How we’re building a culture of innovation

If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, then innovation is the antidote. At Greif, this cure has become an essential component of our work and one of the keys to helping us put our people first.

Innovation isn’t easy. It is a messy process that involves constant experimenting, risk, and failure. Often ‘innovation’ and ‘invention’ are used interchangeably – but this is wrong. The most inventive idea has no business value unless it is technically feasible AND commercially viable. Unfortunately, this higher bar also means a higher rate of failure, which over time can create a culture of resistance.

How do you prevent this from happening? How do you build a culture of innovation that doesn’t just support and reward a messy process, but engrains an action bias mindset into your colleagues and your business?

Innovation starts with people

It is often said people are a company’s most valuable resource. This is absolutely true when it comes to innovation, as there is no better source for creativity, imagination, and inventiveness. To harness this power, it is essential for our colleagues to have the confidence to share ideas, try new things, and repeat the process when it doesn’t work out.

This begins and ends with trust. At Greif we have worked to shape a company culture that puts people first, focusing specifically on:

• Building experimentation and challenge into daily routines
• Establishing pathways for different perspectives and new ideas to be explored
• Filling our teams with colleagues who embrace curiosity, collaboration, and change
• Creating psychological and social safety nets that empower colleagues to take risks without fear of failure

Even with the right structure in place, fear and failure are innate emotions that are difficult to overcome personally, and often disincentivized professionally. How many times in your career have you heard “keep your head down” or “don’t rock the boat”?

Innovation thrives with failure

An important part of creating the right culture and company ethos around innovation is recognizing failure as an integral part of the process. If people and culture are the ‘corner stones’, failure is the ‘key stone’.

More often than not, the insights that come from failure can be just as valuable to process as the ideas that succeed. When asked about his mounting failures in creating the incandescent bulb, Thomas Edison said: “I have not failed 10,000 times, I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.”

Regardless of your opinion of Edison, this is the right mindset. Holding up failure and incorporating it as a powerful part of the innovation roadmap can help remove fear and build trust into the creative process.

Innovation in action: A Shark Tank / Dragons’ Den approach

With a culture of innovation established and our psychological and social safety nets in place, the next step was to create a process that efficiently moved ideas from ‘invention’ to ‘innovation’. Specifically, we wanted to create pathways with low barriers to entry that would allow any colleague to take their idea through a process to be tested, challenged, evaluated, and encouraged to continue or start again.

At Greif, we mirrored our process on the popular TV shows ‘Shark Tank’ and ‘Dragons’ Den’, in which entrepreneurs and innovators from all walks of life pitch ideas to investors for funding. From colleagues on our shop floors to senior leaders, everyone at Greif is actively encouraged to submit ideas. After an initial selection and vetting stage, the top in-house entrepreneurs are invited to pitch their ideas to a panel of experts made up of leaders from across the organization. The goal is to attain funding to explore, develop, and test their concepts.

Seven months in, and it is clear our colleagues at Greif are a hotbed of innovation. Ideas have ranged from 3D printing and AI machine learning to concepts to make fibre-based products stronger and more sustainable. One project generating real buzz in the company is using lasers to remove rust as a safer, more effective, and efficient alternative to existing maintenance practices. In three weeks, the idea went from pitch to initial testing, and is now being explored as a viable corporate initiative.?

The best part? It came directly from the shop floor.

Bet on your people

If I were to boil down my experience with this innovation process at Greif to a single piece of advice it would be this: If you’re seeking innovation as a business, bet on your people.

I have been amazed at the response we have seen from our colleagues as we have worked to get this program off the ground. To see people stepping out of their comfort zone to pitch new ideas and commit to a process that, more often than not, ends in failure is a powerful testament to the culture we’ve built at Greif.

Innovation does not take place in a vacuum. It is the product of people’s minds. To unlock these ideas requires creating a culture of inclusivity, psychological safety, and support, then aligning it with a process for accelerating the best ideas quickly. Ultimately, what we are asking people to do is leave the relative safety of their day-to-day jobs and think creatively, experiment boldly, and take risks. In the case of Greif, we’ve built a culture to help them do that over and over again (no insanity needed).

If you trust and invest in your people to do this, the potential rewards for you, for them, and for the business are immeasurable.