Innovation is something that every company wants. All too often, however, it is an elusive thing. But it is possible to take steps to encourage innovation, to establish a culture of innovation at your company.
To foster innovation, you need to allow your employees to take risks without fear of failure. In fact, as strange as this may sound, when it comes to innovation, you need to embrace failure, to encourage it. Without failure, it is impossible for people to take risks, to learn and to grow. You have to try a number of new ideas before you hit on one that actually works. But if you don’t have the opportunity to continue trying, you will never find that good idea.
If people are punished for failing, they are unlikely to take risks or try anything new.
Another way to encourage innovation is to encourage as much diversity of opinion as possible. Innovation grows out of an interaction of a diverse array of ideas and opinions. If everyone is thinking alike, there really isn’t any creativity. In multi-national corporations, this might involve bringing together people from different countries. In other companies, it might involve bringing together people from different departments and backgrounds. Often someone new to the situation, who is viewing it from a different perspective, can offer valuable insights.
Even though people tend to think of innovation as a kind of freewheeling process, it needs to be guided as well, or many of the new ideas may never get to take root. You need to determine where innovation needs to occur, what needs it is fulfilling. Companies see where innovation is needed from listening to customers and seeing trends in their industry.
When you have many different ideas being tossed about, there needs to be some kind of process in place for corralling them and then following through to see which ones might be viable. The process helps to guide thinking. The company decides which areas it wants to emphasize with innovation, based on input from employees, customers, clients, and others, and then these ideas are focused on in an attempt to bring them to fruition.
When your company needs temporary, temporary-to-hire or direct-hire workers in the Anchorage area, send a message to the Opti Staffing Group. We would love to discuss how we can help your company with its contingent staffing needs.