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4 Ways HR Can Cultivate a Successful Culture of Innovation

Published date: May 19, 2021 в 3:14 pm

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Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation

In the beginning, corporate innovation belonged to R&D. It was viewed as a top-down affair to which only the upper echelons of the company were privy, and you were lucky if you received an invite to the secret club.

Fast forward to today, innovation is now perceived as a culture and mindset; companies – from the long established to new startups – are seeking to instill it at all levels. HR, given its role in the organization, is in a unique position to be a major enabler for establishing mechanisms so that a culture of creativity and entre/intra-preneurship will flourish. Here are four ways HR can shape, frame, and facilitate a company-wide conversation about innovation:

1. Everyone is an innovator

“Accounting is a department. Marketing isn’t. Marketing is something everyone in your company is doing 24/7/365.” Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, Rework – Similar to marketing, companies have traditionally dedicated departments for innovation . Now, the expectation is for innovation to stem from anyone in any department. We, at SIT, define innovation as “thinking and acting differently to achieve your goals”. In this light, innovation is a valued improvement to a situational status quo; it is a way to perform your job better. It’s not tied solely to a company’s products and services, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to its productivity, operations, and processes. Adopting this outlook, HR can help to ensure that its organization’s innovation agenda will promote an inclusive and empowering work culture.

2. Innovation Roles

Years ago, my colleague recommended the book “Cool Careers for Dummies”, full of practical advice for keeping one’s career relevant. Last October, the WEF published their mid-Covid findings estimating that by 2025, 85 million jobs will be displaced by machines, while 97 million new roles will emerge . Career definitions are constantly in flux. So, while we just established that ‘everyone is an innovator’, it is still necessary to put official innovation roles in place; people who have accountability for aggregating activities and outcomes.

We’re talking about Innovation Managers, Architects, Coaches, Ambassadors, etc. Some of these may be full-time positions in their own right, while the majority are most effective when these responsibilities are assigned to employees distributed across the company, in addition to their current roles. HR can assist in determining and characterizing the roles, identifying individuals to assume official innovation positions, and defining the criteria to be assessed during the interview process.

 3. Personal Innovation Goals

Declaring a culture of innovation and actually having people participate and evolve such a culture are two different things. There needs to be a system in place for monitoring innovation KPIs that cultivates a working environment where responsible risk-taking is encouraged. Including innovation activities in people’s annual goals and then assessing them during performance reviews keeps the checks and balances in place to make innovation a reality.

4. Opportunities for Innovation: Gaining Skills and Putting Into Practice

HR and L&D offer many opportunities for training, programs, and events that people can join. More and more companies are promoting approaches like Lean Start-Up, Intrapreneurship, Hackathons, etc. as frameworks inside which to innovate. Many used to believe that creativity is a talent reserved for the few, the vast majority never got to develop this muscle. Today, we know better. Structured creativity tools exist; people can be taught to innovate. The same WEF report identifies the top skills which employers see as rising in prominence include critical thinking, analysis, problem-solving, and skills in self-management such as active learning, resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility. In other words, creativity and innovation. Skills; not talents. Developing, running, and making innovation training programs available broadly; including practical application of these new skills to their organizational roles as part of these programs; and then keeping employees accountable for using their new skills after the training, proves to the individual that they really can develop these skills in a useful way. Practical business results emerging immediately during the training program, legitimizes participation for all– even if one’s manager doesn’t understand why it’s important for her direct report to be an “innovator”.

HR has the mandate to nurture organizational culture. A culture of innovation requires providing both the tools and the outlets which will promote both the individual’s growth goals and the company’s business goals. It’s no secret that people want their ideas to be heard (and acted on!), and to be constantly challenged with opportunities to move ahead in the workplace. HR prioritizing its “innovation tab” will not only assist in improving the company’s bottom line, but help with employee retention and workplace satisfaction, as well.

4 Most Critical Innovation-Related Challenges

Published date: May 12, 2021 в 4:43 pm

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Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation

The Meetup was held in 3M’s Innovation Center: 40+ participants from a dozen Minnesota-based organizations convened to share and learn from one another how they deal with some common challenges that they encounter while trying to promote innovation. Prior to the meeting, they raised a long list of 67 challenges, but there were many that had some overlap and as the SIT team analyzed them, we realize that the vast majority fall squarely into four main categories.

