Innovation Culture

Innovation I would argue that innovation is not particularly well-encouraged by my organization. It is a good organization to work for, but innovation isn't really their thing. When you consider the different ways that companies can foster innovation, few of those are evident where I work. The most basic level of encouraging innovation is just to have pathways for ideas to go up the food chain. At my company, this is not really the case.

The organization is quite hierarchical in nature, and unfortunately that creates a situation where communication is not all that easy. Where it exists, your supervisor would then need to champion your idea in order for it to be approved. Moreover, head office probably needs an approval in there somewhere if it is a big idea. So these layers for things to happen really discourage innovation.

A lot of decisions are made at head office and with that sort of centralization of command it is expected that innovation from the "provinces" is not as likely going to be as frequent -- we are simply not charged with the task of innovating so it becomes something that everybody leaves to the big brains at head office. Further, there is no pathway for credit either.

So ultimately, I do not own shares in the company, and it is unlikely if I came up with an idea that made the company a lot of money that I would see any of that. The company simply doesn't have a pathway for people to come up with good ideas, communicate them, and get credit for that. Without some sort of reward systems, innovation is pretty much stunted before it starts -- you always need to have some sort of reward, even a little one, for innovation.

Another aspect of innovation is innovation culture. Some companies have a great innovation culture and this encourages people to think outside the box. In some companies, innovation is a point of conversation, and a means by which the company measures itself. When this occurs, the entire company is oriented towards innovation as a way of doing business. It is only natural that when there is a strong innovation culture that innovation will thrive. I noted above some of the reasons why we do not have an innovation culture.

Innovation culture is something that needs to be fostered by management, from the highest levels of the company, and with repetition. This is not the case where I work. People are not encouraged to think in terms of innovation, so naturally they do not see it as part of their jobs, or as anything that they should be doing. To foster innovation, companies also need to incentivize it. People tend to do that on which they are evaluated.

So a company that wants people to innovate will have to ensure that innovation comes up during the performance review. If part of your job description and evaluation is based on your contribution to innovation, you will leave some time for innovation. If there is no point where innovation is going to be evaluated, then you have no incentive, monetary, respect, career or otherwise, to engage in innovation activities. This is the case with my.