How to push more innovation projects in your company?
“What is the calculus of innovation? The calculus of innovation is really quite simple: Knowledge drives innovation, innovation drives productivity, productivity drives economic growth.”
But if you clicked on this article, you were most probably already convinced innovation is a pillar of a successful business.
For today’s share, I would like to define 2 important phases when you need to usually give an extra nudge to the teams around you: how to get deeper into the creative mindset, and how to make sure you are actually launching the innovation.
Phase 1 - Intensify the creativity spirit
Mix different fields of expertise. If you want something new, it work marvels to mix up at least 2 universes which don’t usually have the opportunity to talk to each other. It is almost a certain promise that automatically, new ideas will be generated. A great inspiration that illustrate perfectly this idea is the episode about Neri Oxman on Bio-Architecture in the Netflix documentary serie Abstract - the art of design.
Get inspired. Do your homework, know your market, know the usual practices, then challenge something about the way it all works. Then and forget about it all for a little while and let it rest. Let your brain do the background work. Come back to the topic again with a fresh look and voila! You’ll soon see new ideas popping.
Make it a habit. Creativity is a skill, therefore it can be trained. Consider it a mental game that you wire your brain into practicing. I truly believe that valorising creativity in your team as part of the culture, including weekly rituals and long term objectives to make sure it is really embedded, is crucial. You’ll see this is true when you realize how hard it is to find a new idea when you have done it for a long time.
Phase 2 - Make it happen, now!
Innovation implies that you will drive change, and change automatically scares people. However, at this point, you know you have a good idea, and it will never turn into an innovation if you don’t implement it. Your challenge now is to convince as many people as you can around you that it is an incredible chance to put as much energy in this project as you.
Accept the risk. Acknowledge there will be risks and be ready to take them . If this is really new stuff (and not a re-issue of something existing), you’re not sure it’s going to work. When you gamble, be ready to lose.
Anticipate. Before entering any innovation project, you need to make sure all your urgent work is clear from your to-do list. You can of course work projects in parallel, but need to have a minimum of free time, mental space and budget left over to dedicate to this new project. Don’t let day-to-day considerations eat up your initiative.
Ask feedback from relevant people. At this stage, only talk to who have true expertise, not the ones who love you and want to protect you. You need truthful and legitimate feedback, not a warning from someone that would like you to avoid to crash. In the same spirit, give another bone to bite to the non believers, as they will easily bring every team members’ moral down.
Launch! Don’t wait up for too long to test what you are doing and to mesure it’s impact. If you delay it, you’ll lose the fragile balance you have succeeded to put raise the motivation of the team members around you. All the arguments in favor of risks and the non-believers will quickly come back. When you start to implement, you don’t have to gamble it all wither. Enter your testing phase, and use it to improve your concept and bullet-proof it. Using the Agile project management concepts can be of great help.
Source: Abstract: The Art of Design | Officiële Netflix-website
