Michelle Symonds, Founder & MD of Ditto Digital was recently in conversation with Paul Naybour, Business Development Director of Parallel Project Training, about the importance of encouraging an innovative culture within a company. They discussed some of the ways to do that and the benefits that could be achieved.
Businesses that consider themselves as innovative often use the term to describe the product or service they sell. But imagine how much more can be achieved if the whole business infrastructure was truly innovative too.
To create an organisation that encompasses an innovation infrastructure, leaders and managers need to look for teams with the diversity that dare to explore beyond perceived boundaries.
Default leadership structures
Leadership is often thought to be a requirement for command and control, which can ingrain linear thinking and result in expert-led teams with distinct and similar thought patterns. However, this misses many opportunities.
Teams with diversity of thought will, instead, lead to better innovative outcomes that encompass a broader and more diverse audience. It is often only after a new product goes live that what is missing or wrong becomes apparent. How much better would it be if these issues were identified and dealt with throughout the whole product development phase?
Open up business modelling
How can a business identify blind spots if individuals do not have the opportunity to raise concerns or there is no diverse capacity to identify the blind spots in the first place?
Imagine sitting in a brainstorming session, where you should be able to say what you think, yet you feel that the only acceptable course of action is to agree with other people’s ideas and any doubts you feel are best kept quiet? What if your doubts were critical, yet never voiced? The business could fall short and suffer.
Innovating your business
An organisation can only effectively bring about change if it enables those with different opinions to have a respected voice and time to explore and brainstorm diverse views.
Innovation management is the process of managing new ideas, which evaluates and prioritises open communication between employees at every level, and collaboration to explore ideas. The lack of an innovative infrastructure has seen the demise of some top brands. Blockbuster and Polaroid are examples of companies that did not have innovation at the heart of their business models and, perhaps more importantly, a business infrastructure to move their services forward to keep up with everchanging technology innovation.
Managing and encouraging innovation enables better product development, cost reductions and enhanced development processes to secure a company's future and outlive its stagnant competition. New companies with new ideas will move in and take over companies that do not promote innovation. Often the talent is there, but feels unheard, either through their junior position or tunnel vision management.
Managing for innovation
Employees need to be brave but managers need to encourage the exploration of genuinely new ideas. Embracing innovation ensures opportunities are never missed. Employees should be encouraged to share all ideas and thoughts even if not fully formed. Here are some ways to do that:
Ongoing learning – Learning keeps the mind sharp and open to new ideas, revealing opportunities within existing teams that should be given the time and resources to explore.
Accept failure – Don't let past failure suffocate the future. Solutions proposed but unsuccessful are not simply bad ideas. The knowledge gleaned from them should be used to benefit the future. Accept that not all ideas will work or get the go-ahead, but that's okay. We often learn more by getting it wrong along the way than right, so turn failure into a learning opportunity.
The best wins – Build a meritocracy, where anyone feels able to move the business forward and present ideas, knowing that if their ideas are deemed the best, and their proposals align with business goals, their ideas can win. Hierarchy and bottlenecks can prevent true innovation.
Get there first – Finally, when you implement and encourage diverse exploration of new ideas as part of your company infrastructure, the more likely it is that you will develop the best products or services and succeed against the competition.