Innovation is not a brainstorming session. 5 principles that every organisation should practice.

While organisations seem to understand the basics of creativity well; diversity, connections, collaboration but leadership within sometimes doesn’t know the path to achieve this.

Creativity is not a spontaneous combustion

The leaders need to appreciate that innovation is complex. There is no easy route to it. No one has discovered the magic mantra. The plethora of research that exists many a times contradicts each other, and an infinite number of books published each year, should clearly indicate its complexity to all.

If one has to think of a parallel, innovation is like trying to light up wet leaves on a rainy day with two wet sticks while sitting in the open.

The path towards the answers is messy.

But even before you embark on this journey there are many things that must be executed right to even hope for a chance to reach the end destination.

Innovation is not about one big thing right, it is getting many small things in place that would then hopefully combine to give an intriguing answer.

As Kevin Ashton, writes in his seminal book, “How to fly a horse”, innovation is regular work and is incremental in nature. And an incremental change that opens doors to new opportunities is called a breakthrough.

Innovation is not one big thing, it is many many small things done right.

Primarily he is espousing the need to be continuously in search for that magical incremental.

There are certain realities that come up again and again in every research and in every case study. These facets are certain mandatories that organisations must focus upon.

These are top five that we recommend and try to achieve for our clients.

1. Enhance the quality of conversations

Let’s say you are an educational institution, and all employees are students in that college. How will you enhance the conversations in your institution? You will achieve this by increasing the capability & knowledge of your students. And to ensure whether the quality has actually improved you will keep testing the students before you send them out in the real world. This exercise is not purely benevolent, as an institution you are aware that your own reputation is linked to that of your students.

Similarly as an organisation, the rules remain the same.

You have an objective to grow continuously.

That growth is only through the employees. Employees are the custodians of your growth and market reputation. So it is for your own benefit that you train them regularly to enhance their capability. You can level up your internal conversations by regularly practicing idea hackatons on a regular intervals, testing their skills. These habits & skills built over time will lead superior internal conversations and will/might provide you with the next big idea.

2. Discover like-minded talent

To continue the analogy of an educational institution, a college has many students. Each student has his own interests and skills. And natural affinities create friendships that last a life time. These friendships that are formed go beyond the classes, these are across years, across departments, across colleges. These people will support each other to maximise their intents without conflict or any ulterior motive. They are each others natural well-wishers and caretakers. There is no authority or supervision required to dip into this collective pool of resources. It is given and offered voluntarily.

But colleges are naturally fluid, organisations in contrast are far more rigid.

But training and learning can be a route to connect people, by not specifying who should attend which training. This will help employees know each other and discover each other, create organic affinity groups. And when that interesting project will come, the team would naturally know who should be part of this group. Affinity and psychological safety that is key to any group would be a natural reality for the organisation.

3. Engineered Serendipity

Everyone who is a fan of Apple and follows its best practices, would have heard the story of how Steve Jobs designed the Pixar building and would remember that he put the restrooms in the middle.

Steve Jobs truly understood that innovation is connections of ideas, and these ideas reside in different minds. If one could bring the people closer literally, one brings the ideas closer and the probability of ideas connecting is far higher.

Rarely does an organisation think that their physical design makes them more or less innovative. Most of them still follow industrial design approach, so few enlightened ones who have adopted the open office design have also got it wrong.

It is not about open office or boxed office, it is much more than that.

The design is about creating conversations and not in interfering in private mind-spaces or interrupting work-spaces.

Plan for conversations and not random visibility or entertainment. As Steve Jobs had understood by connecting people repeatedly in occasions that encourage small talk, employees eventually talk work because, if one was to draw a Venn diagram, is what is common between them.

4. Continuous Challenge

Employees are like athletes, they also need to train themselves though the months, seasons, years, before they perform before the crowds.

Without the training, employees are the mute untrained gladiators thrown in front of the lions for the entertainment of the baying crowds. There will be lots of noise and screams but would result only in unwarranted but expected mayhem.

Practice innovation even when it is not necessary.

Challenge your employees. Train them to work in teams. Let them learn the rules of innovation, innovatively. Teach them the constraints, allow them to scrape resources. Practice makes perfect.

These could be real or imagined challenges. These could be big or small challenges. the focus here is on the methodology and not necessarily the output.

Write to us at ask@thinksimplr.com if you want our Internal Innovation Challenges Kit

5. Enable Expressions

Any organisation is made up of employees with different personalities, some are introvert and others are extrovert. And along with that there are natural hierarchies in every organisations. All these create hesitations, doubts, egos, beliefs, cultures, mores and norms.

As much as thinking ideas is an art, presenting the ideas is an equally delicate science.

Don’t just train your employees to think ideas, also focus and plan for the process of presenting the ideas. There is much training required at every level on enabling expressions. This will include, how leaders receive ideas, how employees present ideas to the management, peers, functional heads, how gatekeepers are trained to evaluate ideas, when to evaluate, how to evaluate, who to evaluate. Each of these ladders impact the eventual output. The concept of psychological safety is best understood in the expression stage. To present ideas without the fear of ridicule, to accept ideas without hurting self-ego, select ideas with an understanding of inherent mental biases, are all skills developed through learning, training and practice.