company development. For the
culturally diverse team, as our case company, understanding and respecting the cultural
differences, establishing a speak-out culture can help to reduce conflicts and
misunderstandings. Moreover, by hearing, giving feedback and support to employees thoughts
and giving certain decision-making authority can help optimize the creativity of the team, which
is the base of innovation.
 Top management also plays an important role in innovation management. European
Commission (2004) demonstrated that top management attitude was one of the internal drivers
to innovation. It reflects on the understanding of market needs, disposable resources as well as
the competitive business environment, and studying the future. And as we mentioned above, to
achieve innovation by managing diversity, top management also needs to create a culture and
working environment that employees feel free to contribute ideas. Furthermore, for top
management, having a good command of innovation management and innovation management
techniques (IMTs) is another feature to stimulate companys creativity and maintain sustaining
development. European Commission (2004) pointed out, persisting to companys goals,
highly-motivated, creative and skilled managers and employees are the foundation of successful
innovation. In addition, proper application of innovation management techniques improves a
companys capacity to launch new technologies or to react changes quickly to its products,
business process or organization. In our case study, although it seems to lack of a systematic
knowledge of innovation management, the top management has a good diversity management as
well as the application of certain innovation management techniques, which can help the
company to achieve innovation and eventually improve company development.

2. Practical consequences
Part 4 and part 5 targeted to giving more factual examples on whether diversity drives
innovation and how it drives innovation. Surely this findingsthese findings request further
research and precise studied, but this case could be a reference of innovation management on
diverse team. Referring to the analysis of interview includes organization changing and financial
data, innovation has contributed to company development undoubtedly, it brings more chance
for future developing. According to the literature review, diversity drives innovation under a
well-management system with open-mind environment, and this peroration has been verified in
case study. To build a bridge of communication among team members and with management is a
critical issue on different cultural background. To pursue successful innovation, the clear
direction, endorsement and support of the top management is crucial (Wong, Stanley Kam Sing,
2012). Management needs to be open-mind, listening to employees voice and give supports in
time, besides, building a stable and with good management system to help employees better
understand each others culture and narrow the distance. For example, people from Thailand and
Laos are more slowslower down on working, but Chinese and Indian are faster during work,
furthermore, they have their own communication way, if a Chinese leader set a schedule for a
team includes Indian, Thai and Laos, maybe it will be delay or even uncooperative with each
other because of the different working type and difficult communication.

VII. Conclusion
When doing the primary research of the domain of innovation and diversity, the negative
effects and positive effects appeared apparently. Managing a diverse team brings more
difficulties to management, also it causecauses to complex corporate culture because of mix
culture. On the contrary, an environment contains different culture and accepted conflict affect
employees creativity and innovation.
As seen from literature view, innovation management means companies achieve innovation
activities of target though new factors include management method, ideas and model, or brings
new management system to fit on the situation of workforce. From the factor of organization
structure, a democratic top management contributes positive effects, abundant recourses provide
a guarantee for innovation, and well communication benefits overcome the potential obstacle.
From the factor of culture, the characters of organization culture of innovative spirit are
acceptance of complex, toleration of conflicts, accepting of risks and democracy. It emphasizes
results and opening system. From the factor of human recourses, keep training and developing
employees professional skills for updated techniques, meanwhile, providing relax and freedom
working environment to reduce employees anxiety of mistakes; moreover, management need to
encourage employees develop more creative ideas; it brings sequential reaction of insights for
others.
Through all the studies about the relationship between innovation management and diversity,
now it is clear that the three hypotheses formulated with this case study contributes to the
potency of research directions, however, we are expecting more cases could be provide for
academic research of diversity drives innovation management.

