Innovation at work is rewarded in a number of ways. Companies that innovate become more efficient in their internal processes and are more likely to produce products that consumers like and are increasingly attractive to potential employees.
Examples of innovative workplace practices include:
- Find a more sustainable way of producing and wrapping food.
- Designing an electric Car
- Create digital tools so that it is easier for consumers to navigate a complex system.
The good news for companies is that there are concrete steps they can take to become more innovative.
How to Stimulate Workplace Innovation in five Stages.
Our team works with businesses of all types to help them implement frameworks that create innovation. Business innovation can involve creating a new product, or it could be streamlining existing processes. Whatever the innovation, the ultimate goal is to stimulate the growth of enterprises by offering better solutions to specific problems. The process for making innovation possible is as follows:
The first step in innovation is to decide on the question (or all questions) that poses a problem for an organization. Business leaders should sit down and establish a list of three challenges they feel are at the heart of the enterprise.
Stage 1: Determine the Issues to be Addressed.
Maybe this is an industry problem. A case in point is the rise of fintech startups in traditional finance. Executives of former banks may see this as an opportunity to develop new digital products to better serve their clients. Organizations may seek to improve their way of doing business, which involves looking closely at the manufacturing process, employee experience, or customer experience.
To highlight these challenges, managers and business leaders must:
- Sit down and list the key issues that affect day-to-day operations.
- Prioritize some of the challenges ahead.
- Create a criterion/framework to judge and implement a workable solution to this problem.
Once the preliminary work is completed, leaders will hand it over to those who have the most first-hand knowledge of the business: Employees.
Stage 2: Engage Employees
After all, it is the front-line workers who manufacture the products and talk to the customers. They are the ones who have the most opinions about the processes that could be made more effective. Therefore, it is important that any attempt at innovation understands their perspective.
Companies can do this, for example, through programs that allow employees to present ideas on how to solve the problems identified in the first phase. These programs can range from hackathons to enterprise-wide innovation challenges. They can be of short duration (duration of a week) or long duration (duration of a quarter).
The key is to engage the whole business and allow those in all departments to submit ideas. It is also important to do so through a separate program from the day-to-day work of employees as it allows employees to move beyond the traditional feedback loop of the corporation. When the goal is to develop new ideas, employees are more likely to think otherwise.
Stage 3: Brainstorm ideas for Innovation
Once a framework or program is put in place, employees start to come up with ideas. They work as if they were building start-ups within the enterprise. Based on their own experience, they should consider potential solutions to the issues that the company has identified.
There are many ways in which a positive brainstorming session can be encouraged, including through physical space. Conference rooms allow groups of people to come together and discuss ideas in a private, quiet space. Bonus points if the boardroom has white boards in order to chart or map ideas. Entrepreneurs will then judge the resulting ideas.
Stage 4: Judge the Ideas
Once all employee ideas are gathered, it is time for business leaders to consider them. They should separate ideas that might be achievable and provide value to the business, from those that might not.
In this curation process, business leaders will judge ideas against the predetermined criteria they set with stakeholders at the first stage. It is then that the most interesting ideas for innovation are identified and placed high on the list.
Stage 5: Empower ideas to be Executed
Once the coolest, most recent and exciting ideas for innovation are generated, updated and judged, it is time to prepare them for the execution phase. Employees with the best ideas should be brought into contact with those in the company who can help them implement these ideas internally. Encourage them to work with business leaders to brainstorm the integration of activities. For these teams to succeed, Company leaders, Executives and Managers need to empower these employees with budget and time twenty percent (20%) of their work per week, for example) dedicated to bringing those ideas to life.
Workplace innovation can sometimes give the impression that it is an open topic. But there are proven measures that an organization can take as long as it believes that workplace innovation is essential to its success.