If you want your company to be the best it can be, you've got to create an " innovation culture," John Jarosz writes at Forbes.
"An innovation culture only lives when your corporate culture allows it to thrive," he writes. "Breaking things requires a safe word. Culture is critical to continuous innovation because moving fast and breaking things can only happen when teams feel safe to do so."
Jarosz, who worked at a "bubble-wrapped room" tech company, explains that in order to be innovative, companies need to be less focused on "thinking big" and more focused on "small yet potentially high-impact efforts."
For example, one company he worked at was so positive it spent a "small fortune" on side projects designed to divert customer feedback away from the team in order to avoid upsetting anyone. "Issues get blanketed with general statements like, 'We could do better in customer acquisition,'" when customer acquisition is the lowest it's ever been, Jarosz writes. "That's when being ''safe' becomes toxic."
So what can you do to create an innovation culture that's both effective and fun? "The best way to inspire an innovation culture is technically free," Jarosz writes...
A customized collection of grant news from foundations and the federal government from around the Web.
Ganesh Natarajan is the Founder and Chairman of 5FWorld, a new platform for funding and developing start-ups, social enterprises and the skills eco-system in India. In the past two decades, he has built two of India’s high-growth software services companies – Aptech and Zensar – almost from scratch to global success.