One of the best blogs I read regularly on innovation is 100% Open. The latest post there is a pretty interesting one on building an innovation culture.
The tips are:
- Focus on fostering a viral innovation culture one person/team at a time
- Build innovation habits
- Institutionalise what innovation looks like
- Give mavericks & their networks permission to innovate
- Celebrate benefits of creative-thinking, risk-taking & mistake making in personal and professional lives
- Incentivise inner motivation as much as financial or professional rewards
- Give innovation (a) space & bring it to life
Read the whole post for a description of each one.
Not sure I would agree with them all – number 3 gives me the willies – but certainly food for thought!
Any you would add, or question?
Hmm no 3 seems to run completely counter to the essence of innovation. I would add a point about creating a culture where it’s OK to fail (occasionally and within reason!) Individuals and organisations can learn just as much from failure as they can from success. Sometimes more.
Hi Dave,
Thanks for the post about our blog and really glad you like it and the post. Re point 3, I take your point and wasn’t sure about that myself (I didn’t write the post) and I think the checklist suggestion doesn’t really capture it. We’ve been working with some large organisations recently where we’ve been surprised how many people have said ‘innovation is not my job’ in different ways which feels wrong and there has to be a way to distribute responsibility and opportunity for innovation across and beyond the organisation.
Anyway, thanks again.
Cheers,
Roland