# Companies should actively promote creativity and innovative thinking. Often companies discuss innovation during managerial meetings, after which nothing is done with it; no one wants the burden of innovation. By appointing a creative manager to promote and manage innovation, the employees will share their ideas. This will motivate people to be creative by making it fun: people work better when it is fun and interesting.
# Innovations are not made by focusing on the product and thinking of solutions. The best things happen when you are not looking for it. One important part of innovations is that the innovator has to escape the everyday environment. E.g: Not having a separate bedroom and workroom will lead to a bad night of sleep since when you go to sleep, you are still in your working environment and thus associate your thoughts with work instead of sleep. The same goes for innovation: when you try to come up with innovation at work, or in a meeting, you will associate the problem with experience you already have and what you already know about the problem. Because of this, you cannot think out of the box and innovations won’t flow.
# Parksinson’s law states that the time pressure of a deadline forces you to focus on execution, and you have no other choice but to do only the bare essentials. The 50-50-90 rule states that 50% of a project will take 50% of the time, while the remaining 50% will take the remaining 90% of the time. With this logic it is of vital importance to have a short deadline for every project so that people don’t get side tracked and that the actual work necessary is done.
# An important factor after the start-up phase of the innovative process, is that no innovator is that good that he can get the best out of his innovative idea without help. For sure, the start is the hardest part but working out the details is not possible without the view of other. When working on something all alone, you do what everyone else does: you stop being creative and start looking at the (corporate) culture of in-box thinking. Focussing on one point (your own view of your innovation) narrows your point of view, like the blinkers on a horse. You need other peoples views, feedback and creativity.
But how can my company apply this?
Successful companies look Google and Atlassian give their employees a certain amount of time when they can work on whatever they want, when they want it, and with whomever they want. This approach is not only feasible for large companies, but also for your company.
You can do this by giving your employees the Thursdays afternoon off, to work on their passion. Let’s call this an InnEx day; Inn for Innovation, and Ex for Express since the employees should deliver ‘over night’. The only requirement is that the employees come up with an innovative idea which they have to present to the other employees the next morning. This can be an individual project or a group project and the employees can work on it wherever they want. After the idea presentation the next morning, a discussion is started and the ideas are uploaded to the company’s online and open community. This community is accessible for everyone so that not only the company employees, but also people that are interested in creativity and innovation can comment and give feedback.
“Creative people are too busy being creative and are sometimes critical of the creativity of others.” (De Bono, E. 2008)
"Innovative ideas, lead to innovative thoughts" (Roderkerken, J. 2011)
# Innovations are not made by focusing on the product and thinking of solutions. The best things happen when you are not looking for it. One important part of innovations is that the innovator has to escape the everyday environment. E.g: Not having a separate bedroom and workroom will lead to a bad night of sleep since when you go to sleep, you are still in your working environment and thus associate your thoughts with work instead of sleep. The same goes for innovation: when you try to come up with innovation at work, or in a meeting, you will associate the problem with experience you already have and what you already know about the problem. Because of this, you cannot think out of the box and innovations won’t flow.
# Parksinson’s law states that the time pressure of a deadline forces you to focus on execution, and you have no other choice but to do only the bare essentials. The 50-50-90 rule states that 50% of a project will take 50% of the time, while the remaining 50% will take the remaining 90% of the time. With this logic it is of vital importance to have a short deadline for every project so that people don’t get side tracked and that the actual work necessary is done.
# An important factor after the start-up phase of the innovative process, is that no innovator is that good that he can get the best out of his innovative idea without help. For sure, the start is the hardest part but working out the details is not possible without the view of other. When working on something all alone, you do what everyone else does: you stop being creative and start looking at the (corporate) culture of in-box thinking. Focussing on one point (your own view of your innovation) narrows your point of view, like the blinkers on a horse. You need other peoples views, feedback and creativity.
But how can my company apply this?
Successful companies look Google and Atlassian give their employees a certain amount of time when they can work on whatever they want, when they want it, and with whomever they want. This approach is not only feasible for large companies, but also for your company.
You can do this by giving your employees the Thursdays afternoon off, to work on their passion. Let’s call this an InnEx day; Inn for Innovation, and Ex for Express since the employees should deliver ‘over night’. The only requirement is that the employees come up with an innovative idea which they have to present to the other employees the next morning. This can be an individual project or a group project and the employees can work on it wherever they want. After the idea presentation the next morning, a discussion is started and the ideas are uploaded to the company’s online and open community. This community is accessible for everyone so that not only the company employees, but also people that are interested in creativity and innovation can comment and give feedback.
“Creative people are too busy being creative and are sometimes critical of the creativity of others.” (De Bono, E. 2008)
"Innovative ideas, lead to innovative thoughts" (Roderkerken, J. 2011)