Sean Wallbridge
Innovation fuels forward-moving companies. In fact, evidence suggests that more innovative companies enjoy higher profits. For example, a company’s ideation rate, which refers to the number of winning ideas per 1000 active participants, has a positive correlation with their profits. To stay relevant and competitive in the marketplace, you must continue to grow. Your biggest assets towards your company’s growth are fresh, creative ideas that will help to set you apart from the vast selection of other businesses trying to make their mark just as you are.
Unfortunately, it’s easy to get stuck in a creative rut and lose sight of your company’s innovation in the day-to-day. So, what sort of workplace culture should you create in order to foster innovation? What tools do you need?
Create Company Innovation
Start With Leadership
If upper management doesn’t model innovation, how can you expect your team members to do the same? Leaders need to demonstrate the sort of qualities that inspire creativity like passion, optimism, and adaptability. Management should allow team members the freedom to explore their ideas. This will empower each employee with a sense that their contribution matters. Perhaps, this could ignite a new sense of passion for the work they produce.
Embrace Risk
In an effort to hoard resources and avoid the possibility of loss, many companies fall into the trap of avoiding risk altogether. However, the progress of a business relies on its ability to change. Change always involves a degree of risk. If upper management puts too much emphasis on risk aversion, team members can feel too restricted to explore their more ambitious ideas – ideas that could be winners if given a chance.
Encourage Collaboration
What’s better than an ingenious idea? Many ingenious ideas that come together to create a successful new company strategy. To ensure you’ve made use of all of your team member’s brainpower, encourage collaboration. There are easy solutions to improve this. For instance, hosting regular meetings and facilitating data sharing.
Provide Resources
Team members can’t express their creativity fully until the essentials are taken care of. When workers are bogged down with too much busy work, less time and brainpower are available to attack creative solutions to client problems.
Many companies are streamlining their administrative processes with customized software solutions which frees up more energy for innovation. In addition, it’s helpful to utilize organizational tools that enable team members to have access to important information and other people’s ideas. Such tools make the creation process efficient, easy, and accessible to everyone involved. You can even use them to share prompts and inspirational content to get everyone’s creative juices flowing.
Navo is one such resource. It’s a bookmark management tool that makes it easy to save inspiring content for driving innovation in your company. Conveniently, the browser extension feature facilitates quicksaves. Additionally, it promotes sharing which enables all team members to express their creativity and improve the quality of their ideas. Navo assists administration which eliminates the need for time-consuming tasks, leaving you with the time and energy to engage in forward-moving business activities.
To start streamlining your business today and make room for innovation, start your 30-day free trial.