7 Keys To A Continuous Innovation Mindset Within Teams

Innovation tends to come naturally from aspiring entrepreneurs and new teams, but as your company grows, that spirit of innovation is often lost. The focus moves to reducing risk, creating repeatable processes, and satisfying existing customers. The resulting teams concentrate on honing existing processes, but are susceptible to new competitors and changes in the market.

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Recognized leaders in the marketplace, including Jeff Bezos at Amazon, work to drive continuous innovation by challenging teams to initiate more innovation ‘experiments’ in a given day, month, or year. He attributes this process to Amazon’s continuing success and growth. It forces all teams to evaluate existing architectures and continuously re-evaluate major aspects of their business.

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In my experience, every business, big or small, needs a framework for fostering team innovation, which contains at least the following key elements:

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1.???? Foster a mindset of making innovation a positive challenge. By default, team members see innovation as a risk, and they hear your stability and repeatability demands as an incentive to resist change. You can reset this mindset by rewarding change and demanding regular creative and innovative solutions to internal and market challenges.

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2.???? Incent divergent team thinking to expand solution horizons. Encourage every team member to look outside their area of natural focus to find ideas and solutions that can be applied to current challenges. Here is where it pays to build a team from diversified cultures and backgrounds, so your team generates unique ideas with more innovation.

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3.???? Remove obstacles that deter or stifle team innovation. These obstacles include real or imagined punishment for upsetting the status quo, allowing a culture of minimizing team risk, and hiring for experience rather than skill and creativity. I recommend that you really listen to team member feedback, and recognize innovative efforts within the team.

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4.???? Empower teams with autonomy to make decisions. For teams to feel comfortable with innovation, all team members and the group as a whole needs to be empowered to make decisions and move quickly to implementation. This means everyone must have clearly defined roles and responsibilities and can move even if you do not totally agree.

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5.???? Prototype multiple experiments and test with customers. Very few ideas and solutions are born perfect, and issues can’t easily be seen without testing them in the real world. Teach the team to expect multiple pivots and eliminate their fear of failure. Always define creative metrics of success and measure the team progress along the way.

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6.???? Always seek the base challenge rather than symptoms. Attempts to innovate over symptoms of a problem are usually short-lived as solutions, and quickly replicated by competitors. Prioritize your team’s energies on implementing challenge solutions, rather than just building a larger new idea list. Focus on challenges that are most important.

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7.???? Require documented plans for proposed innovations. Specific plans are key to team member communication and validation. Managing and communicating change is always difficult, and it is important that all team members are focused on the same actions and expecting the same results, rather than working on their own assumptions.

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In today’s volatile and competitive business environment, all your teams need to be working in concert regularly rolling out innovations in order to thrive and survive. That requires new leadership from you and other executives to foster the right mindset and build trust with open and pervasive communication, as well as new incentives and new focus on the right hiring.

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This may sound challenging, but I assure you that it can be done by harkening back to the perspective and mindset you once brought to the scene as a new business founder. Don’t let today’s opportunities slip away by not infusing your teams with that passion for innovation you once felt.

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*** First published on Forbes on 08-01-2024 ***