How to bring innovation to a company

​Innovation helps us create a new dimension of performance, future, benchmarks, standards, directions and improvements.

In this article we have highlighted 78 ways to enhance creativity and innovation in organizations and also in your own personal, professional, social life.

In the organizations, nations and communities - Sustained innovation comes from unleashing the creativity of people by making them recognize unconventional opportunities and improvement tools.

The need for constant innovation and reinvention is absolutely mandatory for survival in our present VUCA environment [Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous].

In today's world - A breakthrough concept, idea, product can put an organization ahead of its competitors for usually short-period, as your competitor may copy and even better what you have done in - in much shorter time.

The innovation in an organization can only survive and thrive if its top Leadership help create the psychological and physical environment for sustained innovation at all levels.

Many leaders and organizations start with big-bang but later this fizzles out and every new initiatives of the management starts being looked-at as being just another fad of the crazy-leaders.

Employees in larger organizations tend to feel removed from the function of innovation and are less likely to take independent action or offer revolutionary ideas.

78 Ways to create, build, sustain a culture of innovation in your organization – many of these ideas can also be used in your personal and other aspects of life as well

1. Create a flexible culture of disruption – because If you don't disrupt and reinvent yourself regularly someone else will
2. Proactive Self-disruption needs to be backed with top leaderships resolve for creating and sustain a culture of innovation
3. While reinventing and redefining your products and services - it is a brilliant strategy to go for minimum-viable-product as it is very difficult and all the time to create new product/services in short time
4. Get everyone involved – without involvement of each and every stakeholder involved and participating in your pursuits, it is impossible to even think about
5. For creating a culture of innovation, the top leadership has to be flexible in procedures and processes to make it facilitative to the long-term visions and objectives
6. Focus on studying and maybe even creating a new unthought off change
7. Be prepared to fail while trying newer ways, methods, ideas, solutions, perspectives
8. Encourage the people who challenge everything
9. Differentiate between people who are either resistant to change or the elements who wants to stall and obstruct FROM THE PEOPLE WHO THINK DIFFERENTLY and unconventionally
10. Go for and Implement a culture of trial and error
11. Make the seniors Encourage employees to take risks
12. Let the reverse mentoring be a part of your culture by making the people at the operational level select and go for new innovate projects
13. Test the validity of all the ideas and Don't be afraid to kill something that doesn't work
14. Make learning fun and a part of everyone's KRAs/KPI
15. Engage employees, customers, partners, vendors as well as the world through crowdsourcing
16. Keep everyone updated with digital technologies & global best practices - blockchain and Artificial Intelligence have the potential to disrupt many industries
17. Look for simple solutions
18. Have a transparent reward, recognition and appreciation system
19. Ensure that there is 100% meritocracy
20. Help your employees solve their problem
21. Create a dialogue box – where the employees post their problems [which they could not solve or failed] and others solve them
22. Ensure that there is a Crisis-opportunity team – who tries to find opportunities in every crisis that your organization, your industry faces
23. Co-create, co-create, co-create
24. Engage your employees the best ways possible and one ce they are engaged make them engage with your customers and prospects in innovative and regular ways
25. Brain storming is important – but ensue that it gets Implemented and executed too
26. Ensure that all the necessary resources and support is available
27. Focus of steady incremental innovations and improvements on day to day functioning for sustained growth
28. Handle people with care - who are capable and think very different YET are say lazy. Many of these can bring very new and transformational changes and ideas
29. Top leadership has to ensure that this most important aspect of organizational role doesn't get delegated to a functional responsibility like say that of HR or an innovation team – everyone has to be involved
30. The vision has to be very crystal-clear, motivating, simple and pride-inducing
31. The top leaders have to ensure demonstrating living the core personal and organizational values
32. Communication the correct situation of the organizations to employees to Kill the rumor-mill
33. Let the situational leadership – that is – letting the most competent employee for that specific task take the lead and others support – prevail in the organization. Again, this is top driven thing only
34. Encourage and create a mechanism for the ideas from the operating levels reach the top
35. Think like a mom-and-pop store for creating ways to enhance customer experience delight
36. Kill the red-tape by giving empowerment and authority even at the smallest functional level
37. Have a performance driven career-path for the employees
38. Instill sense of ownership and belongingness
39. Remove people who are chain-pullers
40. Ensure that recognition and rewards are consistent
41. Eliminate projects and processes that don't work
42. No idea is stupid. If someone challenges the norm and it fails, we learn from it. Don't punish them
43. Support good ideas through to implementation
44. Give your employees reasons to care meaningfully for you and the organization
45. Create healthy competition Redefine definition of competition in your organization
46. Do what you can to minimize your own stress so you can be at your best
47. Invest your time in the creative nourishment of your workers
48. There is nothing better than a fresh new project that has the whole team amped up and ready to create.
49. Don't Be Afraid to Set Unrealistic Goals and Deadlines – but then be at forefront to brain-storm with your people on – if it can be done – how we are going to do it
50. Seek Inspiration Everywhere
51. Schedule Creative Activities
52. Think Big, Invent Small
53. Observe, Talk, Ask, Listen to Measure the Market and the customers
54. Simplify approval processes
55. Cross pollinate the points-of-view
56. Introduce your employees to new concepts and ways of thinking with job rotation, multi-skilling and ensuring teams incorporate people from different backgrounds and generations
57. Maximize diversity to maximize innovation
58. Bring in occasional outsider to bring in fresh perspectives and different background differs from that of your existing staff
59. Look broader - beyond your industry for new ideas which can be adopted by your people and organization
60. Run a contest, scout for ideas from colleges and your customers
61. Copy someone else's idea and then improve
62. Use difficulties and complaints a tool and opportunity for improvement
63. Encourage Entrepreneurship & Intrapreneurship [someone who thinks like an entrepreneur but brings their ideas to the company where they are employed instead of launching their own business]
64. Improvise when some idea does-not work
65. Focus On - Why of your organization's existence
66. Learn and Use the innovation frameworks like Running Lean, Design Thinking, Lean Startup
67. Use the lessons from disruptive industries those are huge currently
68. Look to Other Areas for expansion
69. Make workplace fun, Re-Humanize the Work and the workplace
70. Use innovation to respond to change, uncertainty, and constraints
71. Improve your own process how you generate ideas
72. Think like a venture capitalist
73. Balance operational excellence with innovation
74. There's no one proven formula for success – o stop looking for one
75. Always focus on excellence rather than perfection
76. Focus more on results than on processes
77. Benchmark against the best
78. Create practical and helpful employee job-levels – ditch hierarchies