The corporate culture is a well-connected web of rules, values, norms, and attitudes prominent in an organization that influences how an employee acts, thinks, and innovates. Innovation as part of the corporate culture is determined by how well it is supported as well as promoted by the management and employees. This ‘innovation culture’ is crucial for any organization’s success and continuous growth because it provides them with a competitive advantage that helps to identify, grab new and better opportunities for the organization and simultaneously increases the productivity of the employees by building a positive culture at the workplace.
But, what are some barriers to this culture of innovation? Innovation is one of the largest factors to support the survival of an organization is also affected by a few barriers. These barriers include rigid higher management, fear of taking risks, lack of leadership, and a lack of vision.
A good example of such barriers leading to the downfall of an organization could be Kodak’s downfall that includes their inability to innovate their business model with the digital age, lack of complacency caused by higher management to not listen to innovators, and lack of organizational agility that made them focus on maintaining their status quo instead of taking risks.
So, how to build a culture of innovation? Although organizations can set up a number of events to teach the importance of innovation and clarify how important innovation is for them if they don’t give enough space and time for employees then ticking off projects from one’s list take priority over innovation, hence the first step is to provide enough resources and space to employees for innovating new ideas. Then a simple and effective hack for organizations to build a culture of innovation is to introduce monthly competition for innovation where any employee can either come up with smaller innovations to boost productivity & business or come up with their own corporate ventures to build a child company. The organization can further set up rewards as a source of reinforcements for such activities.
Bonus tip: Open up organizational space where anyone can bypass the barriers and hierarchy to present their innovative ideas and products in front of any/all department and management heads and enhance the building of culture for innovation.
“Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity – not a threat”
– Steve Jobs
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