Recently, innovation analyst Beth Henderson compared building innovation into your organization to cooking up a delicious soup with only the ingredients you have readily available in your kitchen. She points out that you have the basics for innovation in your organization, and if you blend them together in the right way, you can create a delicious and satisfying offering for your business. We'll explain more in this issue of Promotional Consultant Today.

Vision and Strategy: The Recipe. The first and most important step is to have a recipe to follow. This is your innovation strategy. It will provide the guide to your entire innovation program. Ideally, innovation should be a part of the overall business strategy, so your innovation strategy should align with the strategic goals of your business.

Ask these questions: What areas of your business should innovation efforts focus on? What are the key disruptive threats? How are you going to enable innovation to happen? Put this strategy on paper and share with others, get feedback and get people on board.

Processes and Procedures: The Onion and Garlic. The next step is to create some processes for generating and capturing ideas, as well as a process for refining, assessing and implementing them. These are like the onion and garlic in your kettle of soup; they set up the base flavor or foundation for your program. The process could be as simple as an excel spreadsheet shared centrally, with the potential for it to evolve into a more complex idea management platform.

Leadership and Governance: The Executive Chef. Your leaders are like the head chef—dictating the flavor of your program and playing a key role in inspiring innovation, motivating teams and communicating success. Consider having an executive serve as the sponsor for innovation in your organization. This leader can represent your organization's commitment to driving innovation and keep it top of mind.

An innovation leader can also:

  • Ensure that innovation is a standard agenda item at management meetings
  • Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for innovation and development

People And Culture: The Stock. Just as stock is the base for soup, culture should make up the base for your innovation program. If you're starting with a conservative culture where challenging the status quo is frowned upon, then you will need to launch culture-building initiatives that promote change. Help people realize that ideas and execution can come from anywhere within the organization. Simple innovation competitions with prizes are a good place to start as they are inexpensive and easy to establish. Also, aim to drive innovation by focusing on the types of attributesto to seek in new hires. Look for those who are creative, independent thinkers, problem solvers and challenge-seeking individuals to help carry the innovation torch.

Getting hungry for innovation? Read the rest of this business recipe in tomorrow's issue of PCT.

Source: Beth Henderson is a Melbourne-based innovation analyst for Spotless Group, an integrated facilities services company.