Innovation is about unleashing creative thought, looking at things from different angles, and coming up with new ways to solve problems. Yet business innovation isn’t something that can be easily learned in a workshop or seminar, and it certainly isn’t something that a single entrepreneur can always be expected to muster by themselves. For companies that want to use innovation as a wellspring for growth, it’s important to consider tapping into the creative capabilities of everyone on your team.
But how do you encourage employees to start thinking outside the box? One way can be to lead by example: Try showing how others how to think, act, and adapt innovatively in all situations, from big projects to daily activities. Modeling innovation – and recognizing employee efforts to innovate – can help positively reinforce team expectations and cultivate a receptive environment that rewards everyone for throwing ideas against the wall to see what sticks.
Here are seven ways you can model innovation for others in your business.
1. Embrace social media as a source of innovation inspiration.
Consider showing your team that social listening – the act of monitoring and analyzing social media content relevant to your product or brand – can be an important creative activity. Customers and the public often use social media to mention problems they’d like solved or to point out things they dislike about a competitor’s offering. Try paying attention to these comments, as they may trigger novel ideas about new products your company could create or innovative ways to do something before the competition gets there first.
To lead by example, try regularly passing around relevant links to comments or reviews, whether via email, your team’s collaboration software channel, or during meetings. Consider asking your team what they think the feedback means and how your company could leverage it.
2. Encourage innovative skunkworks projects.
A skunkworks project refers to a team-based initiative that aims to develop breakthrough technologies, products, or services. Often kept secret, skunkworks teams have a high degree of autonomy and tend to work outside of a business’s usual organizational structure. This approach can offer freedom to take risks and make creative decisions, without seeking excessive approvals. If your business is in need of innovation, it may be worth encouraging employees to launch a skunkworks project. Consider setting some goals to guide the project, and try to make sure the team will be able to focus on it without getting bogged down by day-to-day activities.
If the occasional skunkworks project isn’t suitable for your business, consider similar alternatives, such as the “20% time” rule made famous by Google. The rule encourages employees to autonomously spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit the company. While it’s unclear whether Google still applies the rule, it did give rise to significant advances, including AdSense and Google News.
Still, not all companies are in a position to allow employees to spend a full 20% of their time on unstructured innovation. But encouraging even the occasional creative side project could yield remarkable results.
Even though your team may not have the resources of larger competitors, you can make up for it by being more creative and agile.
3. Take an innovative approach to brainstorming.
Whether brainstorming is actually effective has long been up for debate. But that doesn’t mean brainstorming can’t be a way to spark business innovation – as long as you take a novel approach to these groupthink sessions.
For example, rather than picking a problem and encouraging everyone to unleash their proposed solutions, consider asking everyone to come up with as many questions as they can about the problem. Rather than pushing for the best answer, posing questions can prompt deeper exploration into the issue. Meanwhile, an open floor for questions – without the pressure inherent in proposing a solution – can help create a more comfortable space for anyone to offer alternate perspectives.
Another tip for better brainstorming is to let individuals work alone before coming together in a group. When people work in a group, ideas may tend to merge, limiting the bounds of creativity. Allowing your team to first work on a problem individually can prevent “groupthink” because everyone has a private space within which to work through their thoughts. One option is to try having everyone anonymously write down their proposed solution, before evaluating and building on each idea as a group.
Even if immediate, tangible innovations may not bubble up from these sessions, the act of holding them can be important in and of itself. Think of creativity as a muscle – the more your people exercise it, the stronger it can become.
4. Lean on your seasoned employees.
Seasoned members of your team may have a wealth of experience, including diverse approaches they’ve acquired from working at other companies. That past experience could inspire your business’s next innovation. Consider empowering these employees by encouraging them to share processes and ideas that may be old hat to them, but are unfamiliar to less experienced team members. This can show the entire team how much you value novel and alternative ways of doing things. The rest of the team may then get the message that exploring new ways is important to you and your company’s growth.
Conversely, it’s also important to give a voice to new team members. While they may not possess “seasoned” industry knowledge, they can offer a fresh perspective that isn’t bogged down by years of thinking “this is just how things are done.” Instead of letting seniority rule, eliciting feedback and ideas from all employees can help create an open, encouraging environment where innovation can thrive.
5. Solve an internal problem and make a product.
Great entrepreneurs have long demonstrated the ability to turn solutions to internal problems into revenue-generating products. Take Slack, for instance, which was developed as an efficient internal communication tool for the founder’s previous company, Tiny Speck. Or, let’s say your company needs an order-processing system and can’t find one tailored to your industry. Why not try building one for your company? You might be able to package it up and sell it to others.
To help get team members into this mindset, consider holding product-visioning sessions to discuss how solved internal problems might be turned into products. For companies that have byproducts (manufacturing or food companies, for instance), this can be a good time to figure out how to repurpose “waste.” A hummus company that’s tired of wasting tons of aquafaba – the leftover water in which its garbanzo beans were cooked – might decide to package and sell the liquid as an egg substitute, for instance.
6. Recognize and reward innovation in your business.
Do you have a formal employee recognition program, such as “employee of the month”? Perhaps your company is less formal, and you simply give “good jobs” in team meetings. In either case, think about adding innovation as one of your employee recognition criteria. Besides rewarding workers for upholding high standards, such as providing outstanding customer service, consider recognizing employees who solve problems in a unique way, tweak processes for efficiency, or come up with innovative product ideas.
Even if those ideas don’t always come to fruition, employees who feel appreciated for trying may be more likely to continue sharing ideas in the future – and the more ideas that are shared, the more likely it can be that you’ll land on a great one.
7. Celebrate small size – it can be the secret sauce to business innovation.
For many small businesses, size can feel like a disadvantage. Employees might be forced to wear multiple hats, while resources may be repeatedly stretched too close to the breaking point for comfort.
But small size can also be an advantage for business innovation. “Small” often means “more nimble,” which can make it easier to jump on new opportunities. And, when you don’t have a lot of money or resources to throw at a problem, teams may be forced to come up with unique solutions – after all, necessity is the mother of invention. In fact, small businesses produce over 14 times more patents than large businesses, according to the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.
Celebrate being a small business. Positively declare that, even though your team may not have the resources of larger competitors, you can make up for it by being more creative and agile.
The Bottom Line
In the business world, innovation is a fundamental driver of growth, competitiveness, and adaptability. While entrepreneurs can often be known for their adventurous mindset, small businesses may be able to raise the bar on performance if all team members feel free to think outside the box and come up with inventive solutions. To help your employees boost their creative capabilities, aim to be a role model for innovation. You can do this by engraining ingenuity into day-to-day operations, from encouraging employees to explore autonomously to holding regular brainstorming sessions and celebrating all attempts at innovation – successful or not.
A version of this article was originally published on April 19, 2017.
Photo: Getty Images
