5 Principles For Creating An Innovative Company Culture

  • The Crossroads of Innovation Exploration
The Crossroads of Innovation Exploration

Image via Flickr by Hampton Roads Partnership

The changes that take place in the business world make lightning look slow. It takes a special way of thinking to keep up. Innovation should serve as one of the fundamental ideals of any company that wants to keep up with the pack and stay relevant for years to come. What steps can you take to freshen up your company’s perspective and cultivate an innovative company culture?

Study Your Company’s Personality

What attitudes and practices make your company a success? What aspects of your company do your customers and clients most appreciate? Answering those questions is vital in building a culture of innovation because there is no one infallible method for encouraging innovation; it is different for every business.

?What If! gives the examples of Facebook and Four Seasons. Both companies have a reputation for consistently rolling out fresh ideas, but they have completely different personalities. Four seasons is elegant and refined while Facebook strives to be hip and fast-moving. Those underlying traits have a profound effect on the way each company innovates.

Act Decisively

Organizations that ponder over new ideas until those ideas become old are stagnant and get left behind. That isn’t to say that you should leap on every suggestion as if it is the last piece of cake on the planet. You should recognize that there is no way to analyze every possible outcome of an action before you take it.

Sometimes you have to jump in with both feet. At other times, you can just dip your toes in the water. For example, if you are thinking about implementing some significant changes to your website, you can perform A/B testing to see how visitors interact with the new format. Four Seasons arranges for pilot programs in a few of its hotels before implementing changes on a company-wide scale.

Listen to Ideas From Every Corner

Ideas are the lifeblood of innovation, and just like literal blood reaches every part of a body, ideas can come from anywhere within your company. Don’t limit yourself solely to what the members of your executive and managerial staff think up. Think of Four Seasons again as an example; they invite a wide range of employees to contribute ideas through their BLUEWATER program.

Also, don’t be afraid to lend an ear to perspectives from outside your company. Look for ways to collaborate with other businesses.

Don’t Let Routine or Fear Put You in a Rut

Large companies often get so caught up in day-to-day matters that innovation gets shoved to the wayside. Thomson Reuters, an information solutions company, found itself facing that problem and decided to tackle it. They created an innovation fund and took other steps to move their company forward.

Some companies are afraid to innovate because they hold the attitude, “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” While that may be a sound principle in some situations, it is good to keep in mind that what isn’t broken can still fall behind. As Fast Company puts it, innovation “starts with the right mindset—the unexpected must be expected.”

Change the Way You Think About Failure

Failure is quite the buzzword when it comes to innovation. You’ll often hear things like “embrace failure” and “fail more often.” Hold on. Everyone knows what failure feels like. It feels awful and final. Sure, it teaches some good lessons and can help your company grow, but that doesn’t mean you should celebrate when an idea falls short of its goals.

The right attitude is not one of failing just because everyone says that innovative companies often fail. As Forbes points out, these innovative companies have “a larger number of transactions and attempts at new things… which nearly guarantees a large number of failures . . . and a larger number of successes.” Expect success, but don’t let it paralyze you if you fail.

Innovation is the reason man went to the moon and smartphones can do everything but make your morning coffee. When your company adopts an innovative culture, its potential becomes limitless.

JT Ripton is a business consultant and blogger who enjoys writing about many things, business and technology among them. Ripton’s advice has appeared in numerous places like BusinessInsider, Entrepreneur.com, The Guardian, and The Street.

2015-09-25T05:47:58+00:00

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