To maintain viability against the competition and relevance in the minds of consumers, today’s businesses increasingly rely on their ability to innovate—regardless of size or industry.

However, true innovation can’t be forced. Innovation is more than mere updates or improvements to existing products or services; innovation requires people to consistently view their world in interesting, imaginative, and often unorthodox ways. And this involves cultivating an innovation culture.

Of course, the presence of an innovation culture doesn’t happen overnight. Before setting out to create an environment where employees feel empowered to defy the status quo or compelled to look past obvious solutions, it helps for us to first understand what an innovation culture is.

What is an innovation culture?

Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Being innovative on a consistent basis requires an environment where unconventional thinking is not only encouraged but applied. A culture of innovation also allows great ideas to come from anyone, regardless of role or tenure. For an innovation culture to thrive, all team members must feel comfortable giving suggestions for improvements, offering critiques, and being champions for change.

In an innovation culture, status quos are meant to be challenged. Routines are broken. Unique perspectives are nurtured through people who come from different backgrounds or life experiences. To encourage innovation, a company must expect to think outside the box.

The transformation to an innovative organization takes time, but it’s worthwhile. You’ll know you have an innovation culture when the right conditions are in place for both innovation leaders and individuals to flourish. Identify and implement the practices that are necessary to encourage innovation, such as: 

• Cross-functional collaboration 

• Democratized decision-making 

• Collaboration equity 

• Transparency 

• Agility

Why is creating an innovation culture important?

With a thriving innovation culture, a business gains the catalyst it needs for continuous growth and progress, even in the face of a sudden crisis or other difficult situation.

Having an innovation culture better equips employees to succeed when resourcefulness and creativity are needed. It also gives people a reason to rally behind a company and trust in its leadership.

Importantly, an innovation culture also boosts employee engagement as people can see the actual impact of their efforts. With a culture of innovation, great ideas are brought to life, encouraging employees to continue to perform at their best. Workers are also surrounded by others who embody similar values and drive, which provides further motivation. 

Here are some of the other reasons why it’s important to create an innovation culture:

New ideas emerge

In a culture of innovation, businesses use a multifaceted approach to inspire more employee creativity.  By implementing an innovation framework, companies can actively help guide the innovation process by helping employees generate ideas and turn the best ideas into action. An effective innovation framework is flexible and iterative while providing just enough structure to guide ideas forward.

In an innovation culture, teams can approach problem-solving or thought generation with freedom and spontaneity. Through a lens of innovative values, past mistakes and failed opportunities become starting points to enact bold solutions.

By allowing brainstorming sessions to be nonlinear and free flowing, ideas are quickly created and collected, while simultaneously sparking more ideas for the organization in the process.

Employees feel more invested

In an innovative organization, it’s not surprising for employees to feel a greater sense of dedication to their team members as well as to their employers. The reason is simple enough: If an organization places importance around its culture of innovation, then so will its workforce.

When a company embraces an innovation culture, it’s natural to treat people more like genuine partners whose opinions are valued when difficulties or changes occur. Whether it’s a cost increase or a market loss, team members are more empowered to overcome obstacles and contribute ideas if an innovation culture is in place.

Being invested also means team members become more engaged in activities that affect day-to-day decisions or long-term growth, which helps give them a higher purpose as they see that their ideas do make a difference.

Creates learning opportunities

Living in fear of failure or giving up too soon can often undermine innovation at a company.

To encourage innovation, businesses must strive to give more of their employees the latitude to take calculated risks in the pursuit of greatness. On top of this, taking risks and making the hard calls is one of the essential attributes to innovation teams. Once team members realize it’s actually okay to fail, they begin to quickly learn from their mistakes and find ways to adapt and overcome.  

The process of creating something never imagined before or coming up with new methods to tackle old problems is always fraught with trial and error. Being immersed in an innovation culture and having the freedom to take risks provides everyone with steady exposure to learning experiences.

Core values of a culture of innovation

At this point, you may find yourself contemplating how to create a culture of innovation within your own organization and wondering about how much time and effort it will actually involve.

The good news is that characteristics of an innovation culture may already exist in your business. To better encourage innovation throughout your company, look for these seven core values of an innovation culture and find opportunities to nurture them.

