1. Resistance to Change
Implementing bottom-up innovation requires a cultural shift within the organization. Some employees may be comfortable with the existing processes and hesitant to embrace new ideas or approaches.
It is important to bring employees along on the intrapreneurship journey. Encourage personal investment in the innovation process by offering significant reward for taking the risk and putting in the effort.
2. Lack of Support and Resources
Without proper support from management and allocation of resources, intrapreneurship efforts may struggle to succeed. Employees need the necessary time, funding, and tools to explore and develop their ideas.
Allow employees to make use of office hours (about 20 % is ideal), in-house experts and other resources in their innovation process. If you value innovation, with more than just words, your employees will be more likely to engage in the process.
3. Risk Aversion
If a company prioritizes risk mitigation over exploration, they can stifle any attempts at innovation by resisting ideas that deviate from established norms or that carry uncertainties. Risk aversion, as a company culture, tells employees it’s better to be safe than to think creatively.
By embracing a culture of failing fast and failing forward, and gathering learnings along the way, employees can trust the process and learn to take measured risks into new territory.
4. No Recognition or Rewards
Innovating requires effort, conviction and personal resources. A lack of acknowledgment can whittle away motivation and hinder the sustainability of such initiatives.
A little recognition goes a long way. Rewarding intrepreneurial behaviour can bolster the confidence of employees facing the steep climb of iterative innovation. Remember to recognise invalidated ideas as emphatically as validated ones. An invalidated idea is full of new learnings and data to inform the next Problem Adventure.
5. Managing Expectations
Bottom-up innovation generates a large number of ideas. Not all of them will be feasible or align with the company's strategic goals. Managing expectations and effectively evaluating and prioritizing ideas can be challenging. However, it is vital to avoid disappointment and maintain employee engagement.
Many successful innovators are famous for failing and trying again until they discovered a winning idea. It's about the process, the learnings. It is important to have a company culture that encourages grit and commitment despite setbacks.
The common denominator in addressing these challenges comes down to company culture. Creating an environment that nurtures innovative behaviour is vital. Innovators require a supportive culture that values and encourages innovation and flexible decision-making processes, while providing resource allocation and recognition mechanisms to empower and motivate employees. The company must serve as fertile soil and a safe space to iterate ideas over and over again.
5 Ways to Grow an Innovation Culture
For intrapreneurship and any other innovation initiatives to flourish and to mitigate any potential challenges, its is important to cultivate a culture that celebrates innovation.
Growing an innovation culture can be achieved by:
1. Introducing an Innovation Program & Strategy
Having the right innovation program and strategy in place that suit the needs of your company, will ensure that innovators have adequate resources at hand to exercise creativity and contribute to the innovative efforts of your company.
2. Promoting Psychological Safety
Before expecting innovative ideas from your employees, they need to understand that there’s no such thing as a bad idea and that all ideas no matter if simple or revolutionary are in fact welcome.
3. Allowing Employees Time and Resources to Innovate
Innovative ideas and spouts of genius can often strike at unlikely times. This is why it is crucial to allow employees to innovate not only during specific times of the day but throughout their workdays, year-round.
4. Celebrate all ideas
As mentioned above, all ideas, big or small, deserve to be celebrated. The same counts for invalidated and validated ideas, since even those ideas that do not make it past the ideation phase, can carry valuable lessons for innovators and for the company.
5. Encourage sharing of advice and perspective
Although not every employee in your company might want to become an innovator, they can still become involved in company-wide innovation by offering their expertise and knowledge in a sort of 'advisory' role. This helps to foster a culture of innovation that goes beyond those who are submitting their ideas, to include everyone who is willing to contribute their input throughout the process.
While intrapreneurship can carry many challenges, it also allows an organization to bring everyone aboard the innovation process and encourage personal investment. The rewards of this approach to corporate innovation are manifold and with the right tools, you can transform your business by harnessing the creativity of your employees.
Let us give you and your team the tools to encourage innovation in your company. If you're rready to motivate your employees and transform your business, then reach out to us.
Get started today
