Creating a Culture of Innovation in Your Workplace
Want to start a move towards creating a culture of innovation and co-creation in your workplace? Successfully implementing an idea management system is a great place to start. Idea management can be a useful tool to aid a culture shift from closed to open. But it cannot change the culture on its own. It's important that employees feel empowered and valued. Significant shifts in everything from executive visibility to employee recognition programs will all help foster a culture change. Ensure that the system is open to all employees in organisation, across all levels of seniority and all departments. Emphasise that idea submission and collaboration is sought from everyone in organisation, regardless of hierarchy.
Leadership Buy in from the leadership team is key to any effort to build a culture of innovation. Significant changes in organisational culture such as increasing executive visibility and championing innovative efforts will start to create a shift. Members of the leadership team need to communicate the importance of innovation as a company priority and visibly support and share new ideas. Employees need to believe that their ideas and contributions will be listened to. Senior management must state their belief and commitment to the use of any idea management tools and also to the culture of open innovation.
Idea Management Idea Management is a very valuable tool to aid a culture of innovation. Without clear systems and processes for capturing and filtering ideas it will be hard for a culture of innovation to take root. Emphasise that idea submission and collaboration is sought from everyone in organisation, regardless of hierarchy. Encourage feedback and participation from all employees. Engaging your employees and encouraging employee involvement will develop a culture of innovation over time. Encourage positive feedback - but not criticism. No idea is "bad", don't put people off submitting ideas and contributing through fear of doing something wrong.
Recognition and reward Create and communicate a clear reward and recognition policy to motivate your employees and to recognise individuals or teams who have contributed to new projects. Providing incentives and/or rewards for participation will motivate your employees to contribute. Recognising innovators and contributors regularly and vocally across the organisation both reinforces participation in an idea management programme and increases the satisfaction and productivity of those who are recognised. Communicating results and recognising contributors will help to build an ongoing cycle that encourages further ideas and therefore contributes to the building of an innovation culture.
Resources: http://www.organizedfeedback.com http://ezinearticles.com/?Creating-a-Culture-ofInnovation-in-Your-Workplace&id=7083479
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