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 Appendices
Company Profile
Company Name: Lucky Power Asia (Hong Kong) Ltd
Register Year: 2009
Business Type: International trade and project
Business Scope: providing equipment and technical service to thermal power
plant
Main Market: India, Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan, Lao, Indonesia etc.
Operating Office: Hong Kong and Chengdu
Team Number: 20 members
Function department: Administration, Marketing, Commercial, Technical,
Finance and Project department.
Turn over: 12 million US dollars in average

Lucky Power was established on 2009 in Hong Kong the free zone trade center
and the international financial city of China. It engaged in export trade of equipment
for thermal power plant of South East Asia market about 8 years already. It specializes
in providing main equipment, spares and technical services for thermal power plant.
The markets involved India, Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan, Lao, Indonesia etc. To
develop those markets, they cooperate and hire some local people to help us for local
business; the employees include Chinese, Indian and Laos. Their key idea is providing
qualified equipment and advanced techniques for clients to guarantee the secure and
high efficient operating of power plants.
Interview for management
Part 1 Personal information
1. Can you introduce yourself?
Your name Shaohua YE
Your nationality China
Your position in this company General Manager
How long have you been working here 5 years
Your responsibilities/missions of this position responsible for company
operating

Part 2 The diversity of this company

2. What is the purpose to create a diverse team?
Our company is developing oversea countries, we need diverse team members
help us for local markets. In many countries, local people who speaks their own
languages, have same culture are easier to communicate.
My big boss had tried it before and it failed because of the wrong management,
but still I think it is good idea to have diverse team, so I started it again since I joined
this company,

3. What are the difficulties of managing the diverse team?

It was very difficult in the beginning, because we dont know them that much.
Like Indian and Thai people more like relax work, it will take double time for the
same work compare to Chinese, so normally we cannot push them, otherwise they
will feel stressful.

4. What problems you have met and how did you solve these problems?
Like what I said, the work efficiency is the biggest problem in the beginning, but
it is ok now, we know that is their common character, so I will leave more time to
them when I arrange the work.
The second is communication I think, we all speaks English at work, but our
pronunciation is very different, I couldnt understand them actually, I was afraid to
talk to them on phone call or Skype, because I cannot understand. And I had to ask it
again and again., so we arranged more meetings for communication, to enhance the
understanding.
After different work style and communication problem, the other big problem is
how to manage them, we all from different culture background, like salary, holidays,
food, religion, everything is very different, and we tried our best to respect them. But
some of our employees work in other countries, they asked more holidays, more
bonus, more salary, that is a lot cost. And the working time even be a problem because
of the time difference.So in our company we use 2 different system of management.

Part3 The innovation of this company

5. What innovation has been driven by your diverse team?
For my opinion, it must be the technique combine with sales. After we hired
local person who work for us, we can do very good after-sells for our clients. Our
employees have no stable work office, they are visiting different power plants to help
for the engineering and operating, they are local person, so it is easier to communicate
with clients, every problems they have will be collected and send to us, we will
consult the superior Chinese engineer how to solve those problems, local
communication plus Chinese techniques, we solve problems efficiently, it is expand
our markets and gain good reputation.

6. What kind of methods did you use for innovation management/How do you
manage innovation? Please give the examples.
Actually I dont know if my management includes any method, but I think
innovation management is the way to make people develop their advantages. Create a
free and creative environment is the basic factor for innovation.

7. How your team is working performance? How do your team members perform
under your management? Why?
 Normally they will finish their job well, because I will give them different
mission, and for management part, I identified their obligation clearly. I hope they
will enjoy our company, I also very pleased to know their suggestions if not.
Also I have developed the one company two systems policy in our company, it
means we dont need to force them (other foreign employees) to accept our Chinese
management, I have instituted special management system for them, let them choose
it freely, it works, we gain more output after it.

8. Under the belt and road initiative strategy, could you tell us how it
helps/hinder the development of your company? What are the benefits and/or
disadvantages of managing your diverse team and the innovation?
I think it is a very good chance for companies like us. One belt one road is an
important historic innovation. Our Chinese ancestors opened this door for us, I am
very happy that we can go through by it again, it is the tool, to bring us develop
markets and be economic union together. Some people they think it is more like
politic strategy, like India and other few countries they dont want to join it, it is the
disadvantage I think, but also it is a good change to develop economy together.

