Strategies To Encourage Innovation In The Workplace


When you are running a business, and trying to grow it and achieve your goals on a budget, it’s important to do everything you can to innovate and solve problems creativity. This is not only much cheaper in the long run, but can also help your business to interest investors, stand out in a crowded marketplace, discover potentially best-selling product or service ideas, generate more leads and referrals, provide top-notch customer service, and improve productivity. 

No matter what industry your venture is in, or the types of wares you sell, you should have a focus on improving innovation and creativity in the workplace every day. Read on for some simple yet effective strategies you can employ in your business to help it soar. 

Be A Supportive Boss 

To begin with, never forget that, like so many things, encouraging innovation and creativity needs to start from the top. If you want your team to feel free to think outside the box, they need to be continually supported to do so. Workers should feel safe to try new things, take risks, and not be worried about being penalized if their ideas don’t pan out. If they are constantly worried about being made to look foolish, or being rebuked, for innovative suggestions, they won’t look for ways to see problems or opportunities in a new light, and will simply keep playing it safe. Be a better boss!

To encourage staff members to be creative, focus on having a positive corporate culture, whether you give workers regular, helpful feedback. Consider rewarding innovative workers too. This isn’t about necessarily cheering people on only for ideas that work, but also for coming up with interesting suggestions. Think about motivating employees with gifts, awards, public recognition, bonuses, fun perks, and the like. 

In addition, look for ways to act on at least some of the ideas presented by staff. This is one of the best ways to be a supportive manager when it comes to innovation, because it shows team members their ideas are being listened to, taken seriously, and invested in. From here, they will then be more motivated to try harder to be creative in the future. 

Another way to support workers is to give them the chance to keep learning new things. It is much easier for people to come up with innovative ideas when they are exposed to new opinions and training, and have the time and flexibility to pursue their interests. As such, consider paying for employees to study, whether it’s via a California MBA program, an international conference, or some in-house training or speaker presentations. 

Encourage Diverse Teams & Flexible Work Practices 

Another way to foster creativity is to encourage cross-pollination between team members. While individuals can come up with interesting ideas by themselves, innovation really soars when people have the chance to chat and work with colleagues they normally wouldn’t meet or collaborate with. 

Encourage people from different departments, locations, cultures, and other backgrounds to mix and exchange ideas and opinions. Create new project teams with people with diverse strengths, weaknesses, and career experience, and see what they can come up with together. Ensure everyone is given equal input and responsibility for the project, and let them learn from and encourage each other. 

As well, it is a good idea to let your employees work from different locations on a regular basis. This might include days working from home, at coffee shops, off at corporate retreats, in alternate areas of the office, or even in different branches of the business. A change in workspace can quickly lead to seeing things with fresh eyes, and innovative ideas in turn. 

Encourage Creativity-Boosting Techniques 

Lastly, keep in mind that there are plenty of creativity-boosting techniques to try. For example, brainstorming, done right, can be very helpful. This strategy works well when people get together in pairs or larger groups to bounce ideas off each other. 

However, proper brainstorming isn’t about only some people talking or about ideas being shut down; effective sessions revolve around each participant going to the “edges” of a problem or idea as much as possible. Assure workers that there are no silly ideas in these sessions, and that instead, they are to go beyond rational thought and be as open as possible to stretching their imaginations. 

It often works well to put limits in place to help teams be more creative too. This is because constraints tend to help people think more laterally. By only being allowed to come up with ideas that fit within certain criteria (these can be fun, crazy limits too, not serious ones), the brain has to work harder to think in new ways. Often, from this process, ideas that normally wouldn’t have even come up will arise, and these can lead to clever innovations that have a big impact on business.


I hope you enjoyed this article about effective tactics for improving innovation and growing a creative spark in the office.

Interested in more articles about employee management?

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