How To support innovative ideas in the company?

Check out relevant tips to support innovative ideas in the company.

How To support innovative ideas in the company?

Create an innovation team

For the generation of ideas, it is important that the employee is focused on this task. Knowing this, it is interesting to assemble a team in order to identify the best opportunities. These people can do research in the area to understand customer needs. You should support innovative ideas in the company.

In this way, the creation of product and service suggestions is enhanced. Another point is to record all these ideas so they don’t get lost. For this, you can select employees who will be responsible for registering them.

In addition, the team can count on the help of specialized software for improvements. With this measure, the information is stored and can be used when necessary.

Hire people with different perspectives

As it was possible to perceive, having a team focused on innovation is quite relevant. Therefore, it is important to know factors to consider when hiring employees. The first refers to the perspectives of these candidates for the vacancies.

It is interesting that employees have different views, as the team formed by them is able to develop different approaches to problems. Consequently, they increase the chances of generating innovative ideas for the company.

Also, look for collaborators who:

• understand the business vision;
• align with the organizational culture;
• are of different origins;
• have different skills.

Build spaces for exchanges to support innovative ideas in the company

Another important point for generating new ideas is the creation of physical spaces for exchanging experiences. And this point requires extra attention when working in the remote model.

As much as there is videoconferencing for holding meetings, the evolution of humanity favors personal interactions. On the other hand, virtual communication can become impersonal and less sociable.

So, depending on how it is done, it undermines conversations that can generate insights that result in the development of new products, processes, and services. For this reason, it is interesting to create spaces conducive to exchanges, with a more relaxed atmosphere that inspires innovation.

Another possibility is to adapt online meetings and hold different events, even at a distance, to promote greater integration and exchange of ideas among the team.

Allow time for the creation of innovative ideas

It is true that innovative ideas can emerge from an unpretentious conversation or overnight. However, with the routine increasingly full of tasks, this becomes more difficult. For this reason, it is important to give employees time to create opportunities.

The brainstorming technique, for example, is a dynamic that can be done individually or in a group. Its objective is to explore people’s creative potential. Then, during the activity, you can suggest that all participants freely give ideas.

Then it is interesting to select the opportunities that are most viable. That way, you can put them on the agenda so that they can be debated and polished. At the end, task the innovation team to record all ideas.

Other ways to support the creation of innovative ideas over time are:

• encourage suggestion boxes;
• hold meetings to share ideas;
• allow schedules and rooms dedicated to the process.

Invest in tools to support innovative ideas in the company

As you have seen, it is necessary to have an appropriate moment for generating ideas. However, a busy routine is usually not conducive to the process and can make it difficult to pause for dynamics and fruitful conversations.

In this condition, it is possible to save time by investing in technological tools that promote the automation of the stages of your business. With the employee being able to complete their tasks in a shorter period, there will be more tranquility and time to promote insights.

Encourage field practice

Another method that helps in generating ideas is field practice, which means going to places that can generate new ideas. For example, a supermarket entrepreneur who wants to bring more gourmet options to his business.

It is recommended that he visit other markets with the same proposal. This can even be done by visiting other cities to find different models from the competition in your region. Still, it is necessary to analyze, annotate, photograph and buy products of interest.

With this, you can experiment, analyze and consider whether they are suitable for your company. From this perspective, it is important that not only the entrepreneur maintains this habit, but that he encourages it in his employees.

For this, you can take the employees responsible for the ideas to other establishments, for example. Over time, it is possible to train their eyes so that, naturally, they capture insights on a daily basis.

Promote participation in events

Just as visiting other businesses can bring many innovative ideas, participating in events also opens the door to innovation. When attending a lecture, for example, it is possible to have many insights from the presenter’s explanations.

After the events, it is also common for participants to socialize. This is another moment when you or your collaborator, if applicable, may have a lot of ideas.

This is because, when talking to other people, there is an exchange of experience — which is fundamental in the process. Therefore, promote team participation in events in your niche market to sharpen creativity and enable networking, which is also essential for generating ideas.

Implement ideas faster

A relevant issue is to understand that innovative ideas that can bring good results to the company must be implemented quickly. After all, when employees perceive that their suggestions are influencing the company’s improvement, they feel more motivated.

In this scenario, it is common for them to continue to share their insights, work towards the success of implemented ideas, and encourage the productivity of other employees. That is, it also helps to stimulate the generation of ideas among team members.

Reward employees for their ideas

Another strategy to engage employees in creating innovative suggestions is to offer rewards for them. These bonuses can be offered individually, by teams or for all employees.

The reason for applying the practice is that it is critical that employees understand that you appreciate their efforts to improve the business. For this reason, it might be interesting to create a reward program for good ideas, for example.

Keep multiple projects in progress

Often, companies invest only in one project, putting all their efforts into it to be successful. While it’s important to dedicate yourself to the program, it can be smart to have more than one alternative in the works.

In this way, there is a greater chance of having a success rate, given that some projects may fail. Therefore, having other proposals in progress, it becomes easier to give up the less promising alternatives, giving continuity to the ideas that develop better.