How to foster innovation in your organisation

It should be obvious, create the work climate to enable innovation. It will lead to improved processes and existing products, services. More breakthrough innovations will be achieved by R&D programmes that lead to change.

Let's start at the ground level and improve existing products and processes. This article will discuss some key objectives to enable organisations to gain a fresh look.

1. The business plan, the primary organisation objective and innovation is essential to drive growth and bottom-line results. Looking at the process and meeting the marketplace is challenging for most senior managers. A high-level overview is simply not enough, and most changes will be based on data-driven models that can also be misleading. It is good to know where you are as an organisation, but it will have to be multidimensional and data-driven, more so with common sense input. For example, a new employee will immediately see poor processes at the organisation level and where this can be improved, changed, or completely eradicated. Commencing the contract or taking on an inherited project will also present many opportunities that may be useful across the business.

2. Political; internal, national, or international level. We see how some countries impose restrictions, regulations that do not foster innovation. This will considerably impact any organisation from the top-level—legal, administrative, or even cultural differences. Organisations may be forced to bring the business into a more favourable environment.

3. Cooperation and effective communication; senior management, employee, contractors, external suppliers. Communication is the key to thriving in the competitive environment nowadays. To foster innovation, the organisations must develop an approach to enhance and drive change. For example, they dedicate time to discuss the fresh approach and improve the processes. This open approach can also be sensitive due to various company restrictions and internal politics. The simple solution would be to have a workshop where involved parties can freely discuss or submit their observations to be analysed and measured.

4. Technology should be driven with common sense; we can see that the data is the key and is often used to make significant changes or support decisions. If not interpreted multidimensional, it could also lead to time-consuming and expensive exercise with little or no results.

Failing behind implementing these methods and missing opportunities will only lead to poor business performance and stagnation. The conclusion is that any organisation can start with the ground up and build on existing processes and products. That may even lead to dedicating focus R&D programmes and allocating more resources.