16 Techniques to Encourage
Innovation in the Workplace
Promoting innovation in the workplace can be tough! Read-on to
discover 16 (effective) ways to do it.
Innovation Strategy
15
min read
Content
Why should companies care about their capacity to innovate?How can companies encourage
innovation and creativity in the workplace?True innovation takes commitment and perseverance
Encouraging workplace innovation not only helps companies stay on
top of the market and defend their bottom lines: innovative workplaces
are also happier workplaces, with consistently higher levels of
employee satisfaction and retention.
Businesses are now paying more attention to the benefits of
encouraging innovation than ever before. 63% of companies now
have chief innovation officers to help drive new ideas and systems.
However, doing it effectively is challenging and time-consuming.
In this post, we’ll take a look at 16 ways to encourage workplace
innovation and how you can put these to use.
Why should companies care about their
capacity to innovate?
Well, if you are reading this, I guess you are well aware of all the
benefits of having a real innovation culture. As a quick reminder, here
I am just listing 3 areas where encouraging innovation has an impact
on businesses.
Competitive advantage
Companies that invest time, effort and money in finding new and
better ways of doing things have an advantage over others in the
market. It’s that simple.
For example, look at Amazon’s groundbreaking innovations in online
purchase and delivery (and pretty much everything else). These
innovations have given the company a significant advantage over its
competitors, and are a major reason for the company’s ongoing
dominance.
Innovation doesn’t just help a company to offer exciting new products
and services to customers. It also allows companies to stay profitable
and survive in the market.
LEGO - a great example of the competitive advantage through
innovation. Source: Forbes
LEGO is another great example here. The beloved block toy company
was facing a tough financial situation in the early 2000s, but gradually
reclaimed its status as a market leader through a mixture of
innovation, co-creation, and customer collaboration.
Customer centricity
Trialing new approaches to services and products ensures a constant
focus on serving the needs of customers. This helps build a dedicated
market base and ensures a company stays responsive to customer
demand.
Think about Apple’s relentless customer focus. By keeping the
company’s goal improving people’s lives through convenient and
intuitive personal electronics, the company stayed on the path to
market dominance.
Employee satisfaction and retention
An innovative working approach appeals to employees with higher
levels of creativity and lateral thinking, helping companies to hold on
to their best talent.
A great example here is Google. The tech giant’s approach to staffdriven innovation keeps its people engaged, happy, and motivated.
This is one of the key reasons why the company is one of the most
coveted places to work.
Google’s offices. Source: Medium
Also, because innovation brings together wider groups of staff,
innovation processes contribute significantly to a company’s social
development, making staff feel valued, engaged, and more cohesive.
Southwest Airlines is another great example. The air carrier company
has a great culture of social development, due in part to its
commitment to involving all levels of its staff in innovative “blue-sky
thinking” exercises.
How can companies encourage innovation
and creativity in the workplace?
Encouraging innovation isn’t easy. From juggling competing company
priorities to overcoming internal resistance and inertia, there are a lot
of things that can get in the way.
No matter what industry you’re in, unlocking the innovative potential of
your people - and your business more generally - comes down to a
mix of management approaches, shared values, strategy, and
resources.
Of course, there’s no single solution to how to encourage innovation.
This process always differs from company to company and depends
on things like workplace culture, ingrained systems, and the talents
and skills present within your staff.
To help you out, we’ve got 16 techniques to encourage
innovation in the workplace, broken down into the following
subjects:

