Cooking up innovation: when it comes to helping employees create new products and services, HR's efforts are a key ingredient

HR Magazine, Nov, 2004 by Ann Pomeroy

Employees may not be the only ones who have to adopt new, perhaps slightly uncomfortable, ways of thinking. For example, Murphy believes that "true innovation requires a front-line change." His advice to companies seeking to change organizational behavior and develop an innovative culture is to "listen to people's ideas, ask questions, then 'sit on your hands.' Don't shut people down if you disagree with them. There is no such thing as too many innovative ideas," he says.

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He also believes that "the thought process for innovation is not different at small and large companies," but change may happen more quickly at small organizations with fewer layers of bureaucracy. "It's the difference," he says, "between driving a small speedboat and a large [ocean liner]."

Structuring Innovation

In 2003, Quest Diagnostics added innovation to its list of corporate goals, and innovation is now a core company value, says Steinhoff. The company measures its innovation success by quantifying the number of new medical tests developed, the number and acceptance of new electronic products, the number of patents filed, and the number of new strategies implemented.

Steinhoff says they have filed 15 percent to 20 percent more patents since the focus on innovation began last year. The number of new medical tests has remained about the same, but the importance of the tests has increased. "Our [increased] sales show that the tests are better targeted now to meet consumer needs," he says.

Like Quest Diagnostics, Whirlpool decided several years ago that innovation should be "embedded" throughout the organization as a core competency. Its products and services should be "part and parcel of a large consumer brand strategy," says Binkley, "and not just innovation for innovation's sake."

As the company set about building innovation into the culture, Whirlpool gathered information from a number of consultants. "Some say innovation's at the top," says Binkley. "Some say it comes in small groups. Some say get all the innovators together in a room; others say they've got to be put in a separate building so boring people like myself don't get in the way."

Then, says Binkley, they talked to Gary Hamel, a founding member of the Chicago-based consulting firm Strategos and author of Leading the Revolution: How to Thrive in Turbulent Times by Making Innovation a Way of Life (Plume Books, 2002). "I think he's absolutely the leading thinker on innovation," Binkley says. "Hamel said there are tools, processes and systems that you could put in a company to drive innovation," Binkley says, and that anyone could be trained to innovate.

While it is true that some skills are innate, and everybody is not equally adept at innovation, Hamel says, "you can dramatically raise the innovative potential of just about anybody." Don't be elitist about where ideas can come from, he says. "Mobilize and monetize the imagination of every employee." The Toyota Co. realized decades ago, says Hamel, that it could realize a "positive ROI [return on investment] by investment in the problem-solving skills of every employee."