Figure F4.1: Cultivation Cycle.

This approach is valuable for the following reasons.

• Simple: It helps you capitalize on the innovation already occurring naturally and discover people with the drive and initiative to be innovative.
• Builds incrementally: It demonstrates how to unite groups of creative thinkers to achieve common goals or surmount challenges.
• Fast and inspirational: It shows how to use quick wins to showcase the power of an innovative culture to the rest of the organization.

Uncover Existing Innovation

Innovation most likely already exists in your organization or within your team. Go find it!

1. Recognize progress you have already made and find out the “why” behind it.
2. Identify your innovators (i.e., those involved in successes and strong drivers of improvement).

Try Innovation

Find examples that demonstrate why a culture of innovation is desirable.

1. Identify a start-up innovation team.
2. Assemble your start-up team to identify and prioritize your top challenges and needs through an established decision-making/escalation process and pick one or more challenges to solve. (See this Deep Dive page for more information and a definition of the escalation process.)
3. Leverage existing working relationships and establish new relationships within, across, and outside the organization with partners to help solve the challenge.
4. Ideate, solve, plan, and implement your solution using the teams and relationships you have put in place.

 

Evaluate the Results

Now that you have tried innovating, how did it go? Did you solve the challenges you set out to solve? If not, pinpoint the exact reasons.

1. Review how well your ideas solved the challenge.
2. Identify and track any issues arising from the solutions themselves.
3. Take a step back and evaluate the process.
4. After documenting lessons learned, think about new policies and procedures that can build on these new methods for overcoming challenges. Make innovation part of how your organization does business going forward!

 

Celebrate the Results

Once you have a new idea, share it with your organization. Highlight team members who worked hard to make success happen.

1. Seek out all participants who contributed to a new idea.
2. Determine how best to celebrate those participants. Start by asking others who work with them about what motivates them or is meaningful to them.
3. Plan the celebration. Get all the details in place, including approvals and logistics.
4. Celebrate! Make sure participants are recognized publicly for their efforts.

 

Continually Build on Your Culture of Innovation Team

If you started up an innovation team, evaluate how the team is doing. If the group has not changed in size or function since it was created, it may be time to help your team evolve by doing the following:

1. Invite new people. Who has not participated yet?
2. Invite a whole business unit.
3. Invite those who are change resistant (i.e., inhibitor or destroyer personas) by enlisting their help with a challenge that needs to be solved.
4. Find new challenges to solve (e.g., hold a competition to generate new ideas).
5. Continue to look for opportunities to bring more people to the team. The bottom line is to keep inviting more people to the team so that everyone begins to incorporate innovation into not only the group but also their daily tasks.

Go through the cultivation cycle a few times, tackle a few challenges, and see who comes together regularly. This is the beginning of your formal culture of innovation team (as shown in Figure F4.2). Use this dedicated team to drive the culture change.