Creating a Culture of Innovation

Innovation seems to be the buzzword of the 21st Century. Google, Facebook, Uber, Instagram are the torchbearers of this movement and companies are doing everything possible – from inorganic growth, recruiting top notch talent, investing in fun workspaces to rebranding their culture to tap into their employees’ creative minds.

So, while you cannot literally teach innovation in a classroom setting, there are a few things that a leader, an executive or an entrepreneur can do to foster a culture of creativity and innovation.

Creative design processes traditionally employed by fields such as architecture, scriptwriting, fashion design and art can provide many cues as to how business folks can systematically tap into their creative side to come up with breakthrough ideas.

Brainstorming. U.S. scientist Linus Pauling says, “The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” Top Innovation firm, IDEO uses this method to bring about the most creative solutions to market’s pressing problems. IDEO’s ground rules for brainstorming are: “Encourage wild ideas; defer judgment; stay focused on the topic; be visual; go for quantity — set a goal for the number of ideas you hope to generate, and then surpass it.”

The concept is to work in a team on a given problem that needs a creative solution. In a typical brainstorming session, everyone in the room comes up with as many ideas/ solutions as possible. Each idea is pinned to the board and none is judged, criticized or annulled at the origination stage. The team then goes through several rounds of iterations developing each idea until a few promising ones make it to the end in terms of execution.

Rewards System. A TED talk by Daniel Pink reveals that a traditional rewards system that increases rewards with an increased or better output tends to narrow focus in turn hampering creativity. Creativity needs a free and open mind and not a narrowed focus that is divided between the lure of the reward and the task at hand. Increased rewards for increased output is perhaps better suited when the job requires execution of pre-established processes or producing a standardized output.

Increase Diversity & Inclusion. Diversity is not just what we understand from US EEO laws but also includes diversity in education, experience, thoughts and personality type. This is something I see a lot in all top Consulting firms and also Business Schools (not surprising that they feed off each other!). Consulting firms, for example, are tasked with problem solving and troubleshooting some of the most complex problems facing corporations. It is no surprise when, as a Consultant, I look around to find people with backgrounds as varied as engineering, psychology, military, governance and accounting, to name just a few. Their recruiting efforts heavily emphasize on the diversity of their workforce for the sheer richness of perspectives and ideas that are brought to the table.

Look into other boxes. “Good artists copy; great artists steal”, said Pablo Picasso. Picasso’s breakthrough masterpiece “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon” reveals elements of Mastisse’s “Happiness of Life” and the African Culture; Starbucks was originally inspired by the coffee shop culture in Italy and the MacIntosh was born when Steve Jobs first saw the Graphical User Interface in use at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center.

This may seem to defeat the very essence of creativity but it cannot be further from the truth. Our brains cannot throw out something that they have not been exposed to earlier. Uber has not reinvented the wheel, just successfully introduced technology and other variations into an already existing operating model. The IPod, Kindle, Apple watch are all excellent examples where ideas have come from existing products.

Activating the subconscious mind. Ideas are known to occur in a shower, while exercising, cooking, taking a walk, meditating or generally when one is in a relaxed state of mind or is not deliberately focusing on an outcome for hours at stretch. There is an entire field of research devoted to this, but in a nutshell, these insights happen when we have switched off our active working memory and have activated our subconscious mind.

Google has tapped into this research and has set up innovative office spaces where people can “work and play” (they even have napping rooms!). Their website states – “When you want people to think creatively and push the boundaries of what’s possible, their workspace shouldn’t be a drab maze of beige cubicles. Like most of our decisions, data shows that these spaces have a positive impact on productivity, collaboration and inspiration.”

Apart from the above, learning something new and generally being in a happy state of mind are also ways that are known to fuel creativity. A recent research by the Department of Fashion Imaging at Mingdao University in Taiwan that included 180 designers from 2 design associations revealed that subjective well-being and job satisfaction are highly correlated with creative inspiration. The happier an employee felt, the greater the probability that she will generate creative ideas.

So there are several ways in which we can tap into our creative side; by fostering a culture and placing increased emphasis on behaviors that provide fertile grounds for creativity. When implementing at an organizational level, as with any culture defining initiative, this too would fail without a strong backing from the organization’s leadership, both, in speech and in action.