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Great ideas don’t have to flow from the top down. Businesses and tech leaders who empower team members to experiment and share their ideas are often rewarded with game-changing—and profitable—results.
A culture of innovation doesn’t happen by chance, though; it takes deliberate, ongoing effort and support. Below, 19 members of Forbes Technology Council share tips to help companies ensure tech team members (and all employees) have the tools and skills they need to maintain an innovative mindset and culture.
1. Ensure You’re Up To Speed In Enterprise Tech
If your organization isn’t tapped into the most recent iterations of enterprise tech and how they influence your business (and the industry as a whole), you can expect to be left behind. Embracing cutting-edge technology, implementing robust learning and development plans and empowering employees to be creative thinkers who aren’t afraid to fail will ensure team members are equipped to innovate. - Nikola Mrksic, PolyAI
2. Enable Experimentation And Collaboration
Make time and space for experimentation and broad-based thinking. Encourage cross-functional team engagement through “blue sky” ideation and creative sessions, and foster a culture where trying and failing is recognized as key to learning and better outcomes. Incentivize collaboration and taking (measured) risks. - Élida Cruz, Capital One
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3. Ask The Right Questions
If a project is behind, don’t ask why it’s behind. Ask how the existing process can be improved, and then provide that solution to your employee. Asking questions is free, but empowering employees is invaluable. - Roland Icard, Simply iCard Consulting Inc.
4. Seek Input From Team Members
It’s important to conduct regular surveys to gauge employee satisfaction. If you don’t know what your employees need, you’ll most likely fail in deciding it for them. - Chris Heard, Olive Technologies
5. Frame Failure As Opportunity
One tip is not to be afraid to foster a culture where failure is seen as an opportunity to learn, rather than as a dead end. Innovation is never born out of playing it safe; it actually springs from the willingness to explore, take risks and stumble along the way. Tools are great, but make sure you give your team members the freedom to use those tools in unconventional ways. - Elaine Montilla, Pearson
6. Rotate Job Assignments
Have your team members try job rotations within your organization. This will provide employees with new challenges and help them harness new skills, giving them the autonomy to focus on what they enjoy doing most. - Prasad Ramakrishnan, Freshworks
7. Provide Learning Opportunities
Consider providing ample learning opportunities and ways to recognize and share those learnings. We empower our employees to learn and to take measured risks on a daily basis. As Pablo Picasso is credited with saying, “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” - Michael Dennis, CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society
8. Decouple Funding From Work
Companies that still fund projects instead of perpetual teams for digital work struggle with incorporating innovation when new ideas and technologies are available. You need to have the ability to pivot to new work quickly. Focus on streamlining the planning and prioritization processes so the company can become more innovative. - Laureen Knudsen, Broadcom
9. Leverage Gamification
The combination of competition and fun may help inspire team members to ideate and vote on innovative ideas. Doing this in small groups is even better, as it encourages collaboration. Recognition of the winning ideas, as well as the support of leadership to turn those ideas into reality, can be great incentives to grow innovation while enhancing your culture. - Matthew Lieberman, PwC
10. Engage In Pre-Mortems
Pre-mortems force teams to anticipate what might derail their plans. Responses can include internal and external factors, such as internal tech debt slowing you down or an emerging competitor winning some of your business. Pre-mortems not only help mitigate risk, but also provide space to question assumptions. Having forums to raise concerns preserves a culture of innovating and rejecting the status quo. - Ken Babcock, Tango
11. Use Technology Tools To Free Up Time
It starts with new technology. If we embrace artificial intelligence to eliminate repetition, we can use that time to focus on things that have never been done before. Generative AI doesn’t just generate code and content—it can also generate the time, room and headspace needed for human talent to get creative. - Andrew Lau, Jellyfish
12. Weave Continuous Learning Into The Culture
The blazing speed of evolving technology puts extreme pressure on an organization because it necessitates the constant up-leveling of skills and talent. Of course, you must add key talent and experience when shifting to new technology, but unless you weave continuous learning into the culture, you’ll constantly be churning staff. Adopt continuous learning by embracing formal learning goals (objectives and key results) for all levels. - Lou Senko, Q2
13. Explore Design Thinking
Adopt design-thinking principles. Keep your customers’ needs at the center of everything you do, iterate over and over again, and embrace a failure-free culture. - Ainsley MacLean, Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group | Kaiser Permanente Mid-Atlantic States
14. Describe The Problem Instead Of Mandating A Solution
Too often, tech leaders direct their teams to build specific solutions, rather than describing the pain point and enabling effective employees to innovate. Limiting ideas stifles creativity. Instead, trust your talented employees, embrace diversity of thought and encourage problem solving by asking questions instead of mandating solutions. - Matthew Polega, Mark43
15. Offer Career Advancement Opportunities For All
Offer clear career advancement and growth opportunities for every position in your organization, if possible. Then, invest in training programs and career development opportunities to ensure that employees can upskill on the job. Many talent management platforms now offer access to professional development courses for a variety of industries—take advantage of those! - Kashif Aftab, SkillGigs, Inc.
16. Show You Care About Team Members’ Growth
Firstly, genuinely care about your team’s growth. Encourage them to obtain and expense tech certifications that are of interest to them, regardless of whether a certification is immediately applicable to the work your team is doing. This encourages everyone to have a growth mindset and expands their problem-solving toolkit through education. This will organically lead to innovation that you could not have planned. - Monish Balasundaram, Amazon
17. Pair Education And Mentorship
Establish an in-house learning and idea-generation program and allow employees to attend outside classes, even if they’re not immediately related to their area of work. Alternatively, offer in-house workshops and courses on innovative thinking. Pair learning opportunities with a mentorship initiative, connecting team members to entrepreneurs, encouraging guidance and enriching learning experiences. - Rachel Lyubovitzky, Setuply, Inc.
18. Reward Ideation And Learning
Make sure you learn from your employees, promote their ideas and give credit in abundance. Reward learning, and encourage taking (understood) risks and learning from failure. If all you do is reward success, then you will never innovate. Innovation requires failure; if you never fail, you are not really innovating, you are just following someone else’s playbook. - Howard Holton, GigaOm
19. Set An Example
Live it. If your team sees you sharpening the saw and innovating, then they will feel safe to do so as well. Celebrate accomplishments and failures immediately. - Michael Loggins, Ultimate Technologies Group
