Steps to Implement an Innovation Culture – by Rodrigo B. Ferreira

In this post I am sharing my perspective on how to transform a company with a complacent attitude into a more innovative player in the market before it gets overtaken by the competition. This was inspired in a case analysis I made on a company during one of my MBA classes. I hope it’s useful and enjoyable reading for you!

Defining the areas for innovation:

I would identify which areas to tackle first in the corporate change process and in which order, if not in parallel, by looking at an in-depth SWOT analysis of my own company and of the main competitors. Those would be the most impactful areas for a company in the industry.

Identifying talent:

Next I would look deeper into those areas and conduct a survey to assess my company’s internal creativity potential. This assessment should be designed to highlight the potential talent for innovation that some individuals might have, which might be underutilized today. This would focus primarily on management of the previously defined areas.

Cultural change:

I would then lead personally a cultural change process by forming specific teams within each focus department making sure there were intrinsically creative people in each team. Such process wouldn’t radically change their work environment, since this could scare the managers instead of engaging them, but it would have a sense of urgency based in evidence that the company is at risk of being thrown out of the market if we don’t innovate.

I would involve managers in the solution by eliciting critical thinking and suggestions of how they see the company operating in the future to reach the success and growth necessary to keep us in business. They would have to come up with answers to questions like: How do competitors see us? What would take for a competitor to gain our entire market share? Which is our greatest weakness? If we don’t do something to change the situation, who will? Should we hire experts in creativity or should we teach our personnel to innovate?

Taking action:

Now, with the management buy in and their suggestions in my hands I could devise a plan to turn their departments into innovative environments. Maybe even have a contest to incentivize them to turn their work environment into a place that represents the new vision of innovation. Next I would give each manager the opportunity to try something new and give them more flexibility to define how to fulfill my new directions. They could begin by performing “question storming” sessions with their teams about their most urgent problems and other tasks related to observing and networking. In this phase I would mix people from different departments in each team, so that they would be exposed to different views on the business.

Conclusion:

These steps would create new environments, insights and philosophies that the managers would accept immediately because they saw the need for urgent change and were part of the creation of solutions. Also, their freedom to do things differently would motivate them intrinsically build on their loyalty to the company and their know-how and drive more competitive processes, products and brands.