Innovation is Everybody’s Responsibility

There never seems to be an end to the number of new startups or new ideas floating around. Resident contributor DesignTranslator looks at how to encourage innovation as priority in an organization. So instead of wondering how and why you didn’t think of that first, take the ability to do so in your hands.

A few times a year most companies tend to start or re-look at their Innovation and product development cycles for the following year. Often involved in such matters, I’ve experienced that most of the time elements of the answer involves innovation and some of the time it also includes design. Ultimately though it often boils down to the one perennial question: “So fellows, what are we going to make?”

Before we continue lets take a look at a few wonderful quotes on innovation:

“At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top – I’m afraid that’s not quite right.” ~ Bill Gates

“Learning to leverage the creative thinking skills of every individual, regardless of their level, creates the sustainable competitive advantage every corporation is striving for.” ~ Jim O’Neal

“Most people think of innovation only in terms of R&D or new product development -– but taking an idea and turning it into cash is an effort that involves almost every part of a company. The challenge is thinking about and managing this extremely broad set of inter-related activity as a unified process.” ~ Hal Sirkin, Boston Consulting Group

I’m sure by now most of us are well aware of the power and importance of innovation as a strategy to come out ahead in today’s market. Anyways back to the story, this year for me the discussion is no different. However, instead of just letting a few managers and R&D people decide, I thought why not make innovation everybody’s responsibility?

Subsequently I suggested to top management to open it to the entire organization and leverage it as a huge resource.

Advantages
And why not? Here are some of the advantages.

1) It involves everyone from the tea lady to the CFO in the life blood of an organization, the creation of its products.

2) If 2 heads are better than 1, can you imagine if you got everyone involved in problem solving? You are tapping on the collective mind power of a large resource.

3) The best ideas come from different perspectives or view points of the problem at hand. You’ll be surprised what ideas my former manager of Logistics could come up with. That guys was brilliant.

Disadvantages
What discussion would not be complete with out a list of disadvantages?

1) No one would participate. Depending on the corporate culture, people may not love their organization enough to help out. Most people go home at 5pm anyway and may not want additional responsibility.