Creating an innovation culture in the organization includes three parts. The first part is to remove the hurdles of innovation, the second part is to provide incentives for innovation, the third part is to creating innovation momentum in the organization.
The first step to accelerate innovation is to remove the hurdles of innovation. The common hurdles for innovation include the inaccessibility of human resources, facilities, and unmotivated management.
In some IT companies, to encourage the exploration of new ideas, the employers allow employees to spend 20% of their paid time to work on projects that are not in the regular plan. To build collaborations between employees who share similar interests, employer can also build employee skill database and share it across the whole organization.
Unmotivated management can be discouraging for motivated employee. It is beneficial to train the management on managing innovation related conversations. For example, when an employee brings up an innovative idea, the management should provide support and guidance even if the specific idea is not entirely practical at that moment.
The second step to accelerate innovation is to provide incentives for innovation. In traditional organization, the compensations are not necessarily tied with employee's ability to innovate. As a result, the organization can establish innovation themed award independent from the regular compensation scheme.
Other than financial incentive, innovators can also be awarded with publicity on internal publications.
The third step to accelerate the innovation is to create momentum. To create a culture of innovation, the organization can organize innovation themed activities such as Hackathon, product fair/competition, intrapreneurship competition.
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