Leadership & management

Innovation strategy

Willingness to experiment

Open communication

Staff well-being

Workplace design & layout

Tools & software
Let’s take a look at these subjects one by one, and think about how
you could put them to use.
Leadership & management
Unsurprisingly, the majority of our recommended innovation
techniques focus on leadership and management.
When it comes to innovation, the tone always comes from the top.
Senior leaders need to find ways to encourage their staff to think
about innovation every day and to take ownership and responsibility
for new ideas and solutions.
Encouraging innovation via leadership and management can be a
challenge, but we’ve got some specific techniques that can definitely
help.
Empower your employees to think about tough problems
As Apple’s Steve Jobs said, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart
people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell
us what to do.”
This is a key technique to encourage workplace innovation: empower
your employees to think about the tough problems and reward staff
for working towards solutions.
People are as innovative as you allow them to be. If you empower
your staff to chase their “aha moments”, you’ll soon find yourself with
a more dynamic and innovative workplace.
Adopt a non-hierarchical management approach
When it comes to encouraging workplace innovation, a strict hierarchy
can be a real killer.
If your staff work deferentially and only think about innovation when
specifically tasked to do so, you’ll never be able to reach your
company’s full potential.
The most innovative companies have a flat - but strong - management
approach, allowing employees to break down silos and barriers
between work areas. A lot of innovation comes from cross-pollination
between teams and divisions, and from the sharing of ideas and
problems.
Tesla is a great example here. Elon Musk’s radically flat management
structure demands a hands-on approach from senior management
and asks employees to work across departments in subject-specific
ways.
Tesla’s Elon Musk. Source: Inside EVs
Give your staff a reason to care
To be truly innovative, your employees need some skin in the game.
They shouldn’t think about innovation as something for senior
management to think about - instead, innovation should be part of
everyone’s job description.
Look for ways to incentivize staff to think about innovation, and bring
them along the journey by developing a company-wide innovation
strategy (more on this below).
A great example is DHL. The delivery company encourages staff to
work with groups of customers and clients to come up with solutions
to complex issues like delivery sequencing and accessing remote
areas. The end result is a more innovation-focused pool of
employees.
Find and motivate intrapreneurs
Intrapreneurs are staff who are already within your organization and
have the mindset and the skills to innovate. Think of them as
entrepreneurs who happen to already work for you.
Finding and motivating intrapreneurs within your business is an
excellent way to encourage a more innovative approach to problemsolving.
For example, the software company Fishbowl spends a lot of time and
effort locating and recognizing intrapreneurs within the company and
uses these employees as a valuable innovation resource.
Encourage your people to think about innovation on a daily
basis
Innovation shouldn’t be something people think about only during
retreats and workshops. If thinking about new ways of doing things is
seen only as an occasional exercise, you’ll never be able to access
the full potential of your employees’ creativity and imagination.
Instead, make room for your staff to consider innovation as part of
their daily tasks. For example, manufacturing giant 3M is famous for
giving its employees a 15% time allowance every day for constructive
daydreaming.
Company 3M has a 15% approach to innovation. Source: Innovation
Excellence
Of course, this doesn’t mean handing out a 15% buffer for employees
to just snooze at their desks. You should ask your people to
demonstrate the results of these innovation sessions.
Innovation strategy
Workplace innovation needs to be strategic and should be a core part
of your company's DNA.
No matter what their responsibilities are, every single one of your
people should be able to draw a straight line between the company
innovation strategy and the contents of his or her day-to-day job.
Develop an innovation strategy - and use it
An innovation strategy sets out guiding principles for how your
company will grow its market share through product and service
innovation. A good strategy helps to clarify what is expected of
employees at every level of your company when it comes to
problem-solving.
By developing an innovation strategy, leadership provides employees
with certainty about the core role of innovation and reinforces the idea
that innovation is everyone’s responsibility.
Developing an innovation strategy also forces senior management to
think about what innovation means to them, and to state in clear
terms how their employees should contribute new ideas for products,
systems, and services.
Microsoft is an excellent example of how to put an innovation strategy
to use. By making its strategy a core part of employee responsibilities,
Microsoft helps its employees at every level to make innovation a key
part of what they do.
Accept failure and make it the norm
It’s an unavoidable fact that innovation carries the risk of failure. For
every example of world-changing innovation, there’s a whole trash
heap of failed ideas.
Rather than running from this fact, companies need to come to peace
with it. Acknowledge the possibility of failure, dedramatize it and
encourage risky initiatives to help employees approach innovation
in a more open and inventive way.
That’s why market leaders like Coke, Netflix, and Amazon never shy
away from acknowledging their past failures.
New Coke, one of the classic failures of innovation. Source: CBS
News
As Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey puts it, “If we’re not making
mistakes, we’re not trying hard enough.” And anyway, while the New
Coke fiasco grabbed a bunch of headlines, in the end it hardly put a
dent in Coke’s position as a market leader.
Willingness to experiment
In order to be truly innovative, companies need to be willing to
experiment.
Whether this is through customer co-creation, identifying market
adjacencies, or participating in an innovation hub, companies must
demonstrate an appetite for new ways of doing things.
Look for market adjacencies
A key aspect of innovation is thinking about market adjacencies.
Adjacencies are new products or markets that are closely related to
the work a company is currently engaged in, but are different enough
to represent new value for the company. By moving into these areas,
a company can create new customers and solidify its market position.
For example, think about Disney’s recent foray into streaming media.
The media giant already produces an incredible amount of popular
content, so stepping into the market adjacency of a platform for
streaming made a lot of sense.
Embrace co-creation and open innovation opportunities
When it comes to innovation, don’t be afraid to get your customers
involved, too. After all, your diehard fans are the most likely people to
have great ideas for new products and services - especially if they
use your services and products every day.
