Three Innovation FAQ's

Here are three frequently asked questions on how to spur innovation in organizations.

1. Are there schemes that organizations can set up to get employees to generate ideas?

Of course there are. However, when organizations do something like this they have to be very careful of unintended side-effects. Say for example, you paid for each new idea. You would get tons of ideas. Some employees might give up concentrating on their day job and only generate ideas. Say you paid for implementable ideas. Who would act as the filter on these? If this is not judged fairly, it could lead to demotivation and a lack of trust in management.

So if you come up with schemes for innovation they need to be authentic to the core values of your organization. This is not easy. Often some cultural change and a revised view on organizational learning is required.

2. How do you get staff to participate in these schemes?

My advice is to start with a scheme that is relevant to the employee in such a way that it links a corporate objective to something within the capability of the employees. Then keep the rewards aligned to the normal outputs of the employee. In this way the chance of an unintended consequence is reduced.

Show the employees that they can be rewarded for innovations in their day-to-day activities. Over time this gives you an innovative capacity throughout your organization. This is not a quick 'ideas competition' and then everything is OK and we can go back to our desks.

Remember innovation is as much about execution as it is about ideas. So start getting people to innovate locally and they will grow in this ability each and every day. Then when you really need the big ideas they are ready and willing participants.

3. What are the support mechanisms?

Encourage learning and experimentation. If you approach something as an experiment from which are are going to learn, you can't fail. You need to look at the failed experiment and ask "what have we learnt from this? What would we do differently next time?

So for support you need to develop a tolerance for failure and an ability to unpack the learning experience. Obviously, you need to be able to withstand the failures so the experiments need to be carefully structured so as not to put the whole organization at risk. Over time as your capabilities build, you will become more proficient at structuring things so that you can take slightly bigger risks.

You also need to allow the employees time to consider the possible innovations they would like to recommend and experiment with. And then they need the time to do so. This is why a firm like Google gives employees 20% of their week to pursue their own interests. Of course, not every firm can be that generous but you can see the enormous commitment to slack resources. If everyone in your firm is stretched to breaking point, don't expect much innovation.