 

4 Most Critical Innovation-Related Challenges:

 

1. How do we de-risk our innovation efforts

“Lack of external leverage; too many options to choose from makes it even more difficult.” Companies are accelerating their front-end efforts; they are producing more ideas and launching more development projects. However, they feel that this only exacerbates the stress of having to decide where to allocate development resources, how to select those products or services with the highest probability of success, and how to manage their launches.

SIT’s take on this: Of course, entering the experimentation funnel with a shorter list of quality ideas that have already been initially vetted by market potential, feasibility, and connection with company strategy will help with resource allocation decision-making early on. Additionally, the shift toward more agile-like approaches, often through Lean Startup, should in principle alleviate this stress, since such approaches dictate that instead of focusing on de-risking a specific “big” idea, one should test numerous MVPs and quickly pivot based on the results of “experiments”. 

But it seems to us that although many companies have officially adopted an LSU process, they find it difficult to wean themselves off the habits of testing and seeking a high level of certainty for each specific innovation before launch.

 

2. How do we change our company’s culture/mindset?

 

“We need to be focusing on long-term development, not the ‘right now’”. “Internal cultural shift necessary to transform our business model.” The most common task these days goes way beyond launching a product, or even an entire product line. Key words are “culture”, “change” and “transformation”. The desire is to find ways to influence the entire organization, change strategies and business models.

SIT’s take: We’ve seen this process evolve over the past 26 years, from attention to a specific local result such as solving a problem or launching a single product, to the demand to generate an entire pipeline and roadmap, all the way to the current situation, in which CEOs and top management either realize the need or are pressured by their Boards or stakeholders to lead transformational changes in their organizations. This can often lead to futile high-profile and costly changes-for-the-sake-of-changing, but, if well-managed by a committed senior leadership team, innovation can truly transform and invigorate a company. Like all major changes, the transformation needs to evolve over time as short-term milestones are hit at a cadence that the organization can digest while ensuring that the day-to-day routine business that keeps the lights on continues to thrive.

 

3. How do we accelerate / acquire speed and agility?

 

“Innovation takes time to hatch. How do we innovate within the fast-paced environment?” Companies are not only pressured to change, but to change faster. This obviously places additional demands on managers, often accompanied by stress.

SIT’s take: A paradox ensues, whereby managers are expected to lead profound transformations, rather than superficial change, which requires time and patience; but, since the environment changes at an ever-accelerating pace – requiring rapid and immediate adaptations – there is less patience and resources for profound long-term change processes to take place. More than ever, small-scale quantifiable value needs to be created as part of a clear plan as to how this accumulated value results in the profound change, which was the original goal.  

 

4. How do we listen and get closer to our customers?

 

“Doing adequate research to uncover new problems.” “Lack of customer interaction to direct innovation.” After decades of effort to get closer to the client, listen to the Voice of the Customer, observe, empathize, research and analyze, companies still feel that true understanding and insights tend to elude them, and therefore are searching for novel approaches.

SIT’s take: Although true that innovation is useless unless it addresses a customer need, it is a mistake to believe that true innovation is born from listening to VoC. Being attuned to your customers is a necessary but not sufficient condition for innovation success. Instead, we recommend a combination of: a) breaking the more-of-the-same-VoC mold by interacting with your customers proactively through co-creation engagements; b) using structured innovation methods to come up with ideas that are, in turn, validated with customers. Don’t use VoC as the starting point for innovation, but as an assessment tool for the amount of resources to invest in bringing and innovative concept to execution.

To summarize, we found, not surprisingly, a high level of congruence between the most pressing innovation-related issues in a wide variety of organizations and positions. And how some of the ill-advised Common Innovation Wisdom exacerbate, rather than alleviate, many of the challenges associated with innovation.

