INNOVATION

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3 min read

A bottom-up approach to innovation

 

Most of us would have heard about the benefits of innovation for organisations - increasing competitiveness, market share, and bottom-line, but managers and senior leaders may overlook conveying how innovation can be beneficial to individual employees as well. Without that, there may be no buy-in from employees to initiate innovative efforts.

Coupled with people’s general inertia for change, it may be rare to see other colleagues driving innovation. If you are someone that’s looking to innovate (or your job requires you to), you may find that this barrier is hard to break by yourself; however, there are still some things you can do to nudge others into the innovative direction.

 

pexels-polina-zimmerman-3778619

 

Employee-led innovation typically starts small, and to spearhead such changes, you may want to think about these:

 

  1. Where would I like to see changes in? What aspects of my and my team’s work can be improved?

  2. For each specific area identified for change, who do I need to get buy-in from if I want to innovate?

  3. When was the last time you saw a positive example of innovation in your organisation? What do you think was done well? Can that be replicated easily and how?

 
Let’s put this in
work context

 

Innovation cannot develop from vacuum, and an innovative culture cannot be cultivated overnight. However, we can lead by example and be innovation champions ourselves to showcase the benefits of innovation:

  1. Pick one area that you or the team would like to see a change, where it is a low-hanging fruit to innovate on.

  2. Come up with some preliminary ideas and brainstorm with the team to kick start the process. Before brainstorming, remember to share why this innovation is impactful to the team!

  3. Depending on the scale of the innovation, you might need to have buy-in from stakeholders. The implementation can be at different levels:

    1. Team level - Gain buy- in and commitment from the team including the team leader
    2. Department level - Together with the team, come up with a short brief or presentation to showcase how innovation has both tangible and intangible benefits (e.g., hours saved, more customers, higher employee satisfaction, etc.)

 

 

“

When you’re finished changing, you’re finished

 

– Benjamin Franklin

 

 

 

 

It is helpful to think about how to set better goals and how goal setting motivates you.

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