In order to foster a culture of innovation and collaboration in businesses, three practices should be implemented. Firstly, tools should be developed that enable everyone to communicate effectively about innovation. For instance, Gore has created a one-page product spreadsheet that outlines its key innovation criteria. This template allows anyone to suggest a new idea and for everyone to evaluate its potential.
Secondly, ideas should be examined and refined collaboratively and continuously. In agile organizations, innovation ideas aren't reviewed once or twice a year by a high-level committee. Instead, they undergo an ongoing process of revision, refinement and, if necessary, termination. The goal is that only the best ideas survive.
Lastly, top leaders should be focused on helping those close to coal get the resources and support they need. The job of top leaders is to serve people who are close to the market. All organizations have the capacity to be smarter than the sum of the intelligence and talent of their members. To boost collective intelligence, diverse stakeholders should be invited early on and frequently to help judge and refine the idea. At Gore, “those who are passionate about new innovations use the company's tools to present the strategic argument for their idea and, in the process, discuss it with customers and colleagues”.
If the idea gets support, regular peer-review sessions should be scheduled with people from manufacturing, R&D, sales, marketing, and other areas of expertise who are in a good position to evaluate and refine the idea. The company's culture of frank conversation drives these review sessions. People understand that their collective work is to put an end to bad projects as soon as possible and accelerate those that seem most promising. To break down the barriers that block innovation, regular procedures for leaders should be reversed so they do everything they can to clear the way for promising new projects and provide innovation teams with the resources they need. NASA leaders are making an intensive effort to understand and transform several of the main obstacles to innovation. They asked their employees for help; people responded with nearly 300 recommendations.
Some of them aimed to encourage the generation of more ideas by offering people more time, money, recognition and a physical space dedicated to innovation. Others focused on reducing process requirements for innovations, such as accelerating low-cost missions and giving special treatment to high-potential technologies. A proposal would require that new flight programs and projects include an element of innovation to promote an informed and appropriate risk of R&D, as a means of counteracting the agency's culture of risk aversion. The outcome of this effort remains to be seen, but NASA leaders are certainly making a concerted effort to address obstacles to innovation. By utilizing these three practices, companies can harness the knowledge and energy of all their people through a collective “prediction market”. This market makes many small bets on new ideas at an early stage, of which only a few will work after intensive collective research.
In doing so, agile companies add the intelligence of their workers to better predict future success and act to make that future real. To create a culture of innovation from top to bottom, management must create a clear mission and vision for the company that everyone has access to. This will give your team direction and purpose in their work. Management must also communicate this shared vision regularly to ensure that everyone works in an aligned manner and toward the same shared goals. You could even create a beautiful piece of art to hang in the office with your company's statement of objectives and missions to motivate the team. By following these tips, management can actively promote an innovative business culture that benefits both the company and its employees and promotes change. Creative and innovative activities increase employee engagement; organizations with engaged employees outperform those with low engagement by 202%, according to a Gallup study.
The culture of innovation is comprised of practices that support and strengthen innovation as an important aspect of progress and growth. Creating a fun and upbeat office environment can have a significant impact on employee satisfaction and team motivation. Innovation and change often involve taking risks but fear of failure can hinder creativity and progress. As an innovation leader, you must base creative people on responsibility for the organization's objectives, key areas of focus, core capabilities, and commitments to stakeholders. Knowing how vital it is to reinforcing the performance of creativity and innovation, companies have constantly tried to apply this concept in their daily activities. A strong and innovative company culture will encourage employees to be creative and work together as a team. I believe that the forces behind the revival of R&D corporate departments have implications for the innovation efforts of almost every company.
This will demonstrate to employees that it's OK to take risks and try new things leading to a more innovative company culture. You can also separate office spaces for creativity to flourish such as a ping-pong table, a cozy reading corner or even a space for team meetings with poufs and toiletries.
