What Are The Six Traits of Highly Innovative Organizations?
I love meeting innovators. You meet all types: some of them are blue sky thinkers, some of them are feasibility buffs, some of them are incredible networkers and presenters, and some of them are shy and fascinatingly deep thinkers.
What is a Virtual Innovation Lab?
The Virginia Department of Transportation created their own Virtual Innovation Lab, where they collaborate to solve problems related to remote work, engineering topics, safety, and more with the help of their entire distributed workforce. Learn more in this December 15th webinar!
What Do Leading Innovators Do Differently
Every year, IdeaScale hosts the global Innovation Management Awards and honors winners in three different categories: engagement, process, and implementation. We see these categories as the cornerstones of any successful innovation program, so the winners this year actually excel at each of these things.
The One Skill that Innovators Forget
Most innovators cultivate traits like creative risk taking, positive reinforcement and strategic planning. However, there is another branch of innovation in which innovators still require a great deal of training.
Are Results Based Work Environments the Future or Fantasy?
Results-based work environments, also known as results-only work environments (ROWE) aim to increase productivity by giving employees the freedom to work in the manner that suits them best as long as they produce results. The old paradigm of coming in to work at a set time and leaving at a set time hasn't been the standard for quite some time. Employees regularly have to work long hours, and there is research that shows these long hours may be better spent working from home. The Sloan Center on Aging and Work at Boston College notes that this shift represents a dramatic change from the traditional 40-hour work week.
9 Steps for Establishing Your Employee Engagement Plan
You've got the best employees on the planet, right? They work hard and are experts in their fields. But, somewhere there is a disconnect. The culture of your organization is not everything it could be, not everything you would like. Is there a way to ensure that your employees hold to the same values you do throughout your department, or the organization? How can you empower your employees, and foster trust, growth, and loyalty? Here are nine ways to fully engage your employees.
Innovate as a Team? Work on Your Psychological Safety!
To be able to use the full potential of innovation, psychological safety within teams and organisations is essential. Psychological safety is the shared belief that it is safe within the team for interpersonal risk taking. There is a direct relation between a psychological safe climate and performance of the team. (Edmondson 1999)
The Creativity Delta: How to Come Up with New Ideas
In a study of 5,000 adults in the US, UK, Germany, France, and Japan conducted by Adobe about creativity, they came up with some interesting findings. To begin with, they asked every participant if they felt creativity was valuable to society and two-thirds of the respondents said “yes.” Perhaps even more significantly, 80% of them felt that unlocking creativity was critical to economic growth.
Innovative Workplace Benefits: Perks Employees Look For
One thing that successful companies usually have in common is their willingness to give their employees great perks and benefits. Having great workplace benefits increases the employee's willingness to go above and beyond for the company, which in turn benefits the organization.
Employee Innovation Training – What Approach Works Best?
As organizations increasingly focus on building corporate cultures that are more open to new ideas, they are examining ways that they can engage a range of employees in innovative thinking and actions. In the past, the answer to this kind of effort was to run a challenge and pat yourselves on the back for a job well done.
Making Work Fun to Improve Culture and Engagement
For HR and business managers, it can be challenging to create a productive workplace where employees are motivated to be engaged. It may be time to make work fun again with a variety of practices and tools that are implemented. To transform the environment of your workplace and create a positive environment. Here are a few simple changes that can benefit the business.
Navigating the Make versus Buy Decision: A Crowd Sourced Check List
Product managers facing the make versus buy decision for their organization have a lot to consider. Biases abound. In this article, the innovation architect Doug Collins shares what was on the minds of senior product management leaders on this topic when they convened, recently. Their top 10 factors follow below.
How to Achieve More Effective Performance Appraisals
Roughly only half of all companies conduct annual performance reviews. Of the fifty percent of companies that do tend to provide consistent and reliable feedback to their employees. However, it can be awkward at times to tell someone on your staff that they aren't doing a good job or attempt to offer constructive criticism without sounding condescending. What are some ways to make a performance appraisal more effective and less awkward for yourself and the employee?
Shouting the Innovation Message (Finally): The Growing Importance of Internal Communication Planning
In the past year or so corporate innovation leaders have clearly taken an “ecosystem” perspective to their innovation activities. What this ultimately means is that they view all of their program’s activities as a connected whole and driving towards higher-level goals, often aligned with broader cultural change.
Clear the Mystery Around Innovation Crowdsourcing: Learn from the Pros
So you’re thinking of tapping your employees or customers for ideas. You’ve read some exciting crowdsourcing case studies and it seems like a no brainer. Or you’ve used a consultant but now want to go it alone? What could possibly go wrong? If you’re like a lot of first timers, you’ll get the software all set up, announce the challenge, and sit back with great expectations!
