The pandemic has seen crisis-induced innovation by some companies, which tested new solutions to new problems to deal with uncertainty. As companies look to the future in the wake of the pandemic, they may be pondering the allocation of resources, new business opportunities and the use of innovation for growth.
Organisations need to remember, however, that people-centred practices are important factors in innovation, as our research shows. Developing and making better use of their human capital to solve new problems and provide new solutions to the market is urgent.
It is now that they need to recruit people who love learning new things, to give them the time and space to experiment, and to involve them in deciding strategy and direction.
It is now that they can invest in well-designed jobs that give autonomy to people and stimulate innovation. If not now, then when? This series consists of outputs from the ECS , the fourth edition of the survey. Eurofound, Wyattville Road, Loughlinstown, Co. Eurofound is an agency of the European Union.
Skip to main content. You are here Home Publications Blog What can companies do to spark innovation in the workplace? Working conditions and sustainable work What can companies do to spark innovation in the workplace? Design jobs that are challenging and give autonomy to employees Companies whose management facilitates employees to work independently, solve problems and organise their own work schedule are more likely to introduce market innovations than companies that closely control and monitor their employees.
So, encourage your employees to: be honest and open share ideas explore initiatives without fear of retribution. Hire people with different perspectives When hiring, look for employees who: understand your vision align with your culture, but aren't necessarily the same as you may have different perspectives come from diverse backgrounds have passions have different abilities.
Give employees time and space to innovate Be open and approachable to new ideas, and set aside spaces for employees to create and share ideas. You can also support innovation by setting up: meetings to share ideas suggestion boxes a suggestion area on the staff intranet dedicated times or rooms. Encourage collaboration Create work practices to encourage employees to work together and openly discuss ways to improve.
For example: allow job swaps that foster new perspectives from different employees hold process improvement brainstorming sessions with employees from different parts of the business introduce a new ideas or 'what if?
Have a feedback process Ensure there's a process that everyone understands for assessing each new idea. Be sure to acknowledge every suggestion in a timely manner and give feedback on the idea. Implement ideas as soon as possible Put employees' ideas and suggestions into effect as quickly as possible.
When employees see they're influencing the direction of the business, they'll be motivated to: continue to share ideas work towards the success of the idea encourage the productivity of other employees. Reward employees for their ideas Use rewards to encourage your employees to suggest all ideas, even if they're not carried out.
Offer training Offer training to employees that will inspire new thoughts and approaches to the business. Invest in resources Innovation is an investment in the future of your business — not an everyday expense. For example, Tomorrowland - one of the most popular music festivals in the world - delivers your bracelet for the event in an outstandingly artsy box, instead of a plain envelope.
How can you turn products into experiences? Starbucks revolutionized the coffee market by transforming a simple product a coffee into a whole experience: they make you feel special by adding your name on your cup, and provide you with comfy couches and WiFi. New generations are more generous and altruistic than ever and give preference to organizations and brands that actively change the world for the better.
Capture more clients by letting them be effortlessly more generous. Amazon Smile provides the same service of Amazon, with the only difference that it forwards 0. Imagine ways to let other companies integrate their services into your service. This way, other organizations have access to your pool of users, while you enrich your product or service with additional features and possibilities provided by your partners.
For example, Slack allows hundreds of third-party extensions into its communication platform. Lifelogging is the process of tracking personal data generated by our own behavioral activities. At our office, Manu is one of the early backers of the Narrative Clip. This small camera takes a picture every 30 seconds and stores them, in a smart way, in the cloud.
This tracker is interesting because it combines big data management with a photographic memory. The Quantified Self movement takes the aspect of simply tracking the raw data to try and draw correlations and ways to improve our lives from it. Companies like Fitbit, Jawbone and Withings are playing in this field to give users insights into their daily activity and sleep.
Intrapreneurship is responsible for a great deal of product and service innovation around the world today. In , you could start by organizing your own intrapreneurship program.
You could start with bootcamps — a great way of developing new concepts in a short time. More ambitious? You can even develop your own in-house start-up accelerator like Sanoma did! What if all your customers had access to a 3D printer?
Gartner predicts that 7 of the 50 largest multinational retailers will sell 3D printers through their physical and online stores by Privacy is a major global topic since many years now.
