How To Build Innovation Culture In Your Business In Nigeria
It is imperative if not indispensable for one to build innovation culture in his business. It becomes the normal way of life for you and your staff.
I believe that deep down, we want to be innovative and do things differently with high results but we won’t be able to thrive if we don’t build the innovation culture.
Innovation can come in a lightning strike but you won’t recognize it if you are not prepared for it. This is why the culture is important. When we build an innovation culture, it is like tilling the farm to get it ready for the cultivation of crops. When you eventually plant, it germinates.
When the culture is absent, it reduces our chances of becoming innovatively productive. We are going to expose you to how you can build innovation culture and reap untold benefits from it.
Build Innovation Culture Through These Ways
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Create Teams
To build innovation culture, you will need people to work together. To get people to work together, you need to create teams capable of working together. It is best you pair people that don’t usually work together so that their task on innovation will become primary to them.
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2. Ask This One Question
There is this question you need to ask. It sparks off a series of creativity and innovation in people. The question is “If you could change one thing that makes it hard to serve our customers, or would give them something they have been asking for, what would that be… and how would you do it?”
Give them time and see what they come up with.
3. Give Them More Time If They Ask
Innovation cannot be rushed. It is a gradual process and should be handled as such. To build innovation culture, you will need to give the team you have created the requisite time to come up with the innovative idea.
Sometimes, they will not need the time extension and you will not bother about giving it to them. However, most times, they will need the time extension and you should give them. Better to get it right than to do it with haste and get it wrong.
4. You will need a whiteboard grid
To build innovative culture, you will need to have a graph like a grid to determine the nature of the idea. The truth is that some ideas are easy to implement while others are not. Others have the potentials to have a high impact while others don’t.
Now the graph will shed light on how easy an idea is to implement and the impact it will have. The X-axis will contain the ease of implementation while the Y-axis will contain the level of impact. This way, you will be able to make the right decision on which idea to adopt.
5. Ensure that each team puts down its most important change
They can understand what their most important change is by understanding the whiteboard grid. The one that has the highest impact with the least ease of implementation is the one that becomes their most important change. The graph will guide them and you on the innovative idea to adopt.
6. Brainstorm on the idea
There are a lot of things you will need to discuss before signing off on the change. This is why brainstorming is one of the steps on how to build an innovation culture.
You have to ensure that the group discusses and dissect the changes needed and effect the necessary changes theoretically before you will have them put them into practice.
Allow you your team members to participate in the process and don’t be too quick to condemn them. Spur the innovative spirit by giving them the freedom to express themselves.
7. Find a way to adopt the best change
The best change is usually the one with high impact and less ease of implementation. You can move on to make the changes and try as much as possible to listen to the opinions of others on the issue.
8. Then Rinse And Repeat the process
The final step on how to build innovative culture is to rinse and repeat the process mentioned above. By rinsing you are fine-tuning the idea and implementing. After that, you will have to repeat the process.
Innovation is not a onetime thing but a process. You keep innovating and making changes to suit the time and trend. The fact is that when you build an innovative culture and other employees follow suit. It becomes infectious and a way of life.