Part 4 Your suggestion

9. To better manage innovation, what do you plan to do, and how to do it?
I think I will create more creative environment to them, let them talk and say
whatever they want, any idea will be listened, and open mind is the most important
part.

10. Will you enlarge your diverse team by employing staffs from more different
nations? Why?
Yes of course, we will develop more new markets later on, like Middle East and
Africa countries, so yes, we will think about hiring more local person to join us.

11. What is the future plan of management under the belt and road initiative
strategy?
For marketing, the first is analysis the potential markets, then we will hire local
person to develop it. We already start it this year, so next step is develop Middle East
markets, Africa markets and maybe East Europe, like turkey.
Besides this we will develop new product with our own techniques. We imported
the advanced Germany technique to our company for renovation of energy saving, we
will build a new company with this advanced technique and create our own product
which use for power plant. I think is will be good for this market.
 Interview for employees 1
Part 1 Personal information

1. Can you introduce yourself?

Your name Ranawant
Your nationality Indian
Your position in this company technique engineer in India
How long have you been working here? 2 years
Your responsibilities/missions of this position responsible for develop
Indian market

Part 2 The information about this job and company

1. Why do you choose to work for this company?

Because it related to my education in university and I can have a good
development in this domain. My future in this company is good I think. And also the
future of this company is good too, there are many projects going on.
The other reason is my parents are getting old day by day; the location I am
working right now is near to my hometown, so I can take care of my family. I just
need to come to China few times when we have big meeting or emergency case, so it
is good for me to have Chinese salary and work in India.

2. How do you feel or what is your feeling about the company and the
job?(working environment/top management/company
culture/innovation/benefits/dissatisfaction...)
They are very helpful and completive, when I have little help from them, they
will solve my problems 2 or 3 days, the company and jobs all very good, Im very
satisfy about this job, and also it is a challenge for me. I think I need to put more
effort on it in the future.
 3. What does the top management/HR do that makes/cant make you feel
incentive? Why?
Yes I feel they are incentive, they always give me some new challenges, because
my main job is turbine engineering, but my boss always give a opportunity to do
boiler also, it is also incentive, I am also doing KPI job now, it is new challenge for
me, they are giving me some support, key applicants.

4. Why you like/dislike your job?

I like this job, of course, I explained the reasons already. About the dislike part is the
climate where I am working here is very hot, every year we will have some food
problems, but it doesnt matter, this is south India, the food is not what we want to get,
now we dont have any problems.

Part 3 The diversity of this company

1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of working in the diverse team?
Advantages: people are from different countries and culture, high productivity.
The different type from people, it is different experience; people are get different
ideas from people from different person.

Disadvantage: first is communication, second is we cannot expect that people

will do the same way with us, people are from different countries different culture,
you must not bother by it, those managers should know how to handle it.

2. How these advantages help you during working?

First is cooperating with others and create a friendly atmosphere, second is free
in decision making, we are very freedom to expressive our ideas, always discuss
together before we make decisions, so the opportunities to clear out mistakes and will
not repeat them in the future.

3. How did you/did your company help you overcome the difficulties bring by
the disadvantages? Do you have any good ideas to solve the existing problems?
It is the group discussion combine with final decision. Conducting meeting with
colleagues and some suppliers about the problems, that is what we are doing.
We will have Skype or telephone meeting every Monday morning regularly, and
we always keep communicating with each other when we are in group work. There is
no leader; we are the same person to speak out our opinions. I think that is why we
can work well with each other.
We dont have any discrimination, no Chinese no Indian no boundary, in the
beginning they dont understand my pronouncement, so we keep talking keep
communication, now we get used to each other, I think that is most important in a
diverse team work.

