Questions you need to ask yourself if your company really wants to be a driver of innovation

Innovation management is not just something you do on the side. Question whether your company is on the right track and think about running an ideas and innovation management community! 

Question your company's core values ​​if you really want to be a driver of innovation

Companies that want to remain competitive make innovation one of their guiding principles. They want to be able to be pioneers and trendsetters, but also achieve excellent bottom line sales figures. Because an innovation that nobody wants and therefore nobody buys is a useless innovation. It is not uncommon for management to talk about their own drive for innovation as a core principle for their company. But how do you know that these values ​​are embedded and lived by everyone? Perhaps you should conduct an innovation assessment to find out whether these values ​​are being adopted or are just lip service. So what should you ask about when conducting an innovation assessment of your company culture?

Ask yourself if there is a culture of innovation in your company that promotes limitless collaboration

Collaboration, especially across departmental boundaries and company groups, is the basis for every innovation. Most great ideas are the result of a combination of inspirations & brainwaves, assembled idea fragments and an existing, established and lived culture of innovation. Ask your employees whether they feel strictly tied to their role or department, or whether they believe collaboration is possible across the board if they believe good ideas can be shared anywhere.

Does your company have a healthy culture of failure? Are employees allowed to make mistakes?

Innovation always carries the risk of failure. After all, 80% of newly developed products and innovations fail every year. Failure is part of it, life is just part of it. If management sets out to be driven by innovation as a paradigm, but then “sanctions” failures, does not tolerate them, or sweeps them under the rug, then employees will definitely not experience the risk tolerance that is necessary for the development of innovations. The best thing to do is to ask your workforce exactly about this topic in the upcoming employee survey, namely whether there is a fear of failure, a fear of making mistakes. If the result is exactly that, then you should definitely initiate changes here. Because employees who are afraid of making mistakes are unlikely to generate valuable ideas or even take ownership of an idea.

Are you actually and sincerely listening to your employees, partners, suppliers and customers?

Innovation requires being open, and being open means being able to listen. And to open yourself up to the outside world, to ask for suggestions, to accept advice. There is a reason why companies that excel at innovation management do better than others. These successful innovators not only listen, they also ask others to share their perspectives on what could be done better or differently. Are feedback and ideas exchanged openly and transparently within your company as part of your innovation programs? Does everyone know what is being said and feel empowered to respond? Do you regularly conduct customer surveys and ask for suggestions for improvement? Also consider opting for open innovation or crowdsourcing and harness the power of a committed innovation community.

Do you measure your innovation efforts with metrics so that you can continually improve your innovation process?

Many companies measure the success of innovation by sales growth or registered patents. But there are many more metrics within innovation management that will help you continually improve your innovation processes, increase the commitment of your employees, reduce costs and increase the productivity of your innovation programs. If you would like to learn more about innovation metrics, download our → infographic on this topic. You can also read interesting facts about innovation analyses in one of our previous blog articles.

Do you set a sufficient budget for your innovation program and do you give employees enough time for idea management?

There are companies that set the budget for an innovation program as they see fit. If it is used up or reaches its limits, an innovation program will sometimes be stopped in the middle, regardless of whether it could have been completed successfully or not. The same also applies to determining human resources. It is not uncommon for employees not to be given enough time to develop ideas for which they have taken responsibility. Something else is always more important. This demotivates employees and they are unlikely to volunteer to drive and develop ideas. It is therefore important to be clear before starting an innovation program about what budget and human resources are needed and that it is possible that a budget can sometimes be exceeded.

Do you provide your employees with technology and tools to develop and implement ideas?

A carpenter needs good tools if she wants to create an outstanding cabinet with great craftsmanship. A hairdresser needs at least a comb and scissors to create a beautiful haircut on a person. Tools are also essential for innovation management if you really want to do it seriously. From a metaplan case to an innovation community: provide everyone involved in the innovation process with the appropriate tools so that they can generate, visualize, develop and drive ideas. So give your workforce the resources they need to develop and implement innovations!

Excursus: Would you have known these five innovation drivers whose innovations you are sure of?

All innovations start with an idea, which is then turned into reality. But even when inventions are widely used, there is sometimes little knowledge about the inventors and innovation drivers behind the innovation. Here are five innovators you may not have heard of, but whose innovations are present in your everyday life.

Ernie Fraze

Ernie Fraze, the owner of a successful engineering firm, came up with the idea in 1959 when he found himself at a picnic where there was no way to open canned drinks. He opened it from the bumper of his car that day, but he kept thinking about this dilemma.

A few months later, when he couldn't sleep, Fraze came up with the idea of ​​a new way to open cans with a tab. This invention, known as the “Pop-Top,” was mass-produced by his soft drink and brewing company. By 1980, the innovator Fraze's company was generating annual sales of over $500 million with this innovation.

Joseph Friedman

Joseph Friedman was at his brother's soda shop and watched his young daughter try to drink a milkshake through a straight straw. Realizing that she was having difficulty reaching the straw without tipping the glass, he invented what is now known as the bendy straw.

Friedman inserted a screw into the straw, which he then wrapped dental floss around to create a ribbed texture. When the screw was removed, the straw naturally bent over the edge of the glass, solving his daughter's problem.

Innovator Friedman patented his innovation in 1937 and then founded a company to produce the new flexible straw. The rights were eventually sold to Maryland Cut Corporation, which sells around 500 million straws each year.

Margaret knight

Margaret Knight noticed how difficult it was to pack items into loose bags she made while working in a paper bag factory. She solved the problem by inventing a machine that could fold and glue paper to make a flat-bottomed bag that was strong and reinforced. The innovator initially created a prototype out of wood, but was only able to obtain a patent when she made one out of iron.

Knight put their innovation into action, but while it was being manufactured in a machine shop, Charles Annan copied the idea and received the patent instead. Knight sued Annan for copyright infringement and won based on her detailed sketches and plans. She later founded her own paper bag company and enjoyed large royalty checks as a result.

Jeff Dean

Jeff Dean is recognized for co-designing the core query system and building some of the programming infrastructure used by Google Translate and various other products. Innovator Jeff Dean was hired at Google when the company only had about 25 employees and remains modest about his innovations.

Stanford Ovshinsky

Innovator Stanford Ovshinsky, arguably one of the most prolific inventors of the 20th century, had a forward-thinking mentality that resulted in over 400 patents during his lifetime. You probably know many of them. Smithsonian Magazine reports on his contributions to modern technology: "When you turn on your flat-screen TV with a click of the remote, when a Prius drives silently by, when you see solar panels powering a house, (or) when you take a photo You have Ovshinsky to thank for that in part on your smartphone.”

He invented an environmentally friendly nickel-metal hydride battery that was used in everything from laptops to electric cars, liquid crystal flat panels in modern televisions, rewritable CDs and DVDs, solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells. Would you have known the name behind these innovations?

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KEYWORDS OF THIS BLOG POST

Innovation driver | Innovations | Companies | Innovation Management