Innovation is a journey. The thing that not many people understand is a simple fact that innovation doesn’t happen overnight; it’s a journey that has an inclusion of successes and failures which is often different for every respective individual. The innovation journey if we keenly notice never ends, it doesn’t have any end result, it is a continuous process and with time, you are prone to gain efficiency in it. Before we commence into the further integral parts of this very article, let’s get into the crux to comprehend the meaning of what innovation culture actually is?
To put it into exhaustive words, an Innovation culture is a type of work environment that is basically nurtured by team leaders to promote unorthodox thinking with the thought of applying it at the end. Workplaces that emphasize such a type of culture within an organization subscribe to the notion that ideas are not only limited to the topmost level of hierarchy but can come from anyone working in the organization. In simpler words, it can be deciphered that an innovation culture provides validation to an employee and also gives them the scope to cultivate various innovative ideas.
A great deal of innovation masters faces ordeals once it comes to actually apply these ideas and extracting results out of them due to many underlying reasons. Some of them simply are not able to have aligned thoughts, the right kind of drive to work towards that particular idea, and not having the correct team of stakeholders on board which can easily give them the zeal to bring implementation to the table.
A leader is expected to elaborate and communicate it in such a way that the goal is tangible to the employees and they are given the space to think effectively and efficiently to help an organization attain great results.
An organization needs to take it as their core value to simply give every employee the liberty to put their unique ideas out and also work in such an effective way that it helps a company in accomplishing them too.
However, there is a catch, many organizations think that innovation can happen on its own without providing the right kind of resources and sources for doing so. Non-availability of such basic things creates a hindrance further which delays the desired output.
Let’s get into a few facts that we need to -
In order to be able to generate an innovation culture in a wholesome way, a leader needs to give precedence to the below-mentioned ways-
- Provide employees with the right kind of tools, information, and skills for them to be able to articulate a desired innovative idea.
- Sensitise employees to innovation and the opportunities it's likely to give.
- Don't force them to generate ideas, give them the right space, and necessary resources to be able to do that on their own.
- Validate their thoughts, however, let them know how they can be molded to transition them into a desired innovative idea.
Commencing ahead, we need to know that Innovation requires dedicated time – significant blocks of time to “get into the zone,” to focus and concentrate.
If you are new in this journey and are someone who is aspiring to begin your innovation journey, you require a group of dedicated people to bring innovation to the picture.
In recent years the focus has been on creating highly driven organizations that apply lean principles to both management and operations. We recognize it has become very hard for many companies to allocate time and resources to make innovation happen. But fortunately, there are ways to make innovation more efficient. Here we describe 4 simple things or ways through which you can do so.
Make an innovation Project
Once you introduce your team to the expectation of emphasizing on innovation, you need to stress this enough that it should be taken as a
project that requires you to work rigorously upon them. So to say, it needs to be structured and conceptualized in such a way that everyone is known to the value it brings to the table. There needs to be a sequence between idea generation, idea elaboration, and experiment design.
Requires you to work as a team
Many organizations and leaders often take it wrong and work on innovation as a solidarity affair rather than taking it as teamwork. There should be appropriate time fixed to generate ideas as a team, elaborating its effects and reviewing them. However, we need to understand a key difference here that a few tasks such as researching on different topics, issues and contributing towards maintaining a data of all the things are initially works that require you to work single-handedly although at the end of them, you need to sit down with the team to decipher its repercussions and the process.
Introduce innovation challenges
At the start of the innovation journey, you need to challenge your employees with the intriguing thought of being in competition with each other and being near to activate the diversity it brings to the working arena.
Infliction shouldn't be an option
Throughout your journey, understand you need to not inflict your demands onto your employees as it will only sway them away from assisting you
in making the organization’s goals seem viable and attainable. Give the employees space to have their own thoughts. Make it crystal clear to your employees that their thoughts are valued and they will be rewarded for it. Prepare a system in which they feel comfortable sharing their ideas without feeling any sense of being unworthy and unrecognized.
Failure tolerant
While innovation journey is expected to bring lot many positive impacts
on business and people, let’s be prepared to navigate through ambiguity and likelihood of failures. A successful organization enable failures as learning, learn abundantly while failing quickly and cheaply on innovation journey.
I hope this article helps you in finding your true and utmost potential, happy reading!!