But if you’re an inventive type, maybe there’s hope that you don’t
have to live with your frustrations indefinitely. Serial entrepreneur
Ken Tencer, co-author of the new book Cause a Disturbance, believes
that it’s very possible for companies to change and embrace innovation.
He’s the CEO of Spyder Works, a branding and innovation firm with
offices in New York and in a suburb of Ontario, Canada. He previously
founded Nettlewoods, a private label of bath and body products sold
through major chains, such as Walmart. He is also chair of the Unleashing Innovation Summit,
to be held in New York City on March 26 and 27. Here’s an edited
transcript of a conversation we had yesterday about how to bring more
innovation to today’s workplaces and to innovate more on your own.
Many people say it is hard to get their company to pay attention to their great ideas. How can companies become more receptive?
Tencer: Certain companies really embrace the notion that `We have a lot of incredible people working for us, they’re very close to our customers, and we should actually be engaging these people.’ If you look at a company like LinkedIn LNKD -4.55%, they enable employees to come up with new idea, put a pitch together and if it comes through, to bring the idea to market. At Google GOOG -0.37%, 20% of your time can be spent on projects other than your main job. I don’t know why more companies aren’t gravitating toward that whole notion of empowering employees, of putting in place mechanisms where they allow people to present ideas and push them forward. It engages and motivates them and helps attract the best talent to your company, rather than frustrating them, turning them off or pushing them out.
Is it possible that big companies don’t see an upside to internal innovation? Many seem to want their employees to focus the products or services they already sell. When they want to add new products and services, they go out and acquire small, innovative companies, instead of doing a lot of R&D internally.
Tencer: If they don’t see an upside to internal innovation, I think it’s incredible short-sightedness. Your brand is about building relationships with your customers. Innovation is about keeping those relationships fresh. It’s about introducing “new, improved and better.” The people closest to your relationships are your employees. They’re on the front lines of speaking to or working with customers. To me, these are where the most relevant ideas are coming from or should be coming from. I’m not saying acquisitions or open source innovation aren’t important. They are, but why–if you have 5 or 50,000 or 100,000 people–would you ignore their ideas?
Some companies want their employees to stay focused, but I am not saying innovation should be 100% of their day. I’m talking about adding a glorified suggestion box. Let’s get those great suggestions back to corporate management and the R&D team. I think the tide is turning. I hope it’s turning. I think the great companies are seeing that listening to your employees is powerfully motivating and engaging.
What’s holding the other, not-so-innovative companies back?
Tencer: It’s an incredible mind shift for most companies to move from viewing employees as the doers and executors to the idea generators. I think companies are afraid it will take them out of the stride of their daily work. The change is hard. Instead of being managers, we’re being motivator and coaches.
I think managers can be. [Creativity expert] Ken Robinson talks about the notion that creativity is taken away from us and replaced by very linear thinking through our education processes in his TED talks. In large companies, just like you have an open source innovation platform, you need an internal platform through which employees propose or present their ideas, so it doesn’t become every manager’s responsibility to be brilliant at this. If you have the processes in place, you’ll see that tide changing. I do believe that, given permission, managers will start to shift.
What if you’re an employee in a company that isn’t as receptive to innovation as LinkedIn–and you’re innovative? What can you do to put your ideas into action?
I think if top management really doesn’t appreciate it–I hate to say it–but in many cases an innovative employee will leave. If you’re one voice in 50,000 I don’t know that you’re going to have incredible success at it. But I think that with this new generation of employees, recognition and engagement are so high up on the scale of what motivates people that you won’t be the one voice in the company anymore. Hopefully a lot of companies will recognize that they don’t want to lose their employees.
What can someone who is, say, 47 years old, learn from Millennials about innovation?
They’ve grown up and see sharing as just a normal part of their life. They’re sharing their ideas, thoughts on what they’re doing and social activism through social media. They are habitual sharers. What we need to learn is it’s okay to share our ideas and to build on one another’s idea. For the 47-year-old, the whole notion of the wiki or open source programming or innovation is a little more challenging. We were taught to keep our head down, keep things to ourselves and go in a linear fashion. To be fair to our generation, we didn’t have social media growing up. We can adapt to a new reality. We do it very well through LinkedIn. We share a lot of ideas through LinkedIn groups and other platforms. We can do that internally, as well.
Do you see any relationship between Millennials’ attitudes about consumerism and their opportunities to create? Many started their careers during the Great Recession.
We were brought up with home ownership and the cars in the garage as status symbols. To them, status symbols relate to whether something goes to sharing: Does it go to lowering emissions, saving the planet, to working together for a better cause? It’s an extension of that whole interconnectedness. To me, they’re almost better equipped to bootstrap a company. They don’t have that singular focus on the acquisition of material goods.
So how do midlife professionals who have mortgage to pay take a cue from a younger, very entrepreneurial generation and get back in touch with the innovative side of themselves?