Part4 The innovation of this company

1. What do you think is innovative in your company?
First software is here, for this software here everything is clear, everybody can
see it, nobody can do corruption. That is for the financial part.
Second is technique support. Cooperate with Chinese engineers promote me very
much. Normally trade companies just export goods without any technique support in
this industry; we are the first company to do it.
And the management, I think it is very important in a company, especially us. We
have diverse team members who are from different countries; it is very hard to
manage them. But we have one company two systems management, it is very
innovative idea! Like me, I only need to follow the system of Indian market, it is very
flexible management.

2. How do you feel about the freedom of speaking? Does the team/top
management glad to listen to and consider your ideas?
Yeah I feel very free to speaking, I can say everything if I have any idea, and
management will take my suggestions if I am right, otherwise they will consider it at
least.
 4. Please talk about your ideas about diverse team drives innovation?
Diversity of talent provide more ideas, everybody know more people create more
new ideas, especially we are from different background. My idea had accepted by
company too, about we need to have our own patent of technique solution, about the
renovation of energy saving of Fan system, it is on the processing, I am super excited
that we can have more new ideas!

5. Under the belt and road initiative strategy, what do you think about how it
is affecting/will affect the development of your diverse team and the innovation?
I heard about this policy, it is very good strategy to develop economy. But I am
so disappointed that India didnt attending the meeting of belt and road initiative. I
think it is because of the politic problem between India and China, but economy is
different, I hope our country can think about more. So we will have more
opportunities, India will get better in the future. Cooperate is much better than fight
with each other, that is not right way at this globalized economic system.

Part 5 Your suggestion

1. What are your future career plans?

My plan is promote my skills first, then I would like to try marketing. I am very
interesting in marketing, but it is also very hard for me, because I have no experience.
And also I want to come to China to work for a while, to learn more about the
techniques and to know China more. That is my goal.

2. What are your suggestions for diversity management and innovation

management?
The first is make people feel want to stay long in the company. A stable and
well-cooperated team is most important. I worked here 2 years already and I get used
to this company, we had difficulties before but now it goes smoothly.
 Management should take care of employees two sides, outside and inside. Inside
means in the company, a good management system (salary, promotion, good job
opportunity etc.), outside the except during the job, we travel together, have some
events together, we even celebrate Indian festivals together, and I invited all my
colleagues came to my sisters wedding in my hometown. I was very happy they
knew about Indian culture better. We more like friends now than just colleagues.
Innovation is to create a free and relax environment I think, no discrimination,
just listen to each others idea, forget their identity, thats my opinion.
 Interview for employees 2
Part 1 Personal information
1. Can you introduce yourself?
My name is Douang dao
My nationality Laos
My position in this company Marketing Assistant
How long have you been working here? 6 month
My responsible for marketing development

Part 2 The information about this job and company

5. Why do you choose to work for this company?
I have chosen this company because this company offers a wide field of exposure
as well as it is a leading company in the industry.
And also there are businesses with my country, so I think I may could find a
good opportunity for my development.

6. How do you feel or what is your feeling about the company and the job?
(Working environment/top management/company
culture/innovation/benefits/dissatisfaction...)
This company has a very good reputation, it is well -established and has good
management and I must be sincere, hard work, determined to success, enthusiastic to
learn new things, open minded and highly responsible.
The company culture is very nice, I like it! We have a very diversity team here,
Indian, Thailand,, Chinese colleagues, we are enjoying to work here! But for my job, I
joined this company only 3 month, I dont know so much about this industry, I need
to learn more knowledge about it and I am sure I could do it better.

7. What does the top management/HR do that makes/cant make you feel
incentive? Why?
Ok so they can instance stimulate my work effort by handing out bonuses, that's
money, But also provide good social things Or like freedom to do your own stuff,
Like high tech companies sometimes give for instance 10% work time as time to work
on own projects, This will make the personnel work harder and also sometimes
provide new solutions or product because of those projects, So not just financial but
also social part.

