Name the three major areas required to be focused on, to create a favourable environment for innovation?
Answers
Explanation:
. Management practices that support creating a culture of innovation.
As with many strategic activities, creating a culture of innovation comes down to managerial leadership.
Specific actions and practices on the part of management that impact a culture of innovation include allowing freedom and autonomy in the practice of work; providing challenging work; specifying clear strategic goals; and forming work teams comprised of individuals with diverse skills and perspectives. It also helps to have leaders who are careful not to subconsciously sabotage innovation.
Consider which of these factors are part of your work environment:
Freedom: People need the autonomy to determine the optimal way to carry out their tasks. This gives them a sense of control over their work and a feeling of responsibility for the final product (or process).
Challenging Work: Challenging assignments give employees an opportunity to work hard and feel challenged — and to feel that their work is important and valuable. Employees need to understand why their work contributes to the organization’s competitive advantage and long-term sustainability.
Managerial Encouragement: A boss should set and communicate clear innovation goals that are ambitious, yet achievable. He or she should serve as a good work model, support the work group, value individual contributions, and exude confidence in the team. Support employees when they speak up, take risks, and try new things.
Support for Teamwork: Because innovation is a team effort, people need to work on a team where diverse skillsets are represented. Team members should communicate well and remain open to new ideas, constructively challenge each other’s work, trust and help each other, and feel committed to the work they’re doing.
2. Organizational motivation and encouragement of innovation.
What’s the basic orientation of the organization toward innovation? How would you rate your culture of innovation in terms of organizational encouragement — as well as a lack of organizational impediments? Are innovative mindsets encouraged? Is the focus on developing the game-changing disruptions, or on improvements over time through continuous innovation? Creating a culture of innovation requires collaboration and communication across silos.
Organizational Encouragement: This is a culture that encourages creativity through the fair, constructive judgment of ideas; reward and recognition for creative work; mechanisms for developing new ideas; and an active flow of ideas and a shared vision.
Lack of Organizational Impediments: A culture of innovation doesn’t impede creativity through internal political problems, harsh criticism of new ideas, destructive internal competition, avoidance of risk, or an overemphasis on the status quo.
. Resources to support an innovative culture.
In order to innovate, people have to balance the tension between managing the day-to-day while driving for improvement and reinvention. Does the group have what it needs to do the work? Or is a lot of time and energy going toward fighting for or juggling too-limited resources? In creating a culture of innovation, look at 2 areas:
Sufficient Resources: Innovation doesn’t happen in a silo, so employees need access to appropriate resources, including funds, materials, facilities, and information.
Realistic Workload Pressures: Extreme time pressures, unrealistic expectations for productivity, and distractions from creative work are counterproductive when creating a culture of innovation.
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