Stimulation for Innovation

[Former Member]

A creative mind is an engaged mind.By encouraging employee creativity, companies

can improve morale and boost motivation. Lets discuss to see if we can come up with ideas to innovate, steps that we can take to encourage our team to come up with innovative ideas that will reduce manual effort and increase productivity.

[kashif_bashir]

I believe starting to think creatively is about organization culture. An organisation that works in taboo style and has and old fashioned cleric style of carrying out job. Will make a creative employee actually part of the system and will loose employees creativity.

Therefore more important is the culture to promote and encourage creative thinking.

Secondly creativity has to achieved globally by doing innovation of individual small tasks. One should be given full space to think different approaches of doing individual small tasks creatively to achieve a collectively smart solution.

does that make any sense ?

BR

[Steffi_Warnecke]

Yes, it does. ^^

Secondly creativity has to achieved globally by doing innovation of individual small tasks. One should be given full space to think different approaches of doing individual small tasks creatively to achieve a collectively smart solution.

That's my favorite way to work! And it's an addition to what Colleen wrote:

They will hold onto those work instructions and follow them to the T instead of question value and usefulness.

The fear of mistakes is something, that is holding a lot of people back from using their whole potential IMO. Nobody likes to make a mistake of course, but if you keep on walking the safe path and are afraid to try something else just because it might not work (at first), it makes it harder to get things done and - more important - to learn something new.

Documentation is the experience of someone else written down. It should help you go your way, but not prevent you from making your own experience.

I'm pretty motivated by getting responsibilities for "my" systems. That means, that I have not to ask for every little thing, if I am allowed to do it this way or that way. The trust, that is put in me, that I will do the best I can in the best interest for everyone working with those systems, is something, that gets me going and is motivating me a lot to find new ways to improve everything even further.

[gleo_SRAM]

Fewer box ticking exercises - means that people feel there is purpose in what they are doing.  You are more likely to pay attention to the task rather than mindlessly completing it!

Encouraging out of the box thinking - lets be honest, most people respond to "rewards" so to innovate you whet their appetite! it doen'st have to be a monetary reward, chocolate works just as well!

[Colleen]

In a backward way, for successful innovation you need to encourage acceptance of failure. Whilst fear remains in making a mistake instead of learning a better way people will not take calculated risks. They will hold onto those work instructions and follow them to the T instead of question value and usefulness.

People need to feel comfortable to admit when they don't know or made a mistake and to accept that asking for help is not a sign of weakness.

[Former Member]

I totally agree with you Collen...People fear to adventure out doing things differently and this curtails new innovations. If the organisational atmosphere is congenial to such adventure then I think many more people will come up with implementing their ideas.