Could you use this as a new opportunity in your company? What if your industry was fully decentralized? When talking about decentralized industries, people often refer immediately to energy. Airbnb recently reached over , listed rooms on their platform, conquering IHG and Hilton. Car-sharing services like ZipCar are mobilizing more and more users to collaboratively consume a car instead of buying a new one.
We recently saw this model popping up in the creative services industry. The Web Agency 8K considers themselves the first agency in the world where you pay what you think the design is worth. Try it for yourself today! What if we paid with self-created virtual currencies? Currency — the bills and coins you carry in your wallet and your bank account — is founded on marketing.
And on the belief that banks and governments are trustworthy. In recent months, Bitcoins have been all over the news with people questioning this new kind of money — virtual currencies. From Nike Sweat Points to bottles of Tide which are finding an unexpected use in illegal markets , meet the non-bank future of currencies! What if power naps were allowed at your company?
Power naps of fewer than 30 minutes — even those as short as 6 and 10 minutes — restore wakefulness and promote performance and learning. A starting guide for power napping at work can be found here. But why buy a service if you could start small and design it yourself? This article outlines the 5 things to keep in mind as you design a wellness program for your company.
What if you owned your own bank? First there was crowdsourcing, then crowdfunding and then rewards-based crowdfunding models such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter. But perhaps equity-based crowdfunding is the model that will change the way start-ups raise money in the early future. What if your company starts using this model for launching new innovative spin-offs and getting market traction in a really early phase?
What if you had invested in Apple or Google 10y ago? If you did, and you still have it in your bank account, well, you have our respect.
What if every employee believed to be creative? Believing in your own abilities makes you perform better. We designed several innovation posters to help you inspire your team and other people in your organization. Ready to start your propaganda? Download our innovation posters for free! What if your product became available for free? This is the time to question your business model! You might love it or hate it, but radical changes like this changes industries.
Take Google which earns most of its profit from ads. Adjacencies are new products or markets that are closely related to the work a company is currently engaged in, but are different enough to represent new value for the company. By moving into these areas, a company can create new customers and solidify its market position.
The media giant already produces an incredible amount of popular content, so stepping into the market adjacency of a platform for streaming made a lot of sense. After all, your diehard fans are the most likely people to have great ideas for new products and services - especially if they use your services and products every day.
A great example here is Starbucks, which ran its "My Starbucks Idea" portal for a decade from to , receiving over , suggestions from dedicated Starbucks fans as a result.
This not only resulted in top-selling Starbucks products like Hazelnut Macchiatos and pumpkin spice lattes but also gave Starbucks the chance to build a valuable community of superfans for market research purposes. Innovation hubs are places for business representatives to get together and share approaches to innovation. Having grown in popularity over the last decade, there are now hundreds of these hubs around the world. The concept of an innovation hub recognizes the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to innovation and shows the importance of collaboration in problem-solving.
Take a look at the innovation hubs near you , and think about how you and your teams could participate. To make innovation a real part of your workplace culture, your staff need to know senior management is being open about the need for innovation, and the potential benefits for the company as a result. A key part of this is developing an innovation strategy, and ensuring open communication about innovation. Mobile payments company Square takes this to an extreme, requiring meeting notes for every meeting involving more than two people to be publicly shared across the company.
Still, you should think about how to adopt an open communication approach when it comes to innovation. There are two great ways to do this.
First, you can recognize and reward innovations, and second, try to ensure staff psychological safety. To get the best out of your people when it comes to innovation, you need a way to recognize and reward successful new ideas - especially when they have the potential to save the company money or boost revenue. This can be as simple as providing public recognition, for example, giving out awards at all-hands meetings. Westin Hotels is a great example here. Every quarter, the hotel chain sends its top five innovators on a paid five-day trip, providing them with public acknowledgment and a significant reward for valuable ideas.
This is a crucial element to get right. Your staff members need to be able to be honest and forthright about new product and systems suggestions , without fear of recrimination or adverse effects on their jobs. Office design and layout can make a huge difference when it comes to innovation. Even something as simple as deciding where particular teams should sit can have a massive effect on creativity and collaboration.
There are two reasons for this.
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