Everyone seems to agree that innovation is important. Consider the following:

• Studies show that innovation increases profits and returns for investors.

• Being innovative can help you make better business decisions.

• Focused innovation can also increase productivity and reduce employee turnover.

• Amazon’s search for ‘innovation’ within business books returns 5,757 entries.

Even allowing duplicates, this indicates a lot of interest in the topic!

So why aren’t more companies innovating more often? Can innovation really work within a corporate structure?

Are you Darkmind?

“Darkminding” is a term I use to explain two of the natural ways we think about:

• Sticking with what is known: We don’t like things to change, so even if we could be more creative, we resist developing new ideas because they create risks. We “take care of the darkness” by keeping it and trying not to let in any light (ie new ideas). This is another way of saying that we like the status quo.

• Avoid trying to develop new ideas: it’s too much work! Why think new things when the old way still works? We keep our minds dark and avoid the effort to create light.

Darkminding can be quite useful for some things. If you had to reconsider every step in every process you carry out, you would never achieve anything. Routine can be efficient and help us accomplish things we do regularly.

But unfortunately, the world changes, and often the process we’ve developed doesn’t. However, these changes happen very gradually, so it’s hard to tell when the normal routine becomes less helpful. If things start to go wrong, a few tweaks to what we’re doing and we might be back to where we were. But if the fundamentals have changed, these minor differences suddenly become very big problems.

All of this is exacerbated by a corporate structure that often rewards, in subtle and more overt ways, sticking to how things are done and protecting its own business. Change in a company often means a threat to status and control, making ideas dangerous.

How a company can create a solution

If our brains naturally work that way, you may be wondering “Can innovation fit within my company?” Fortunately, our brains also work in more creative ways that you can encourage, in order to facilitate our initial reaction to ‘Darkmind’ at the first glimpse of a new idea. It can be hard work, but realizing our limitations and implementing some of the changes below can create an atmosphere of innovation in any company.

1. Why should I care?

The first step is to understand why innovation is important. There are several ways to achieve this, but the most important are those that provide information about your specific company. You can produce multiple studies and statistics that show the value of innovation, but without relating it to your company it will not have the same impact.

what are your competitors doing? You need to understand how they innovate and if you measure up to their standards. Comparison with others outside of your industry can also give you a benchmark to aim for. An analysis like this will give you details about where you’re falling behind, and you’ll be preyed on by more creative competitors.

You also need to know how big the gap is between where you want to be, say, three years from now, and how long it will take to get there. If you want to increase your turnover by 20% in that time, and assuming some of your products and offers become obsolete or obsolete, how are you going to make up the difference? If revenue from new products is to provide part of that turnover, how many new innovations are required? If your analysis indicates that two or three new products will be needed, it can often mean that you need to have a minimum portfolio of 6 or more viable ideas. The gap may be bigger than you think, but you won’t know until you check it out.

2. Make ‘business as usual’ unusual

Let me be deliberately provocative for a moment. People need motivation to come up with ideas and embrace a culture of innovation. One radical but effective way to do this, suggested by Peter Drucker in his book Innovation and Entrepreneurship, is to review every area of ​​your business at least every three years and make it clear that you’re on trial for your life. Underperforming areas should be rigorously reviewed and removed if necessary. This approach focuses minds on new developments and ideas and prevents people from stagnating and going with the flow. If you know that you will need to explain how you will be profitable in the future, you will need to be able to explain the gap and how you will close it. Innovation is the best way to make your case. If this sounds scary, the pressure that the market will eventually put on an underperforming area is often worse. Globalization only amplifies this pressure.

3. Make it part of the system

Whatever systems you have in place, make innovation a part of what you do every day. If you’re reviewing monthly budgets versus actuals, add a section on the status of current product development. If you have regular staff meetings, add a five-minute slot to allow people to discuss recent innovations they’ve developed. Make innovation seem important and it will soon become part of the culture. Don’t forget that you should also take some time to step away from your regular job and go through some techniques to generate new ideas that can lead to new products, market approaches, or cost savings. Just put some time in your journal! Remember, if you make it a habit, it will be easier to keep doing it.

You also need a system to track innovations that are being developed, including who is doing most of the work in this area. Then you can ensure that you have a fresh and growing list of new ideas waiting to be developed. You can also reward people who are continually innovating. Someone should be accountable to the CEO for this list and for growing the number of ideas produced. Without a system, you won’t be able to monitor where innovation is needed or know how to use all the skills of your most innovative employees.

4. Create connections

Creativity is connection, so the top priority is fostering people’s ability to do new things and meet new people. Innovation is killed by people working in silos, moving product from one area to the next. Your business can no longer survive with the following mindset:

• “Here’s engineering. We design it, now you build it.”

• “Here’s marketing. We’ve built it, now let people know.”

• “Here you have a sales department. We have announced it, now you sell it.”

Everyone must work together, early on, on ideas or services to make sure they are a perfect fit for the customer’s needs. The additional benefit is that the more a diverse team works together, the more unexpected innovations will emerge. Try mixing people up and see what happens.

Another way to get people to think differently is to move them. Facilitate seconds, both for internal and external movements. And when they are free, make people aware that part of their time should be dedicated to thinking about how their experience can improve what the company does in other areas.

The need for leadership

Some of the above ideas could be easily implemented, in fact, they can be done without people realizing that you are fostering innovation. Behind it all, however, is our human inclination to prefer the way things are, so a lot of work is needed to implement a fully working process. Which leads to a need for leadership. Innovation always brings uncertainty and the top managers and directors of the company need to define a vision to make everything seem less scary. Can you help people see, feel, and know that this is the most important issue facing the organization? Can you make the vision so vivid and compelling that people naturally want to go to that future? That is often the hardest part of driving innovation.