HR for innovation
The Human Resources department in most companies is about performance reviews, recruitment, and disciplinaries. HR Management grew up as a function for companies to secure commitment from workers in a time where the job was considered the prize.
This won’t be enough in the future.
In an organisation where knowledge work is the norm, skills are now the prize. This shifts the bargaining power from the organisation to the individual. If an organisation wants to support innovation, HR needs to play a different role. In an organisation where autonomous individuals are committed to their work, HR can become about supporting human intellectual assets and integrating the learned knowledge into the organisation to become the competitive advantage.
Or, to take it a step further into the future, HR in an innovative organisation that is based on anarchist principles rather than capitalist ones would be about achieving ‘cooperative advantage’ rather than competitive advantage through the decentralisation of power, decision-making and wealth. This cooperative advantage would apply just as much between the organisation and other organisations as it would between individuals within the organisation as an innovative organisation has more permeable barriers between it and other entities (including society at large).