Here follows some personal thoughts on how to encourage and promote innovation in the workplace.

Again, this is a topic on which there is written entire libraries worth of books, articles, workshop and course materials. On the other hand, this is something that is very sought after, yet hard to create.

So, here are my personal thoughts and recommendations for promoting innovation!

• Perhaps most important is to make sure there are procedures in place to collect innovative ideas! Holding brainstorming sessions routinely is a great way foster innovative thinking. It also helps to train away the natural reaction to say “no”; the most common cause of death of innovative ideas.
• Another important component is to have an organization that allows innovation work. In other words; if you have no time to set aside for innovations you will not innovate (some might choose to moonlight, but I consider that working outside the work environment and hence outside the scope of this rambling).
• Supportive managers: an extremly important part of innovation are managers that support innovative work by setting aside time to do the work, that champions your ideas at review meetings, project meetings and so on, and managers that give you the monetary funds to carry out the work (if needed). A manager that says “no” will not only kill that particular idea, but might kill all innovative ideas that his/her organisation want to put forth. On the other hand, a manager that says “yes” not only gives an idea the opportunity to grow and blossom, but also create a fertile ground for new ideas to be put forward.
• Reward innovation: this is really a given if innovations are sought after. Within Pfizer manufacturing each site has the opportunity to hand out innovation awards every quarter for teams and individuals. This is a good example of fostering innovation by example; the awarded colleagues are rewarded for their good work, quite a few awards are handed out every year, and the awardees may function as innovation champions locally.

So then, how to say “yes!” to a preposterous idea? First of all, don’t assume you have all the answers, resist the urge to say “no!” and let your colleague present his/her case. Try to formulate questions in order to address the weak(est) points in the idea, as well as those designed to highlight the strength(s). This might help the innovator to sharpen the idea, as well as avoid obvious pitfalls.

If you’re still not convinced, say “yes!” conditionally. Try and formulate a minor study designed at testing the basic premise of the idea together with the innovator. Again, this will help making the idea into something concrete and measurable. If you at this stage still can’t get around making a significant investment, ask the innovator to make do with less resources: a computer model, scale-down version, mock-up, etc.

Always make the innovator enumerate the benefits of the idea, that that in time savings, monetary savings, increased yield, revenue, etc. This will help you gauge the ROI and the risk of supporting the idea.

Always include failure of the idea as a probable outcome, because many if not most will fail.

Finally, being able to help and foster innovation is much more fun than saying “no”!