Managing Innovation Fatigue: How to Keep Your Team Motivated

What is Innovation Fatigue?

Innovation fatigue is when individuals or organizations feel resistance towards innovation as a result of mental exhaustion, being overwhelmed, and/or struggle with the continued flow of new ideas. At a time when 84% of millennials experience burnout at work, it is a very common issue impacting businesses from startups to global enterprises.

The reason as to which innovation fatigue is present in many organizations,  may be attributed to many contributing factors including:

• Continuous change relating to technologies, tactics, and company objectives.
• Too much focus on talking about innovation without actively engaging in innovation.
• The innovators not  receiving the necessary support through the appropriate tools needed to make innovation accessible and possible.
• Structural hurdles that prevent employees from working on their ideas with autonomy.
• A company’s intolerance towards failed innovations, thereby discouraging future idea submission and hurting the formation of an error culture.

5 Tips to Manage Innovation Fatigue

It is known that burnout can lead to reduced levels of innovation, impacting both the quality and quantity of ideas which are produced. However, it is possible to keep innovation fatigue at bay and keep your team motivated, by implementing various strategies to do so. 

Here are five top tips to help you successfully manage innovation fatigue across your organization:

1. Let employees take control of their innovation efforts

Many organizations continue to fall into the trap of having strict time frames during which their employees can actively engage in innovation. When employees are forced to innovate only within a particular time frame,  the pressure can stop them from truly unlocking boundless creativity. Conversely, if you don’t let them work on ideas while these are fresh in their minds, they may lose the motivation and energy as time passes.

2. Kill bad ideas early on

Killing failed ideas early in the innovation process, doesn’t only save the company from wasting time and money. It also allows employees to move on without feeling too disheartened, since they have not invested too much time and resources into their ideas just yet. This is even better when they are able to learn from the experience and take this new insight into the next idea without feeling disillusioned.

To see the best results, it is important to cultivate a culture of psychological safety, where employees feel confident enough to share their ideas knowing that there is the potential their idea might fail; and moving on if that is the case.

3. Recognize all successes

In addition to giving employees the freedom to fail, you must also recognize all successes rather than only the absolute breakthroughs. rready Idea Management supports this, as all innovations are recorded and organized. This makes it easy for program or innovation leaders to give appropriate recognition to all employees.

It is also a key step for gaining a company-wide buy-in and securing ideas from every level of the business. 

4. Streamline the process

The initial idea often has the individual innovator excited and feeling motivated to get started in the process of validating it. Working on their idea can lead to exhaustion and a loss of motivation if there is too much manual data analysis and prototyping to consider. From AI data analysis to virtualizations, several tools can be used to streamline the initial phases of validation and concept development, in order for employees to focus on their ideas.

Other tools such as communication and collaboration with experts on a specific topic, can hold huge advantage as well. This allows employees to get help from an someone with extensive knowledge in a particular subject, rather than struggling to get ahead and feel frustrated by a lack of progress.

5. Fostering a supportive work environment

Finally, as mentioned above, employees need the right mindset to innovate. From a leader's point of view, this means that it's crucial to ensure that the workplace is supportive and encourages a good work-life balance. Employees that enjoy their work environment are 13% more productive and thus they should also be more likely to tap into their creativity. 

From flexible working to ergonomic seating and encouraging healthy eating, it is often the small steps which can translate into big impact in this regard. 

To avoid innovation fatigue, companies might find a range of benefits to being pro-active, and ensuring the above-mentioned steps are followed before company-wide innovation is pursued head-on. With the necessary innovation tools and a company-culture that celebrates innovation in every sphere of the business, companies will can lessen the chances of their employees experiencing a slump of innovation fatigue.