Curiosity and learning

A culture of innovation is partially defined by curiosity. From being inquisitive and asking questions to embracing experimentation and pursuing better answers, curiosity inspires greater thinking. It’s why so many startups and leading tech companies hire people for attitude rather than skill alone. 

With a curious mindset, employees not only advance within their roles but can quickly learn new skills. Encouraging and engaging with people’s innate curiosity is key to innovation, which is why it’s important for companies to provide learning opportunities for their employees.

Learning is also a key aspect to recovering from failure. By regarding failure as a learning opportunity, people are better able to bounce back and see clear next steps, continuing the process of innovation. 

Collaboration

Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Often, the first thing people do when they are curious about a solution is ask others for their opinion.

An innovation culture should foster positive, equitable collaboration where everyone feels that they have an opportunity to speak up and be heard. People should have faith that they can bring new ideas to the table and be given opportunities to explore potential solutions.

Effective collaboration also requires a place for team members to come together to discuss ideas. By having a central place where everyone gathers to brainstorm, provide feedback, and decide on next steps, you can start creating an innovation repository. This innovation repository takes ideas that you’re already working on into actionable documentation that forms a living blueprint of your business, fueling future innovation.

Trust and vulnerability

Trust is also a critical part of an innovation culture. Without transparency or honesty in the work environment—and the sentiment that it’s safe to fail—people find it hard to be frank about their thoughts and ideas. Without trust, employees may fear their ideas will be taken or they may be afraid of failure, and never pursue their ideas at all.

In a culture of innovation, people feel more at ease with accepting blame, admitting weaknesses, taking risks, and making apologies. In turn, businesses reward employees for doing so.

To better encourage innovation, employees should be trusted to explore their ideas, even if that involves working outside their formal roles or taking on different responsibilities in order to further explore every possibility.  

Integrity

When it comes to innovation, integrity is fundamental. It’s what helps embolden team members to say and do what’s right, even while encountering resistance in their organization.

Acting with integrity requires a certain level of courage and honesty. It means doing what’s best for the business, recognizing employees for their contributions, and holding others accountable regardless of their role in the company. Innovation can’t exist when people don’t value integrity.

The quest for innovation will always involve making mistakes, taking risks, and challenging the status quo. Without the freedom to take those actions, a culture of innovation cannot take hold. 

Respect and inclusion

Respect among team members is important in any workplace. Appreciating each other’s talents and abilities, and ensuring that people feel free to bring their whole selves to work, goes far toward creating an atmosphere conducive to innovation.

With a culture of innovation, employees have the ability to speak their minds freely without fear. Ideas are shared fairly and received respectfully. People know they’ll get the chance to be heard regardless of their role or seniority. Respect also means that criticism, dissent, or disagreement are also welcome in the workplace.

Ideas can only evolve and improve once people get the opportunity to explain and defend them. In many ways, being able to provide or receive honest critiques is the ultimate show of respect.

Humility

Many businesses routinely overestimate their strengths or capabilities and underestimate their blind spots. With a sense of humility, organizations gain situational awareness.

In the absence of excess pride and arrogance, team members are more likely to own up to their mistakes and learn from them. Humility also lowers the resistance to change and increases the willingness to accept fresh perspectives. Is your team humble enough to encourage innovation?

By encouraging openness to new ideas, a willingness to learn from others, and a readiness to appreciate the strengths of another, humility can help foster a climate that promotes innovation. 

Determination and bold ambition

When working to innovate a product or service, everyone runs into obstacles. But determination—which can also be regarded as bold ambition—is what helps teams move past setbacks and stay focused on the future.

Call it perseverance, stubbornness, or old-fashioned hard work, but determination is what turns great ideas into actionable solutions. Even if resources and timing are limited, determination is what allows organizations to work with what’s available to them and make innovations happen.  

When a team is determined, failure isn’t the end but simply a detour. Determination also helps companies establish criteria from the start for deciding whether to keep, modify, or disregard an idea.

Use Lucid to foster your innovation culture

Most every company stands to benefit from a culture of innovation. It’s how new ideas emerge, employees become invested, and learning opportunities are created. By encouraging the values of an innovation culture, the transformation to innovative organization becomes easier.

Looking for a way to get started? A visual collaboration platform helps you keep track of your innovative ideas, record the results of your experiments, and bring teammates together for collaboration. Check out how you can use Lucid to establish your innovation strategy and measure the impact of your innovation culture.