4. Why you like/dislike your job?

As I said before I like my job, Because I can learn new things, open minded and
highly responsible and I like to work whit others people because I can exchange view
and ideas which may be useful in my work.

Part 3 The diversity of this company

6. What are the advantages and disadvantages of working in the diverse team?
Advantages of Working in a Team
There are many advantages of teamwork. Weve all heard the phrase two heads
are better than one. Of course with more minds set on a specific goal, you have
access more ideas. Looking at things from the perspective of others can increase the
likelihood of quality innovation.
Teams create an environment of support and propel people toward
implementation. A team environment can boost the confidence of individuals,
allowing them to do their best work.

Disadvantages of Working in a Team

For every advantage of working in a team, there is the flip side. Just as two
heads are better than one, weve all heard, too many chefs spoil the soup.
Basically, there are just too many people, too many ideas, and too many experts
to come to an agreement and achieve a good result. It is simply why we have to
constantly be reminded that there is no I in team.

7. How these advantages help you during working?

Teamwork is used every day, everywhere in business organizations. It is an
important way of bringing people together, developing stronger bonds between
members and quickly tackling large projects.

8. How did you/did your company help you overcome the difficulties bring by
the disadvantages? Do you have any good ideas to solve the existing problems?
I think to help overcome the difficulties is to create better conditions for the
employees to carry out their work. Normally we will have a open meeting when we
have too many ideas, we all can say what we want to say, but after our speech,
management will ask us to change each others situation to think about the others
ideas, that is very helpful, we find it is very interesting to change our opinions, it is
good to make a compromise.

Part4 The innovation of this company

2. What do you think is innovative in your company?

I think it is good intercultural management. Creativity should be base on
management environment, current team situation and carrying out appropriate
business. Hiring local person to develop oversea countries is common marketing
strategy, but how to avoid the risks and how to manage them well is a big problem.
Our company is a typical case, we cooperate with each other well because we
have freedom to explain our ideas and we can bring our advantages. Also because we
have different management policy, it makes us feel like home. For example, we have
our local festivals, normally other companies they will not give you extra holidays for
your own festivals, because there are not so many holidays in China, but our company
allows us back to our countries to celebrate our local festivals, it makes me feel warm!
So nobody wants to quit, and we even work more harder than before!

3. How do you feel about the freedom of speaking? Does the team/top
management glad to listen to and consider your ideas?
I feel free of speaking, like what I said, we are very free to explain our ideas;
sometimes it is even too much. Freedom of expression in business will brings benefit
to listening, collecting everyones idea and finishing the job better, and yes, senior
managers will listen to our opinions, we talk about our works a lot.

3. Please talk about your ideas about diverse team drives innovation?
No every diverse team drives innovation, Leaders should create a better
condition for their employees and help them to overcome difficulties, like we talked
before; our company creates a good environment for work, also income (salary and
bonus etc), social environment, free speaking etc so we have more motivation to
do our jobs and have more new ideas.
 4. Under the belt and road initiative strategy, what do you think about how it is
affecting/will affect the development of your diverse team and the innovation?
In background of one belt and load ,diversified team is adopt to the
characteristics of different countries and regions , it also will plays their own
advantages and then promote development of business, I think it is a good opportunity,
and maybe thats why our company develop so many southeast Asia markets.

Part 5 Your suggestion

1. What are your future career plans?
My career plan goes along with that of the company. I'm going to first practice
my professional skills and build my expertise in the field, and then I'll try to see if I'm
capable to be a team leader or part of the management of the company.

2. What are your suggestions for diversity management and innovation

management?
Regarding diversified management, I suggest building an appropriate team which
should depends on different kinds of business; I also think that business development
should base on new characteristics of economic environment and business model, to
adapt to the changing customers demand. I think I will have more ideas after I work
longer, now I dont know more.
 Interview for employees 3
Part 1 Personal information
Can you introduce yourself?
Your name KARTHICK RAMASAMY
Your nation - INDIAN
Your position in this company DEPUTY MANAGER
How long have you been work here? 5 YRS +
Your responsibilities for this job PROJECT PLANNING & CONTROL
GROUP

Part 2 The information about this job and company?

