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Innovating Company Culture

A practical approach

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Introduction

• To create an innovative company/organizational culture it is necessary to understand a number of pre-requisites of innovation

• If all pre-requisites are taken into consideration, then the company/organization will have a good foundation for an innovative company culture

• Continuously revisiting these pre-requisites and re-evaluating them is essential to remain innovative

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Company CultureEdgar Schein presents culture as a series of assumptions a person makes about the group in which they participate. These assumptions are grouped into three levels, each level becoming more difficult to articulate and change.  These assumptions can be seen through:

• Artifacts (what you experience with your senses, such as language, styles, stories, and published statements);• Espoused beliefs and values (ideals, goals and aspirations); and• Basic underlying beliefs (taken for granted conditions). [10]

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Overview

Innovation

Why?How?

When?

Who?

What?

Whom?

Where?With?

By having answers to these 8 questions, an organization can build a good foundation for an innovative culture

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How do we innovate?Method

• It can be difficult for people to just sit down and think about innovation without any help

• To reduce this barrier of entry and facilitate for people to start thinking about innovation, there are several methods available

• Lateral and parallel thinking are two methods introduced by Edward de Bono [8], and there are many others available as well

• The line manager should introduce different methods to the organization to facilitate the innovation process

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How do we innovate?Infrastructure

• There needs to be an easy and transparent way of submitting new innovations and ideas

• An innovation portal where all new ideas are listed and where it is easy to see the follow up of each new idea could be one solution

• Once a person has come up with an idea, it should never be intimidating or cumbersome to submit that idea, and all members of a group should be able to support and comment on each others ideas

• You can always go into more details if the idea gets positive attention

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Why do we innovate?

• It should be clear to a group why they should invest time and effort to innovate and come up with new ideas

• Is reducing costs the major driver of innovation? Or is it a lack of quality in reports? Or is it the number of submitted patents? Or lack of product quality?

• If the group knows why they have to innovate, it is easier to focus their attention on innovations that will actually get positive attention

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Why do we innovate?Assessment of ideas

• The assessment criteria should be clear to everyone

• If an idea is accepted or rejected, it should be clear not only why, but how that assessment was done, and based on what criteria

• This transparency is critical to give the innovation program credibility

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Why do we innovate?Personal Incentives

• Why should an individual invest effort in the innovation process? What incentives are available to motivate people?

• Financial incentives are often not effective and overreliance on them can erode emotional commitment [7] [11]

• Allowing people to control what they do and give them autonomy is one way – allow people to drive the implementation of their own innovations [7]

• Recognition within the group is another way – have a monthly department innovation meeting where top innovators are recognized [7]

Incentives [6]

Financial Incentives

Moral Incentives

Personal Incentives

Natural Incentives

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When do we innovate?

• When will the group have time to innovate? Don’t expect people to innovate on their own time - Hopefully they will, but that will be a by-product of a good innovation culture

• Monthly brain storming [9] sessions?

• 10 minutes on each weekly section meeting?

• Lessons learned after each project?

• One hour each Friday?

• 10 minutes on a morning stand up innovation meeting?

• One hour bi-weekly to think about ideas alone?

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Who innovates?

• Everyone in the group should be part of the innovation effort

• However people with less than 6 months experience will have a hard time doing meaningful contributions because of their lack of knowledge, and participating should be seen more as training

• People with 6-18 months of experience could be separated from the rest of the group since they have a unique opportunity to have enough experience to do meaningful contributions, but not been involved long enough to become rigid and trapped in their way of working

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What do we innovate?

• Meaningful innovation requires understanding and knowledge – we innovate primarily within our core competence

• Without knowledge it is easy to invent the wheel over and over again

• Of course we should never prohibit anyone from innovating within other areas, but for the innovations to be relevant and to get the right follow up, it is easier if the innovations are relevant to the groups work

• The line manager should focus to groups attention in the right direction

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For Whom do we innovate?

• The stakeholders should be clear to everyone

• If an idea is generated, it should be clear who receives and asses that idea

• It should also be clear who supports and finances the implementation, development and follow up of the idea

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Where do we innovate?

• Do we have specific rooms for innovation? Or do we use regular meeting rooms?

• Can we use the environment to facilitate innovation somehow?

• Specific innovation white boards in the coffee room?

• The more we can support the exchange and development of ideas, the better

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With whom to we innovate?

• It should be clear with whom a person can bounce ideas with and who is involved in the innovation process

• Innovation is a group effort, but of course parts of it can be done alone as well

• An initial idea can be generated alone, and then developed and improved with the group, but everything can also be done as a group

• The manager should also be involved in the innovation effort and add input from a different perspective and abstraction level

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Conclusion

• If the group has these 8 questions answered in a satisfactory way, they have a solid foundation and a good pre-requisite for creating a thriving innovation culture

• The leader of the group has significant responsibility to drive the group in the right direction and give the pre-requisites needed for innovation to become an intricate part of the groups foundation

• Innovation cannot end with an excel sheet full of ideas that no one acts upon – follow up, support, implementation and rewarding effort is critical

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References[1] The Four Drivers of Innovationhttp://businessjournal.gallup.com/content/26068/four-drivers-innovation.aspx[2] Creating an Innovation Culture: Failure is necessaryhttp://www.forbes.com/sites/darden/2012/06/20/creating-an-innovation-culture-accepting-failure-is-necessary/[3] 8 Pillars of Innovationhttp://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/quarterly/innovation/8-pillars-of-innovation.html[4] Why corporate culture is important for innovationhttp://innovateonpurpose.blogspot.se/2012/10/why-corporate-culture-is-important-for.html[5] The Truth about Innovation Culturehttp://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2012/11/14/the-truth-about-innovation-culture/[6] Wikipedia – Incentiveshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incentive[7] Money is not the best motivatorhttp://www.forbes.com/2010/04/06/money-motivation-pay-leadership-managing-employees.html[8] Edward de Bonohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_de_Bono[9] Brainstorminghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorming[10] Organisational Culture Defineshttp://www.sidewaysthoughts.com/blog/2010/11/organisational-culture-defined-courtesy-of-edgar-schein/[11] The Puzzle of Motivation

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html