A great example here is Starbucks, which ran its "My Starbucks
Idea" portal for a decade from 2007 to 2017, receiving over 150,000
suggestions from dedicated Starbucks fans as a result.
This not only resulted in top-selling Starbucks products like Hazelnut
Macchiatos and pumpkin spice lattes but also gave Starbucks the
chance to build a valuable community of superfans for market
research purposes.
The ‘My Starbucks Idea’ platform. Source: The Innovation Benchmark
Participate in an innovation hub
Innovation hubs are places for business representatives to get
together and share approaches to innovation. Having grown in
popularity over the last decade, there are now hundreds of these hubs
around the world.
The concept of an innovation hub recognizes the importance of a
multidisciplinary approach to innovation and shows the importance of
collaboration in problem-solving. Innovation hubs can be a great way
to encourage “blue-sky” thinking.
Take a look at the innovation hubs near you, and think about how you
and your teams could participate.
Open communication
Getting innovation right takes a commitment to open communication
and transparency.
To make innovation a real part of your workplace culture, your staff
need to know senior management is being open about the need for
innovation, and the potential benefits for the company as a result.
Be transparent
Your staff need clear, consistent information about the company’s
innovation goals, and about the potential benefits for employees if
they get things right. A key part of this is developing an innovation
strategy, and ensuring open communication about innovation.
Mobile payments company Square takes this to an extreme, requiring
meeting notes for every meeting involving more than two people to be
publicly shared across the company. This rule has helped promote
innovation by making every employee aware of the company’s
problem-solving.
Now, you probably don’t have to be that extreme. Still, you should
think about how to adopt an open communication approach when it
comes to innovation.
Staff wellbeing
Innovation isn’t just about encouraging your staff to think laterally: it’s
also about making sure that when your employees are being creative,
they don’t feel threatened or at risk.
There are two great ways to do this. First, you can recognize and
reward innovations, and second, try to ensure staff psychological
safety.
Recognize and reward successful innovations
To get the best out of your people when it comes to innovation, you
need a way to recognize and reward successful new ideas especially when they have the potential to save the company money
or boost revenue.
This can be as simple as providing public recognition, for example,
giving out awards at all-hands meetings. Though, if you also feel like
offering flashy rewards, we’re sure your staff won’t mind!
Westin Hotels rewards innovative employees with paid vacations.
Source: Marriott
Westin Hotels is a great example here. Every quarter, the hotel chain
sends its top five innovators on a paid five-day trip, providing them
with public acknowledgment and a significant reward for valuable
ideas.
Ensure staff psychological safety
This is a crucial element to get right. After all, employees don’t want to
feel like attempts at innovation could threaten their jobs if it goes
wrong.
Your staff members need to be able to be honest and forthright about
new product and systems suggestions, without fear of recrimination or
adverse effects on their jobs.
So, one of the first things you should do when encouraging innovation
is to set clear ground rules and let people know that their positions
won’t be at risk if the innovation exercise isn’t a success.
Workplace design and layout
There’s a growing recognition that the physical working environment
is just as important as management or leadership when it comes to
encouraging innovation.
Fortunately, there are some practical steps you can take here.
Organize your office for maximum innovation
Office design and layout can make a huge difference when it comes
to innovation. Even something as simple as deciding where particular
teams should sit can have a massive effect on creativity and
collaboration.
Let’s look again at Google.
Google’s innovative office design. Source: Workspace Design
Google’s groundbreaking office designs include features like putting
greens, vintage subway cars, and revolving bookcases. However, you
don’t have to invest in gimmicks to be like Google.
Instead, you can learn from Google’s approach to putting teams
together to learn from each other, and from creating spaces where
informal meetings and information sharing is more likely to happen.
These design choices don’t need to be complicated - it can be as
simple as reorganizing your seating chart to encourage staff to share
ideas and knowledge.
Tools and software
Finally, your staff also need access to the right tools to support
innovation.
There are two reasons for this. First, using the right set of tools can
save time and effort, freeing your staff up to innovate. Second, a good
set of innovation software can guide your staff in taking an idea
through from concept to implementation.
Use tools to create time and space to innovate
There’s an incredible range of time-saving softwares available to
businesses. Whether it’s project management software, online
collaboration platforms, or even cloud accounting products, it’s never
been easier to save time on basic processes.
These software products aren’t just helpful with avoiding headaches they can also free up your staff to do the kind of creative and
innovative thinking they didn’t have time for before.
So, take a look at the range of software products out there, and think
about how you could put the inevitable time savings to use.
Consider innovation software
Innovation and creative thinking isn’t a question of natural talent. With
the right tools, processes, and methods, anyone can be an innovator
and find new solutions to complex problems.
This is where ideas and innovation management software can help.
By structuring ideation, collaboration, communication and setting
parameters for problem-solving, the right software can foster a real
innovation culture across your whole company.
True innovation takes commitment and
perseverance
Despite what the business coaches might say, encouraging
innovation isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.
Moving towards an innovative workplace takes time, hard work, and a
certain amount of forgiveness for error and failure. As we’ve seen,
even successful and highly innovative companies still have their fair
share of failures. Let’s not forget the Zune.
As some observers have noted, many of the necessary ingredients of
workplace innovation also involve juggling some downsides. For
example:

encouraging employee collaboration must be balanced against
maintaining individual accountability, and leaving room for those
lone wolves who get their best work done by going solo

avoiding workplace hierarchies requires strong leadership, a
trusting approach to management, and a commitment to hiring
highly motivated people

before a company can experiment with innovation, it has to get
the day-to-day operations on track first
So, while you’re working to encourage workplace innovation,
don’t be surprised if the changes are harder to implement than
you thought.
Innovation can be a long game. Whether you’re chasing incremental
innovation or radical innovation, things will probably take longer than
you realize.