How Innovation Varies Across Countries & Cultures

Published date: May 5, 2021 в 10:21 am

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Category: Innovation,Innovation Facilitation,Organizational Innovation,Problem Solving,Strategy

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Have you ever wondered how different cultures view innovation? Why are some countries more willing to adopt new advances while others fight to keep old systems in place? In today’s article, we’ll be taking a look at two innovative research studies that reveal the impact of culture on people’s ability to innovate.  We’ll also show you how to use this information to create a work environment conducive to innovation. To begin, let’s jump right in to discuss how a country’s culture affects the early stages of innovation.

What Affects the Early Stages of Innovation?

In a study on innovation in European countries, innovation researchers wanted to see if understanding different national cultures could help them predict certain behavioral patterns when it came to initiating innovation. To do this, they categorized cultures using four dimensions –– power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism-collectivism, and masculinity-femininity — and then tested the relationship between each dimension and innovation. Today, we’ll concentrate on the first two dimensions: power distance and uncertainty avoidance.

 

Power Distance Measures: Just How Much Power Lies in the Hierarchical Structure

 Cultures with large power-distance measures are those with formal rules and a centralized decision-making system. These societies keep information-sharing to a select few — only those in power, know the master plan and everyone else remains in the dark. On the other hand, small power-distance cultures don’t rely so heavily on a rigid chain of command. There’s free-flowing communication between hierarchical levels. Both of these traits help foster an environment where creative thoughts and ideas can flourish, which may ultimately lead to breakthroughs. So, which culture do you think does better in the initiation phase of innovation…the one with small or large power distance? If you guessed small power distance cultures… you are correct! Countries in this category include the UK, USA, Germany, the Netherlands, and Nordic countries.

This innovative research shows that high power distance cultures, such as Belgium, France, Poland, and Portugal, may be unknowingly inhibiting their innovation efforts due to this trait. If people are more likely to feel confined and afraid to come up with new ideas for fear of disapproval, they won’t even try. This strategy will severely limit innovation initiation, according to the study. The next dimension may also greatly impact the early stages of innovation.

 

Uncertainty Avoidance: Whether Tense Situations are Avoided or Tolerated

You may not think there’s a connection between uncertainty avoidance and innovation, but there is according to the research. See, cultures with high uncertainty avoidance adopt an attitude of “What’s different is dangerous.” People are encouraged to follow the rules to a T — without ever stepping out of line. When this type of environment is created, you’ll often see a workforce that’s unmotivated to think creatively. As a result, they may struggle to come up with new ideas and innovative solutions to existing problems.  Not only that, your team may be much more resistant to change. And as you can imagine, this way of thinking can negatively impact your innovation efforts. On the other hand, a low uncertainty avoidance culture constantly revises rules and makes allowances to bend existing ones, given the right circumstances. Cultures that rank low on this dimension also expect conflict and see it as just another part of life. Ambiguous situations are viewed the same way — since they’re inevitable, you must always be ready to adjust your plan and adapt accordingly, two things that work well when it comes to innovation. Now before we dive into the specific traits shown by innovative cultures, it’s important to understand a few fundamental findings first:

“Existing cultural conditions determine whether, when, how and in what form new innovation will be adopted,” as our next study shows.

 

Cultural Impacts on Innovation

Which characteristics do cultures with high innovation rank well on?

Researchers discovered that there’s a greater acceptance of innovation when the foundation is already ingrained in the culture.  For cultures built on long-standing traditions, innovation may seem as if it’s going against the societal norms that have been passed down for generations. Therefore, it may not be as well-received or encouraged. Yet, researchers discovered, and research revealed, that when societies are willing to take traditions and adjust them to fit modern times, innovation is much more likely to happen. To that end, there’s one more factor that may contribute to fostering an innovative culture: whether people believe they can make an impact.

Cultural or organizational “class systems” can become like shackles — with people unable to move and think freely.

When applied to the work environment, it’s virtually impossible to motivate your team or community to work at their potential (or, as often is required to innovate, to exceed their potential) when they don’t see their hard work paying off for them in some regard. “Most people work in the hope of reward,” and if they don’t see any, they’ll be less inclined to work hard. People need to feel like they can make a difference and that their ideas are not only heard but also used whenever possible. And they need to do this in an environment that fosters community and relationships.

For an innovative culture to flourish and thrive, the scientists learned, this form of social capital is needed.

 

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