Let Creativity Reign When Appreciating Employees
Everyone likes to feel appreciated at work. In fact, studies have shown that employees are motivated to work harder when their boss shows appreciation for their work. For most employers, showing appreciation might mean promotions and pay raises, but those opportunities don't come along as often as we'd like to think.
Should You Invest in Workplace Training?
‘Workplace training’: two words which are liable to send shivers down every manager’s spine. Not because they’re against their employees learning, of course not; but that it eats up hours upon hours of time and can cost a lot of money. Yet there’s no disputing the benefits of workplace training in terms of staff retention, filling skills gaps, improved productivity and competitive edge.
Communicate to Innovate: Tips from the World of Improvisation
Effective communication is at the heart of innovation: harnessing insights from customers, partners and co-workers, sharing ideas, building upon points of view, advocating and gaining support for one’s innovations all require razor sharp communication. Interestingly enough, communicating effectively is a two-way street. The sender and receiver of information are both responsible for landing it appropriately, and both sides need to actively participate. Two simple, but powerful behaviors that can help increase the efficiency of communication are listening and declaring.
Survival of The Fittest
Based on our work with pioneering enterprises in Silicon Valley and around the globe we have learned a great deal about what makes innovation prosper. This article reveals some surprising insights on how prepared our institutions are to successfully compete for the future.
Diversity and Innovation – A Perfect Team
Please, not another business imperative! Every time I open a journal or glance at a blog it seems as though the panacea to all business ills has just been discovered and is waiting for me to embrace it! One minute I’m being told to hire for cultural fit, the next to increase diversity. It’s no wonder that employee engagement is falling because if I’m being pushed from pillar to post then it’s not surprising that my people are confused……
5 Management Mistakes You Don’t Realize You’re Making
The dictionary defines management as, “the process of dealing with or controlling things or people.” Sometimes, managers don’t understand why their team does not function cohesively. Below are five management mistakes managers don’t realize they’re making and tips to avoid these missteps.
Unlocking Innovation in Business
85% of UK workers believe the strategic objectives of their employers could more easily be met through innovative approaches. Fortunately, the innovation discussion in business is progressing. Yet although most organisations acknowledge the desperate need for change, they are still at a loss when it comes to taking action. Workforces are a goldmine for the insight needed to drive change in an increasingly competitive business environment - but this knowledge must be captured to unlock innovation.
Enhancing a Startup Culture in a Corporate Environment
There is little doubt that startups are dominating leadership discussion in many sectors of the economy, and have even become a source of admiration in popular culture. Whether driven by the hopes of “unicorn” valuations and lucrative exits or by the desire for more informal, collegial working environments, startups are more prevalent and attractive to existing and potential employees than ever. In fact, in a recent Accenture survey, only 15% of the class of 2014 would “prefer” to work for a mature, established organization.
Where Do Good Ideas Go to Die?: The Problem with Your Old Idea Program
Our team found an example of one of the earliest workplace suggestion boxes the other day from 1721 when a shogun, Yoshimuni Tokugawa, wrote to his citizens “Make your idea known . . . Rewards are given for ideas that are accepted.’” This means that the concept of crowdsourcing ideas that can improve a city, workplace, or world has been around for quite some time.
10 Reasons Corporate Culture Should Value Introverts
The corporate industry is defined by its powerful, charismatic leaders who articulate their company's innovative measures through bold and confident public announcements. If corporate culture can be likened to the backbone of a business, then the leaders are like the vocal box. They take the reins during meetings, deliver presentations and speak at a variety of different conventions and gatherings. These individuals become the face of their industry, and would surely be described as extroverts by most.
5 Great Ways to Ignite Your Team’s Energy
There are always periods when, as a manager, you might feel that your team members aren’t as productive as they could be, when their morale seems a little low or when they don’t seem as fully engaged with their work as you would like them to be. This can lead to them leaving the company if the situation becomes really bad, which costs the company both money and time spent either hiring a replacement or training a current employee to replace them.
6 Ways to Avoid Employee Burnout and Foster Innovation
According to a recent Gallup poll, around 31% of U.S. employees were engaged in 2014. Why are employees less engaged? Some of the blame is due to burnout at work. This burnout, characterized by severe mental and physical exhaustion, is leading to a lack of interest, reduced employee engagement and less work being accomplished. Most of the theories that have been devised in this regard suggest that the main cause is too much work and strain, but this might not be the case.
5 Advantages to Crowdsourced Innovation Management
At the beginning of the twentieth century, research and development was a highly guarded and elite practice. Imagine laboratories peopled by white-coated scientists who had passwords to protect the doors to their office. This kind of research and innovation was highly successful for a long time – it gave us electrocardiography, DNA fingerprinting, and many Apple products.