1. Why do you choose to work here?
It is related to what I have studied in my collage. My education and my work
culture are same. So I choose this path for my carrier

2. How do you feel or what is your feeling about this company and job?
I am comfortable to work in this company because I can able to balance my
carrier and also my personals

3. Do you feel the management of company makes you feel incentive? Why?
Management can makes me feel happy when project goes in good path and
sometime opposite side also I were crossed to reach this position

4. What makes you like this job or dont like this job?
Responsibilities wise I like this company, for my work I am the boss. On other
side, there are no new inventions or no new technologies. Since my company is top
most companies in Thermal Power project suppliers, so they dont change in to new
technologies. I have no idea how many year still Thermal Power withstand in this
global market(This I dont like)
Part 3 The diversity of this company
1. How do you feel to work here?
As I said, for my own work I am the boss. So I feel more comfortable to go with
new ideas/ suggestions

2. What are the difficulties and advantages of working in the diverse team?
In the beginning, we have few Indian members, there are two colleagues joined
earlier before me. I was watching them be depressed during the day because of
uncomfortable communication with management and other Chinese colleagues,
sometimes they even dont understand what we are talking about, maybe because of
our pronunciation, I was ok because I lived in China for 2 years already, but they
couldnt have smooth communication with others, so there is a lot of
misunderstanding between each other.
Advantages are team working for such big project. Will get new ideas from team
which I may not come across in my mind during planning. So, can learn new ideas
from team mates
Difficulties are, too many ideas from team will delay the project implementation,
and as I said in the beginning we have very big communication problems.

3. What are the good parts bringing to you during your work?
Usually bosses will get the base information of the project works and with that
base information, myself will create a total planning and implement. Once
implemented/approved than that will be the base line of the project details to follow
everyone in that project. That brings good part in my work.

4. What are the solutions to the difficulties? Do you have any good ideas?
Good ideas will come across once we face the difficulties. It depends on how
big/importance that the problem will be. So based on the problem will generate new
ideas to resolve it.
 Part4 The innovation of this company
1. What are the innovative parts in your company?
My company is not a manufacturing company to innovate new things on day to
day basis or to do R&D for success. My company is purely construction based and for
every on-going project if any issues come across that would be be updated and for the
future project will implement to control the cost for the project.

2. How do you feel about freedom of speaking? Will your ideas be considerate?
100% freedom available for me to speaking and provide suggestions. If my ideas
are reasonable, 100% they will implement.

3. Can you talk about your ideas about diverse team drives innovation? Why?
In project, planning department drives the project, So, I can suggest new ideas to
the team to follow the same.

4. Under the belt and road initiative strategy, what do you think about it for
company development?
It will increase more business opportunities with oversea countries; I think it is a
strategy of globalization. Without this policy we had more obstacles to do business
with others, now we can get more promotion of business policies. It is good for
companies want to develop oversea markets, also it is good for our business, I am
confident about it.

Part 5 Your suggestion

1. What are your future plans for your career or in this company?
To reach such a higher position to drive the project and company. With that
experience to start my own company and drive with my experience to reach a better
side

2. What are your suggestion for innovation and positive management of

diversity?
Innovation will starts from our own experience. In my view, positive
management means company should support the employee to complete the project in
time and should support in all circumstance and encourage achieving it.
 Interview for employees 4
Part 1 Personal information
1. Can you introduce yourself?
Your name Shuilin
Your nationality Thai
Your position in this company Foreign trader
How long have you been working here? 2 years
Your responsibilities/missions of this position responsible for develop
oversea market

Part 2 The information about this job and company

8. Why do you choose to work for this company?
-- I have live in China for a long time after graduated, I like China and I can
speak Chinese, so I want to find a job to stay here. This company gives me the
opportunity to learn about foreign tradeurges and encourages me in daily worksand
it offers long-term career development and this is what I am looking for, additionally
the corporate culture, management style of this company are impressing me.

