I often hear executives say things like, “We need to become more innovative," or “We have to start establishing an innovative culture,” yet they find themselves stuck or not knowing where to start. Sure, many companies can find small pockets of innovation already occurring within their company, but developing a corporate-wide culture of innovation remains elusive to many.
There are many reasons for this — one being that it can be an overwhelming and daunting task, which might make it seem unachievable. It can be uncomfortable knowing that your culture will need to change in order to accommodate innovation. On the flip side, one might jump straight into "doing" rather than first understanding what innovation could mean to the company from a strategic, financial, operational/people processes and cultural perspective. These all need to be in lockstep in order to be successful.
Innovation equates to change, and change equates to challenges. If you are up for that challenge, help jumpstart your company by exploring this five-step approach to developing an innovative culture, and make the seemingly impossible, possible.
1. Readiness And Capacity
Developing a corporate innovation approach requires starting at the top. If a company is not aligned at both the board and management level, it will be difficult to cultivate company-wide innovation. Whenever possible, think about including your board in these conversations. There needs to be space given to management teams to explore and venture outside the common balance sheet and governance mentality to encourage and infuse innovative behavior throughout the company. Innovation is not the “job” of the senior leaders, but creating the focus on it and the space for it is.
Though to do that, management teams must first create a dialogue amongst themselves that explores their own and the company’s understanding and level of comfort with innovation. Questions that should be asked include:
- What are our expectations of innovation, and how do we see this contributing to our strategic success?
- What is our risk mindset? Do we see ourselves as conservative or aggressive innovators?
- Do we have the culture to support it?
- Do we have the capacity, knowledge and bandwidth currently within the organization?
Questions like these will help you to understand and articulate where your company will benefit and capitalize on innovative efforts. You’ll be in the driver's seat to start formulating your areas of focus, or what we like to call “innovation themes."
2. 'Innovation Themes'
Let your strategic priorities be your guide, and through robust discussions, themes will begin to emerge. Innovation themes define areas of opportunity aligned to a company's strategy that allows it to create focus and energy around its initiatives.
Innovation can start small; it doesn’t have to be transformational. Though once on this journey, the little innovations could lead to more “game changers" as this thinking becomes part of your company’s culture.
Once senior leadership provides the innovation focus, communicate clearly what the themes are and what’s expected of the employees. Focusing on innovation gives the company a license to “think differently,” and you must be prepared to give space for creative thinking and have a high degree of openness to ideas that may not fit your current views or biases. Once you are there, you are ready for creativity.
3. Creativity
Creativity is creating a safe space and time to allow for innovative ideas to bubble to the surface. To be successful innovators, companies need creative thinking and ideation to thrive. Whether it’s a state-of-the-art innovation lab or old-school suggestion boxes, you are going to need to think about how your company can successfully harness the ideas of your employees and how to give them the opportunity to share and explore these ideas collaboratively across the business.
Rewarding this behavior is crucial, and ensuring that your leaders or managers are empowering their employees to think this way is paramount. Reward it, encourage it and enable it.
4. Enablement
You can’t expect employees to “think outside of the box” if you won’t let them out of the box to begin with. Leaders need to support the flow of ideas, and when a good one arises, avoid the red tape or antiquated processes that get in the way of bringing it to life. Identify where the bottlenecks in your company may occur or where contrary leadership may exist, and fix it. Your employees are the best source of this information.
To keep these ideas moving, consider various channels for innovation. These channels can be both internal and external to the organization and could include incubators, think tanks, internal software to capture and direct ideas, partnerships, or even a direct investment in early stage companies. There shouldn’t be one channel for innovation; in a corporate innovation framework, companies should be looking to leverage the channel where the idea has the best opportunity to advance.
5. Realization
Realization is about value creation. How do we bring these new innovations back into the company? How do we productize, commercialize, leverage and monetize?
Consider that those driving the innovation process may not always be best suited when it comes to implementation or commercialization of the technology, solutions or processes. Look within the organization to what existing expertise or capabilities you can leverage. Or if not, what other support or resources both internal and external could help unlock the value? Not all new innovative ideas will succeed. Look for value where it doesn't. Ask yourself, "What did we learn, and what value and knowledge can we realize from the process?"
Be patient. Establishing a culture of innovation takes time and cannot be forced. It needs to evolve, develop and be supported. Starting at the top is critical to building a successful innovation framework and culture. Investing the time upfront when building this culture leads to improved focus, better results, and greater sustainability for innovation programs to continue to thrive.
