Building a Culture of Innovation in your Organisation

Jan 12

What is Innovation in Your Business?

Innovation and creativity are frequently used interchangeably. They aren't the same, despite being comparable. Because it generates original ideas, using creativity in business is crucial. A crucial element of innovation is its originality.

Creativity doesn’t lead to company inventions and growth, innovation does. However, innovation doesn’t happen without creative people on board. Generating creativity means allowing people to think outside the box and go against the norm sometimes.

If you let bureaucracy stop creativity, innovation will be the victim in your company, letting your competitors move ahead with new market share growth.

A concept must be practical in order to qualify as creative. Because they don't always result in workable answers to issues, creative ideas don't always lead to inventions.

In a nutshell, innovation is the creation of a good or service that is also original and beneficial. A company's customer service may be improved, or features could be added to an existing product; innovations don't always include significant advances in technology or novel business structures.

A Time for Growth in Innovation Culture

It’s an extraordinary time for innovation in business across the world. Innovation is difficult for well-established companies. By and large, they are better executors than innovators, and most succeed less through game-changing creativity than by optimising their existing businesses. Technological change and industry disruption seems to be accelerating year on year. Development of new products and services is an important aspect of organisation success. Modern digital information networks are linking high performing individuals and future focused organisations to achieve further innovation.

As opportunities grow amongst online teams, many organisational boundaries to an innovative culture are being removed. Exchange of ideas and a culture of R&D is becoming an attractive model for remote based professionals. Large organisations are now implementing even further innovation models using advancements of artificial intelligence. AI will surely have implications for most companies in regard to their innovative culture. We all need mechanisms and a culture that encourage the embrace of new technologies, kindle the passion for knowledge, and ease barriers to creativity.

There are two different types of innovation in a business: Sustaining and Disruptive

Sustaining Innovation: Sustaining innovation improves an organisation's procedures and technological capabilities to boost its product range for a current clientele. It's frequently undertaken by established companies who wish to maintain their market leadership.
Disruptive Innovation: When smaller enterprises take on bigger companies, disruptive innovation happens. Depending on the markets those businesses compete in, it can be divided into groups. A new-market disruption is when a company creates a new market segment to serve a customer base that the old market is unable to serve. Low-end disruption occurs when a company enters and seizes a segment at the bottom of an existing market.

Start with a Philosophy of Innovation

As an innovation leader, you must help creative people focus on the organisation's objectives and key areas while also keeping in mind their commitments to stakeholders. Then you give them the freedom to do their job within the parameters set by company leadership. Obsessing too much about budget and deadlines will kill creative ideas before they get off the ground. This process needs to be carefully managed and developed for long term growth. Accountability within the team will ensure that budgets are not wasted. Creativity has value and needs to be commercially intertwined in these innovative goals.

Innovation parenting also focuses on the social development of innovators. Millennials, in particular, will expect and seek out commercial opportunities to interact with people who interest and excite them. This will aid the development of culture and bring energy to the team. To help individuals see where their work fits in the entire organisation, aim to foster wide spanning relationships. Internal chains should span from design to manufacturing and across to marketing or sales. A good understanding of how your work impacts the organisation will increase the collaborative creativity and bring accountability to team member actions.

Opportunities for Better Growth through Leadership

You can reinforce the cultural benefits of innovation parenting by opening up organisational space to allow innovators to bypass barriers and hierarchies that often sap creativity. Most companies value unconventional thinking, assuring brainstorming participants that there are no bad ideas and urging them to think outside the box. Trigger discussions about unconventional ideas.

Since innovation is a complex, company-wide endeavour, it requires a set of cross cutting practices and processes to structure, organise, and encourage it. Culture of Creativity should be strategic and creative in nature, help set and prioritise the terms and conditions under which innovation is more likely to thrive. If a culture is operating effectively, it will contribute meaningfully to overall company performance.

Aspirations of innovation are hugely important for creating culture. Leaders should aim by quantifying an “innovation target for growth,” and making it an explicit part of future strategic plans of the organisation. This helps solidify the importance of and accountability for innovation. An ambitious target itself must be large enough to force managers to include innovation investments in their business plans.

The conventional view is that organisations starve for a lack of good ideas and projects. In reality, they are more likely to die from having too many ineffective and poorly thought out projects. It is important to actively work on two projects at a time. This way, if the first project temporarily slows down, you can focus on other projects as well. Relationships that extend beyond the boundaries of the organisation are invaluable to acquiring and distributing knowledge.

Hire the Best Talent Available

Very few cultures can be innovative without capable people, and the demands on innovators are higher than ever. It used to be the case that R&D organisations could hire a top scientist to work on a specific project. In today’s febrile competition for those with the most diverse skill sets, this limited approach doesn’t cut it. Instead, R&D leaders need to hire people who are willing to join multiple projects and to move from one to another as needed. They constantly push for improvements and create their own luck by sensing what is happening in their field and then applying their observations and experience to problems.

Identifying, recruiting, and retaining deep scientists, interdisciplinarians, and visionaries requires new thinking and good connections. Maintaining close relationships with influential professors at leading universities who can connect you with promising graduates is key.

IT Management & Consulting International

IT Management & Consulting mission is to help businesses and organisations improve productivity through Agile and Scrum leadership.

We have previously worked with a range of renowned companies, including Goldman Sachs, CabOnline, Cold Technology, and Clebag. Over the past seven years, we have helped clients reduce developing costs by up to 20% and improve on-time delivery by up to 45%.

We are always open to working with companies in Stockholm or indeed remotely across Europe, who are looking to increase their productivity.

Ondrej Papanek