“Innovation”

It is a concept that gets thrown around a lot in the business world, and it may seem that if a manager chants that word enough, their company will be magically transformed. But innovation is more than an abstract; it can be real practice based on real actions. And it’s not just for tech start-ups or market disruptors, as innova-tion is good for any business.

According to a report by Citrix, almost half of growth in some industries is now due to innovative new products, services, or ways of working, and for every 1% increase in innovation spend, organizations are realizing, on average, an estimated 1.95% increase in overall revenues. These are not abstractions, but real results. Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, companies need innovation more than ever.

INNOVATION IS FOR EVERYONE

MCE recently did a global study on how organizations can maximize their inno-vation potential. The online survey was conducted in January and February 2022 of 6,000 full-time employees, aged 21 years or older, across a range of industries, in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, China, Japan, and India.

MCE defines innovation as “the creation, development, and execution of new and valuable processes, services, or products” and it “can range from modest changes that improve a single individual or team’s work processes incrementally, to radical new ideas that can have an impact across an entire organization. Both incremental and radical innovation have their place in gaining and maintaining a competitive advantage.” Innovation can be leveraged by all industries, even though each has different goals. The key to innovation at any company is establishing leaders who are able to prepare employees to solve problems with creative thinking and innovative work behaviors (IWBs). So what are the strategies that leaders can use to cultivate innovation?

WHERE AND WHY DOES INNOVATION THRIVE?

MCE looked at companies that are considered to be highly innovative and found that there are several factors that innovative companies have that make them stand out from others. One factor is that at these companies, innovation is seen as everyone’s job. In the MCE survey, 62% of employees at highly innovative companies stated that they feel like being innovative is part of their job, compared with just 15% of all the other respondents. And this feeling is not just among leaders, but extends even to individual contributors in highly innovative organizations, with 46% of respondents saying innovation is part of their job (compared with 10% of individual contributors at other organizations).

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