By Tomislav Buljubasic
One of the most important factors in fueling creativity in an organization is trust. If employees don’t trust their company, they will not innovate by sharing their ideas. Environment influences creativity which is the zero starting point of the innovation process, with the individual as the starting point of every idea.
Creativity is by definition the ability to create new ideas, but ideas as a result of creativity must have economic value to be treated as an ‘innovation’. On its own an idea may or may not be an “innovation”.
It can be said that innovation links directly to creativity, but creativity is only the start of the long journey that an idea must go through to become a product.
We may or may not have not creativity in our work, but innovation will only come as part of a defined process.
People are naturally creative, but companies often are not and are usually more likely to suppress creativity. Individuals who have the ability to create will not be able to express innovation in those organizations that do not encourage creativity.
Also Read: Guidelines for successful innovation
The key to success is in the creation of models that describe the innovation process, and allow for the occurrence of failure – which is very common in projects.
Indeed, the story of innovation is a story of failure, because only a fraction of ideas are ever realized.
The biggest risk is in not innovating. Namely, if the company does not have innovation, it allows the competition to shape the future by creating a market that is no longer interested in the old product. Therefore it can be said that the challenges associated with innovations are great, but the risks of non-innovating are much higher.
Celebrating innovation is critical. It is usual for companies proud of their latest innovations promote them commercially, but it is equally important to celebrate them successes internally. After the realization of an idea, the persons who were the innovators should be recognized.
An innovation culture can be achieved only if innovation is highly valued within the company; it has to be a way of life and as such be present in all corners of the company.
When innovation is the responsibility of every employee, we can talk about an ‘innovative company’ that bases its development on the creativity of its most valuable resource, its people.
