Can You Motivate Innovation?

Innovation is a huge issue for businesses today. 

Widely available and cheap technology, combined with a continuing growth of our knowledge-based economy where there is no need for huge amounts of capital for factories and equipment, have opened the floodgates on competition.

Our ability to compete is relying more and more on the our ability to innovate.  But can you "motivate" innovation?  I'm sure someone is trying. 

"20 points for each idea submitted and 200 points for each idea implemented.  Now go be innovative.  And if you can get that done by 5:oo pm that'd be great!"

So yesterday.  So ineffective. 

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As I've said too many times to count, incentives should focus on behaviors not outcomes.  So where should a company focus to drive innovation?  What behaviors should I reward if I want to jump start the innovation process in a company?

Here's where I'd start - Social Networks.  Yep, the scourge of most business IT departments.

As with any reward strategy designed to influence behavior you have to do the analysis to determine the root causes (or barriers) to the outcomes you want.  In the case of innovation it is primarily a diversity of ideas.  The more diverse the input - the greater the possibility of innovation. 

I've posted before on the "Medici Effect".  Go ahead, read it.  I'll wait.  Oh... you're back.  Thanks.

Now I point you to two other posts on the web.  First - from the Employee Evolution blog Ryan Healy discusses how social networks allow one to have a lot of weak ties and suggests that you don't forget to shore up your strong ties.  Inadvertently he's proving one of the positives of social networks relating to innovation.  To pull from his blog which was pulled from Wikipedia: 

What social networks have created is a plethora of weak interpersonal ties. Wikipedia says,

More novel information flows to individuals through weak rather than strong ties. Because our close friends tend to move in the same circles that we do, the information they receive overlaps considerably with what we already know. Acquaintances, by contrast, know people that we do not, and thus receive more novel information.

Social networks provide novel information.  In other words our strong ties -  the folks we hang with and connect with more often - will typically reinforce our current thinking, points of view and values - and not provide any "new" information.

Now I point you to this article on the UK Financial Times site called "Table Talk" which discusses a bit of research Google did on the prediction markets they run internally at Google.  The net of the study was:

The results were striking. Clear correlations existed between the trading behaviour of certain groups of employees. But they were not explained by shared interests or by social connections. Having the same immediate boss only explains a little about information flows.

No, it is the office layout that matters: people who sit near each other tend to know the same things, as evidenced by making similar trades on the prediction markets. Social and professional proximity matters very little for the flow of information: physical proximity is almost everything.

While I think they should have rephrased their conclusion to say "Social and professional proximity matters very little for the flow of novel information..." - the point they make is correct in that physical proximity breeds similarity in thinking.  The closer I sit to someone the more I think like them.  Not the fuel needed for innovation.

What's a company to do?

Engage social media and reward people who step outside their strong relationships and connect and build weak connections. 

Provide rewards for signing up on the service, for their first post, for their first question, their first answer, their first recommendation. 

In other words reward the behaviors that connect them to the service - which will then connect them to novel ideas.

Don't ask people to be innovative - ask people to explore.  Reward exploration - innovation will follow.

Now apply my negative reinforcement test - would you ever say "be innovative or be fired?"

Comments

[James Todhunter]

It is important to remember that enablement, empowerment, and incentive are different things. All are necessary to providing a fertile environment for innovation.

Social networks are a type of enablement tool. Other types of innovation enablement tools include innovation software, idea management software, open innovation portals, etc.

Empowerment comes when employees feel they have both clear direction and support. This is most effectively achieved when senior management takes responsibility for the innovation culture of the organization.

Incentive is about reward systems. There are many systems that are being used very successfully. I see many different approaches to this in industry. For some insights into one example from industry, check my podcasts with Vincent Lyons of Leggett & Platt on their innovation practices. You can find the podcasts at http://www.innovatingtowin.com/innovating_to_win/podcasts/index.html.

[Paul Hebert]

James,

You are correct that social networks and the tools you mention are simply ways to enable innovation to happen faster, better, etc. My main point was to communicate that these tools are typically new to most users (this is less of an issue as the Y's and Millenials take over) but none-the-less they are new to many organizations. Therefore, the need to motivate and provide incentives to use these tools becomes important. Many companies install these tools and then say - go innovate and forget that providing rewards for the steps that get people using the tools is as important as the end result.

I will take a look at the links you provided.

Thanks for the comment.

[Ann Bares]

Another thought to throw into the mix. I like the idea, Paul, of directly incenting the use of social networking tools in the short-term, to get people started along the path of taking advantage of them to build connections and get exposed to new information. And if innovation requires connections and taking down walls, I also think that implementing broad-based group incentives, where we reward bigger, rather than smaller, groups of people (or strictly individuals) will also encourage people to cross boundaries in their collaboration and idea sharing.

[Paul Hebert]

Good point Ann. I think you could include an overall "recognition" event that ties back to group activity. You can highlight the fact that one group over another used the tools and show the results. Once you get folks accustomed to the tools and the process, then you can start recognizing the effects creating a new "culture" and showing it through the recognition event.

[Saket Raj]

Innovation sometimes comes out of nothing, yes if you motivate people/employee than it can be much more efficient and frequent- today when globalisation is flavour of the day its very important to experiment with new innovation in formulatng strategies and its effective implemnetnation and proper review.Sometimes casually ignored ideas are wonderful.So ideas must have a welcome clap at every level from top to bottom.