If you look at the Google Trends for Key Words, Innovation has been steadily topping the charts.
Another search on the books, publications dealing with the topic of Innovation and you get 54,400,000 results.
This shows that Innovation is probably one of the most used and probably the most mystic word for corporates and individuals.
Everybody wants to be innovative, every company wants to be tagged as Innovative. In fact, I cross the limits and ask my wife to be innovative in her cooking too :)
But if you look at the number of organizations that are truly innovative, its very humbling. You can count them on your fingers.
This draws us to a questions; why is that Innovation is still not a mass phenomenon though the quest for being innovative is?
I was deeply intrigued by this question until a couple of days back.
My Son and Innovation
My Eureka moment came when I was taking to my son. He is 2.5 years old and speaks my mother tongue, the one we use in family conversation, Gujarati, as fluently as anybody else in my home. Like everyday, I was just having some conversation and I notice he speaks the language not only fluently but also with expression and modulation typical to us. I was awestruck and that was the moment.
I started observing him more keenly and realized that he has picked up the title songs of the TV serials we watch. The songs are in Hindi. My son doesn't have nay explicit training in Gujarati or Hindi, he has picked it up by listening to us. The same is applicable for the title songs. Whatever he has learnt is because of the curiosity and its abundant in 2.5 year olds and the environment.
In fact, this is the case with all the children who have not been spoiled by Education :). With this thought in mind, lets go back to our original question.
Once a organization decides that it wants to be innovative, typically to be innovative what companies do is organize expensive trainings, form dedicated Innovation teams, purchase or build custom software/portals to facilitate innovation, get library loaded with stuff related to Innovation etc.
Still, Innovation remains a distant moon.
One of the many reasons is that Innovation cannot be forced. In fact, if a company is serious about Innovation, it should build a culture such that all the senses of the employees start feeling innovation. The Innovation should start showing in the HR policies, in the Work Place set-up, in the Employee Policies and the list goes on. The way my son picked up Gujarati without any training but just because of the environment, the employees will start picking up and being innovative if everything around them boasts of innovation.
Forming teams, having tools are all explicit means and in fact they are the mediums to channelize the innovative thinking.
If you remember the chain mailers about Google offices and their plush cafeteria, extensive lounges, just visualize the picture in your mind and you will start nodding in agreement to my thoughts laid down in the above paragraphs.
To make the employees Innovative, you have to give them the right triggers from all directions, all the time, everywhere.
Check out Survey from Harvard Business review to check the readiness of your Innovation Strategy
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