Transparency in Innovation
Involving employees in company innovation efforts is one of the easiest and fruitful things that a company can do to increase employee satisfaction and admiration of the company, drive new ideas, and impact your company’s bottom line.
But it is not enough to just involve employees. You must do so with enough transparency to show that their efforts have not hit a wall. If employees see their work being met with progress, they will understand that their efforts were not in vain.
With inclusion and the visibility of forward progress, employees will reward their companies with productivity, creativity, and a special kind of optimism typically reserved for passion projects.
Additionally, this transparency benefits both the initial stakeholders and the company as a whole. Siloed innovation is to the detriment of the organization at large, as the focused effort denies value being added to other departments. Large companies may have several departments getting to the same solution different ways, using more time and resources than if they were to have shared and properly communicated (or done some storytelling) upon developing the solution the first time.
Granted, there are limitations to complete transparency, as innovation is a key driver to organizational sustainability and competitive advantage in industry. Outside of company walls, transparency could remove the barriers that make a company especially competitive, but these reservations can be dangerous if it means denying trust to your employees.
A core component to innovation is collaboration. With a free forum of communication within company walls, collaboration is encouraged across departments. Collaboration brings in cross-functional perspectives, which may mutate and evolve an idea in unexpected ways.
We should encourage collaboration, evolution of ideas, and imitation of ideas among colleagues. In my organization, I find that employees who have yet to contribute to these challenges are hesitant to participate due to fear of their idea being stolen. Ideas can be stolen, sure, but the value of an idea alone pales in comparison to the value of the collaboration on the idea, future evolution of the idea, and most importantly, execution on an idea.
Execution rarely happens in a vacuum. Most ideas require cooperation between teams and colleagues to give an idea legs. Given that requirement, the fear of imitation should be vanquished. If anything, imitation should help ideators to feel that their idea is validated, and that the problem that they are solving is one that other people agree could be reasonably solved using this idea. In cases like this, transparency is needed to connect similar ideas, pair ideators who are passionate about that change, and as a coalition, drive the conversation around that idea.
Transparency is a powerful force. It showcases progress, motivates employees and recognizes their efforts. It is key to storytelling, enabling collaboration, and sharing success throughout an organization. The limitations to transparency are minimized when a transparent idea is coupled with a dedicated leader and strong communication, because that idea can evolve and solve problems across an organization.
So encourage collaboration, be open and clear about the ideas in your organization, and help leaders to fulfill their vision needed to bring ideas to life.
Author: Max Robinson - Innovation Strategist at ignite! Innovation.
ignite! is your partner in crowdsourced innovation management and services. The mission at ignite! is to kick-start a culture of innovation, idea sharing, and management of ideas with client partners.
Contact ignite! at info@helloignite.com
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