9. How do you feel or what is your feeling about the company and the
job?(working environment/top management/company
culture/innovation/benefits/dissatisfaction...)
--It is a small company with nice atmosphere, the management is efficiency
which gives lots of supports to employees, and to be honest, the dim light gives us a
eyes sore, it would be perfect if the lights in office get be repaired or changed by
which a brighter environment we would be in at work.

10. What does the top management/HR do that makes/cant make you feel
incentive? Why?
--You know, sometimes problem happens, the manager always inspires me to
find the solution on my own, sometimes you could feel that the answer is behind the
manager but you are always expected to explain your point of view. It is good to
know what are you thinking first and then give you the advice, it is better than just tell
you what to do and how to do it.

11. Why you like/dislike your job?

--I already work here 2 years, I like this job. It is attractive me and gives me a
sense of achievement when I fulfill a foreign demand with a domestic supply.
Communicating with different people from different places and solving the problem
instead of hiding away, all of it make me feel challenging and I am quite enjoy it.

Part 3 The diversity of this company

9. What are the advantages and disadvantages of working in the diverse team?
--The advantage is that it requires strong interpersonal skills, hence, a culture of
teamwork will be built up, however, it would be a challenge to management as every
employee is required to be capable to collaborate with colleagues efficiently.

--The disadvantage is we need much more time to know how to cooperate with
each other in the beginning; we had some conflicts definitely, like our working
rhythm is quite different. We used to work slowly and little by little, but Chinese are
more efficient, they push me a lot, but now I already used to it.

10. How these advantages help you during working?

-- It makes us working more efficient and surly it helps keeping us work as a
team with an open mind to listen and learn from each other one, every problem and
issue we facing would raise suggestions from our colleagues, thus, the optimum
solution would be found.

11. How did you/did your company help you overcome the difficulties bring by
the disadvantages? Do you have any good ideas to solve the existing problems?
-- Our managers encourage discussion between colleagues and also asking
question is more than welcome, we are given lot of freedom to manage our working
with is impressing me. And my suggestion is that more communication makes us
work as a team.

Part4 The innovation of this company

4. What do you think is innovative in your company?
-- Our company believes that the core competitive ability is top class services
with all aspects and every details in the procedure of foreign trading, hence, we
always try to provide better services to our client, think what the client thinks and feel
what they feel.

5. How do you feel about the freedom of speaking? Does the team/top
management glad to listen to and consider your ideas?
-- I am so pleased that we could use our freedom of speaking by encouraging by
our managers and of course our team has lot of discussion and the managers are
willing to listen to different ideas. It is quite differ from the situation in other
company I believe.

6. Please talk about your ideas about diverse team drives innovation?
-- Different people with diverse thoughts would generate creativity to solve
problems, creativity is a way to innovate, and thats the first point coming from my
mind. Besides, happy and relax working environment I think, maybe because I feel
relax here now.

7. Under the belt and road initiative strategy, what do you think about how it
is affecting/will affect the development of your diverse team and the innovation?
-- It is an opportunity for a foreign trade company like us, or some companies
which want to establish oversea business. With the connection to clients form
different countries we have to develop the way we operate our business in which
different thinking would be developed. It is a good opportunity, in China, policy
influent business a lot.
Part 5 Your suggestion
3. What are your future career plans?
--The foreign trade is really attractive to me and I hope to work step by step in
the next three or five years and command a skill to become a professional in foreign
trade.

4. What are your suggestions for diversity management and innovation

management?
-- Always encourage to hear different voices and to think different, and it is
important to provide a work environment of openness built on trust where every
employees of the company feels free to express their opinions without fear of ridicule.