Building an innovation culture

An innovation culture is a corporate culture that promotes innovation. In practice, it means a positive attitude to innovation on the part of employees, where everyone is involved, has ideas and all work together to drive and support innovation.

With LEAD Innovation you dedicate yourself to your innovation management on the individual level, and build up the 3 most important pillars with us, which enable your employees to advance innovations.

Can - Competence building in the field of innovation methods

Want - Intrinsic motivation through specific stimuli

May - Freedom and structures created for the employees

As an innovation partner, we accompany you in creating your innovation culture and achieve an important goal together, which is to influence norms, values and attitudes in such a way that the people involved in the innovation process change their behavior.

Because don't forget: A positive innovation culture enables, that

- employees to generate, collect and contribute ideas, and

- to promote ideas and their implementation and exploitation within the organization.

What is innovation culture?

A company's culture determines the relationships and actions of its employees within the company and shapes its external appearance. It is not openly visible, but is manifested indirectly through values, norms, attitudes and paradigms that employees collectively share.

The innovation culture, on the other hand, describes a specific characteristic of the corporate culture, which is primarily intended to promote the development of innovations within the company. Since innovation processes generally involve cross-departmental processes, the innovation culture functions as a kind of cross-sectional culture whose norms and values are shaped and supported by all those involved in the process. A positive innovation culture creates incentives for employees and leads to an increase in the innovative strength of the company.

The three dimensions of innovation culture

The innovation activity in the enterprise is to a large extent determined by an innovation-promoting culture, which includes both "Ability" (capacity for innovation), "Willingness" (willingness to innovate) and "May" (innovation opportunity).

The three dimensions do not stand alone but influence each other. The willingness to innovate, for example, is strongly influenced by the other two dimensions of innovation capability and opportunity. A change in one of the dimensions automatically entails changes in other areas as well. Ideas can therefore only be efficiently further developed efficiently into innovations when the framework conditions for ability, willingness and permission have been created.

Can

In order to generate ideas and to develop sustainable innovations, employees must be supported and encouraged in the development and development of both the innovation and their creative potential. This requires on the one hand an innovation-promoting leadership, and, on the other hand, the increase of the innovation ability of the coworkers by the development of specialized knowledge.

Want

Innovative action cannot be ordered. It must be intrinsically motivated in order to establish a lasting innovation culture in the company. This requires committed and imaginative employees, in the company who also show the willingness to leave familiar paths, of thinking and acting, in order to develop an innovation from an idea. Motivated managers and the development of an innovation culture increase the willingness to innovate.

May

Permission is the necessary prerequisite for actually moving from "ability" and "will" to action. Within a company, therefore, framework conditions must be created that offer employees the opportunity to think and act innovatively and creatively.

Innovation is a mentality, innovation cannot be commanded. Innovation is a cultural and leadership issue. Only if all framework conditions interact positively can employees unfold their innovation potential and jointly develop successful innovations for the benefit of the company.

The most ingenious innovation processes, and the most modern innovation methods will have no effect without the commitment, enabling, support and encouragement of the company management.

It is purely in the hands of the management team to positively influence these framework conditions and to create an innovation culture in which innovations thrive by themselves.

Only with a pronounced innovation culture can one win innovation leadership for oneself, and these are the very people who CEOs should want to claim for themselves and their company, which is why cultural design must also be at the top of the CEO's agenda. Anything else would be a waste of resources.

Phase 1: Preparation

In the first phase, the aim is to define the parameters of the project, together with the project team, in a kick-off project and to plan and organize phase 2 on the basis of the results.

Phase 2: Regional Workshops - Training & Analysis of Innovation Culture

Phase 2 represents the core of the project. It serves to familiarize employees with the innovation process and elementary innovation methods, in a workshop. In Phase 2, interviews will also be conducted to clarify the current innovation culture in the company.

Phase 2 will not be rolled out in parallel, but one after the other in the following eight regions Western Europe (WEU), Latin America (LATAM), Central & Eastern Europe (CEE), Construction & Marine (CONMAR), Middle East (ME), South East Asia (SEA), Asia Pacific (APAC) and North Atlantic & Southern Africa (NASA).

Phase 3: Milestones

In the third phase we focus on the presentation and discussion of the results of all the regions, develop tailor-made measures to improve the innovation culture and create a detailed plan for its implementation.

Phase 4: Implementation

Basically, there are three things that shape the culture of innovation. That is the May, the Ability and the Will. In this last phase, all regions are therefore concerned with the implementation of measures at these three levels of the innovation culture.

Innovation culture is becoming more and more important because it is decisive for innovation productivity and innovation success. If a company wants to be successful in the long term, it can only succeed with innovation.

We have put together 10 tips for establishing a culture of innovation for you.

We would be pleased to provide you with these, free of charge, to download.