How to promote innovation within the company
Say what companies need innovate to evolve is not to say anything new. However, it is a subject that many companies try to pass but that a large majority are still failing. Considering the competition that many of them have to face, they can't afford to go to September. Therefore, today we bring you some tips for you to put into practice and manage to create an authentic culture of innovation in your company.
- Create diverse teams
If we create teams based on similar profiles, we will get a single way to deal with a problem. Include in the same team employees with different abilities we will get a wide variety of answers to the same challenge.
- Eliminating the culture of fear
In more traditional organizations, a culture of fear tends to predominate, in which the boss rules and the employee obeys. This type of culture is counterproductive to encouraging innovation in our company. If we want to motivate our employees and bring out their most creative side, it is essential to create a culture based on trust, valuing and respecting our employees.
- Include it in the strategy
Sending the message to our employees that they must innovate will be ineffective and will quickly become fashionable to do so. To achieve real innovation in the company, it must be included in the strategy of the same and pursue the same objectives as the company.
- Don't start the house on the roof
The culture of innovation in a company is born in the General management, and the CEO You must be a leader for employees, follow the work that is being done, and make available to employees everything necessary to innovate.
- Tiempo
If there's anything left over for workers, it's usually work. Therefore, it is not easy to ask them to spend time rethinking processes, researching trends and providing ideas. Offer them time or reward them for the investment is a way to encourage innovation. For example, the company 3M pays for the time its employees spend developing new ideas.
- Exchange
El exchange of knowledge and ideas between departments it's a way to innovate. Some companies encourage their employees to move departments every several years so that their knowledge and ideas reach the entire company.
- Tolerance for failure
Destructive criticism will eliminate any possibility of innovation in the future. However, innovation always involves a risk, and if the expected success is not achieved, it must be approached responsibly.
- Train and communicate
We should not assume that our employees know what we are talking about and how to carry it out. In many cases, they will be disoriented and will be necessary. Educate them, in addition to establishing a communication system to facilitate the work.
- Generating ideas
We can't talk about innovation without ideas. But these should not be proposed lightly, a system for the contribution of ideas, and that, in addition, these do not go unanswered, because that will eliminate the generation of ideas in the future. We must therefore have a management system and evaluation of proposals.
- Incentives
For our employees to be innovative, we will have to Encourage them to this, and Reward them for their contributions. But not only in the short term, the development of their ideas is the best reward we can offer them.
- Measure
Like everything in the company, we must also measure innovation. For this we must set metrics that help us to check if indeed all the effort invested is paying off.
More and more companies are betting on developing new lines of business proposed by their employees. These types of programs help companies locate figures Intrapreneurs and develop an internal innovation system that translates into economic benefits for the company. This is the case of “Santalucía ENCOURAGES employees” which is joining the acceleration program for entrepreneurs and startups this year “Saint Lucia IMPULSES”.
Why do you think that many companies fail in their attempt to be more innovative? Do you use any strategy to get your employees to do their best when it comes to innovation?
