Creating a culture of innovation in the workplace

Why is a culture of innovation important?

• You’ll make your customers happy

• You can reduce waste by building more successful products

• You’ll increase employee morale

Approaches we’ll look at to foster a culture of innovation

• Defining Innovation

• Cultural Attitude

• People

• Physical Space

• Tools

Why does your business want to “innovate”?

• To build more, faster?

• To launch new features?

• To explore new opportunities, new revenue streams?

• To fend off competition?

• To pivot the business?

Present people with a problem to solve, not a solution to implement

Cultural Attitude

Start conversations with “What if?”

Encourage those that say “I have a crazy idea”

Don’t wait for perfection. It never comes.

Invite people to innovate – don’t force it

Resist project management techniques

Embrace failure

Church of FAIL

People

Further reading

At the core of a culture of innovation is the team

Innovation is not a solo sport – it’s a team game

Involve all facets of the business

Give permission for others to innovate outside of your sphere of influence

What makes a successful innovative team?

Co-located Self Sufficient Dedicated

People think roadmaps looks like this“When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.” – Simon Sinek (TEDx)

Physical Space

Further reading

Hot Desk Wednesday

Roadmap death!

People think roadmaps looks like this

“You need to set up and organize so that you can do as many experiments per unit of time as possible.” – Jeff Bezos, Amazon

Tools

How people think roadmaps look…

The reality…

Pick the ones that let you experiment best

Things to avoid

SilosNo colloborationLarge teams

ANTI Collaboration

Avoid freezing upwhen overwhelmed

In Summary

1. Develop a definition that’s right for your business

2. Build out a team with the license to innovate

3. Create a physical space that empowers them

4. Pick the right tools that work for you

5. Iterate and reflect (often)

Innovation lessons from Pixarhttp://www.mckinsey.com/insights/innovation/innovation_lessons_from_pixar_an_interview_with_oscar-winning_director_brad_bird

How Pixar fosters collective creativityhttps://hbr.org/2008/09/how-pixar-fosters-collective-creativity

Hello Innovation – 9 ways Pixar cultivates creative culturehttp://www.helloinnovation.com/blog/9-ways-pixar-cultivates-creative-culture-can/

Thank You