Participative innovation is a collective process that requires certain good practices to be put in place, and certain pitfalls to be avoided. When innovation becomes the business of every employee in the company, we speak of participative or collaborative innovation.
If it is to survive, the company must be able to rely on this participative innovation. The quest for permanent movement strengthens the company's ability to face new challenges, as well as the employee experience.
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When the culture of innovation becomes central to the company
Too often, when we think of innovation, we think of disruptive innovation. The real innovations in business are first and foremost incremental. Every company benefits daily from the ideas of its employees to improve its products and processes.
The kaizen approach, derived from the Toyota production system, has played a key role in the continuous improvement of corporate performance through the generation and implementation of ideas by individual employees. The basic notion behind the kaizen approach is that a continuous flow of practical improvements translates into substantial gains in productivity and quality over time for the company.
Although this approach has its roots in the industrial world, kaizen has also proved effective in other sectors. Examples include auditing, advertising and banking.
Participative innovation or how to develop the commitment of each employee
One of the major obstacles to innovation within the company is often the organizational difficulty of abandoning established practices, processes or standards (especially when these are institutionalized in validated strategic documents). Another obstacle often cited by employees is the lack of transparency regarding changes or new developments. They can then be perceived as being imposed.
Employees need to feel valued in participative innovation processes
One of the keys to avoiding this second obstacle is the commitment of every employee, whatever their place in the organization chart, to the company's innovation initiatives.
Employees rarely perceive how their ideas are evaluated and retained. The feedback and escalation process is not always transparent when one is far removed from managerial or strategic functions.
Yet it's the employees on the "front line" who are often best placed to detect changing market conditions and future business opportunities. They are, however, usually the least heard (as they are at the lowest level of the organization). In a nutshell, it' s hard to get employee commitment when decision-making is hierarchical and processes lack transparency.
How to deploy participative innovation within the company?
The problem of scaling up innovation in the company
There are many different ways of stimulating and developing innovation within a group, entity or company. We won't go into them here. Nevertheless, the principles of POC (Proof of Concept) have been gaining ground in companies for years. They often enable agility and rapid testing of an idea or concept. But what happens when it's time to scale up and deploy a successfully tested innovation more widely? Quite often, it comes up against a number of internal obstacles that prevent it from being scaled up.
Innovations don't spread easily in siloed companies. Ideas are often "sticky" to their department, their creator, and may have difficulty being adopted by others (who will emphasize their own specificities). To complicate matters, the organization often suffers from "not-invented-here syndrome". As a result, potentially good ideas are often overlooked or ignored. They are perceived as unsuited to the particular context of a mission, project or department.
Start with common, collective needs
A key condition for successfully scaling up an innovation within a company is to ensure that the solution provided by the innovation addresses a problem shared by several target users. Meeting this condition generally requires the contributor of the idea to verify with his peers the value of changing/optimizing a process/step/service, and to understand what processes are currently in place. This certainly requires extra effort. But it will ensure that the solution can be adapted to multiple and varied uses.
Promoting innovation
"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," could be the idea. Employee commitment cannot be based solely on goodwill or generosity. The company needs to create the conditions internally to encourage innovation. We've often heard the example of Google and the time it gives its employees to get involved in projects other than those directly linked to their job. An interesting example, but one that is often ill-suited to the context and operational reality of many companies.
Bonuses, career advancement and internal recognition are effective ways of rewarding innovation and those involved in it. More recently, the principles of video games (gamification) have also proved to be effective ways of rewarding participants in collaborative innovation platforms.
3 keys to successful participative innovation in the workplace
1. Reinforce awareness-raising initiatives
We've already mentioned this, but for innovation to be everyone's business, everyone needs to understand the "WHY".
- COLLECTIVE WHY: Why do we need to innovate (especially if we don't see the problems from our own point of view)?
- INDIVIDUAL WHY: Why should I take part in this innovation? What do I gain by sharing my ideas?
If innovation is to become an integral part of corporate culture, awareness-raising and communication are prerequisites for participation. To participate and fully commit to an approach, it is necessary to understand the usefulness of this innovation process.
Individual awareness can also be raised by means of an assessment, an evaluation methodology that enables each person to become aware of his or her commitment.
2. Valuing commitment to the company
As we mentioned earlier, the idea is to reward those who are committed to and drive collective innovation within the company. They act as true gas pedals and catalysts for the collective. The processes and very purpose of innovation take employees away from their usual tasks. Although it can sometimes generate apprehension among certain employees, collective innovation must first and foremost be a "liberator of constructive energies". Enhancing the value of the process, and of those who take part in it, internally within the company, or with management, helps to increase this potential for constructive energies.
3. Free yourself (in part) from hierarchical constraints
We tend to think that, as a matter of principle, innovation should take place outside the box. This is partly true when we think of the constraints represented by hierarchies and over-established processes. Nevertheless, innovating outside the box can either lead to a dispersion of energies, or to the complexity of taking a project beyond the POC stage. Innovation requires latitude, but depending on the project, the teams involved, the budgets allocated and the expected objectives, this latitude must be variable.
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