In my workshops, I don’t start out talking about innovation and being creative. I ask people to talk about what cool things around them they like. Someone might say: “Standing on a corner and getting a text message that your cab is one mile away, and your cab is number 118.” Here’s another example I like: At Disney theme parks, if a child drops an ice cream cone, an attendant will run up and take them to the ice cream vendor, who will put a new ice cream upside down in a cup, with a smiley face on it. These are examples of brilliant process innovation. It’s about making your customer happy in a simple but very different way. It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Once people start realizing that innovation is that simple, it frees them up to be creative.
Many people say it is hard to get their company to pay attention to their great ideas. How can companies become more receptive?
Tencer: Certain companies really embrace the notion that `We have a lot of incredible people working for us, they’re very close to our customers, and we should actually be engaging these people.’ If you look at a company like LinkedIn LNKD -4.55%, they enable employees to come up with new idea, put a pitch together and if it comes through, to bring the idea to market. At Google GOOG -0.37%, 20% of your time can be spent on projects other than your main job. I don’t know why more companies aren’t gravitating toward that whole notion of empowering employees, of putting in place mechanisms where they allow people to present ideas and push them forward. It engages and motivates them and helps attract the best talent to your company, rather than frustrating them, turning them off or pushing them out.
Is it possible that big companies don’t see an upside to internal innovation? Many seem to want their employees to focus the products or services they already sell. When they want to add new products and services, they go out and acquire small, innovative companies, instead of doing a lot of R&D internally.
Tencer: If they don’t see an upside to internal innovation, I think it’s incredible short-sightedness. Your brand is about building relationships with your customers. Innovation is about keeping those relationships fresh. It’s about introducing “new, improved and better.” The people closest to your relationships are your employees. They’re on the front lines of speaking to or working with customers. To me, these are where the most relevant ideas are coming from or should be coming from. I’m not saying acquisitions or open source innovation aren’t important. They are, but why–if you have 5 or 50,000 or 100,000 people–would you ignore their ideas?
Some companies want their employees to stay focused, but I am not saying innovation should be 100% of their day. I’m talking about adding a glorified suggestion box. Let’s get those great suggestions back to corporate management and the R&D team. I think the tide is turning. I hope it’s turning. I think the great companies are seeing that listening to your employees is powerfully motivating and engaging.
What’s holding the other, not-so-innovative companies back?
Tencer: It’s an incredible mind shift for most companies to move from viewing employees as the doers and executors to the idea generators. I think companies are afraid it will take them out of the stride of their daily work. The change is hard. Instead of being managers, we’re being motivator and coaches.
I think managers can be. [Creativity expert] Ken Robinson talks about the notion that creativity is taken away from us and replaced by very linear thinking through our education processes in his TED talks. In large companies, just like you have an open source innovation platform, you need an internal platform through which employees propose or present their ideas, so it doesn’t become every manager’s responsibility to be brilliant at this. If you have the processes in place, you’ll see that tide changing. I do believe that, given permission, managers will start to shift.
What if you’re an employee in a company that isn’t as receptive to innovation as LinkedIn–and you’re innovative? What can you do to put your ideas into action?
I think if top management really doesn’t appreciate it–I hate to say it–but in many cases an innovative employee will leave. If you’re one voice in 50,000 I don’t know that you’re going to have incredible success at it. But I think that with this new generation of employees, recognition and engagement are so high up on the scale of what motivates people that you won’t be the one voice in the company anymore. Hopefully a lot of companies will recognize that they don’t want to lose their employees.
What can someone who is, say, 47 years old, learn from Millennials about innovation?
They’ve grown up and see sharing as just a normal part of their life. They’re sharing their ideas, thoughts on what they’re doing and social activism through social media. They are habitual sharers. What we need to learn is it’s okay to share our ideas and to build on one another’s idea. For the 47-year-old, the whole notion of the wiki or open source programming or innovation is a little more challenging. We were taught to keep our head down, keep things to ourselves and go in a linear fashion. To be fair to our generation, we didn’t have social media growing up. We can adapt to a new reality. We do it very well through LinkedIn. We share a lot of ideas through LinkedIn groups and other platforms. We can do that internally, as well.
Do you see any relationship between Millennials’ attitudes about consumerism and their opportunities to create? Many started their careers during the Great Recession.
We were brought up with home ownership and the cars in the garage as status symbols. To them, status symbols relate to whether something goes to sharing: Does it go to lowering emissions, saving the planet, to working together for a better cause? It’s an extension of that whole interconnectedness. To me, they’re almost better equipped to bootstrap a company. They don’t have that singular focus on the acquisition of material goods.
So how do midlife professionals who have mortgage to pay take a cue from a younger, very entrepreneurial generation and get back in touch with the innovative side of themselves?
In my workshops, I don’t start out talking about innovation and being creative. I ask people to talk about what cool things around them they like. Someone might say: “Standing on a corner and getting a text message that your cab is one mile away, and your cab is number 118.” Here’s another example I like: At Disney theme parks, if a child drops an ice cream cone, an attendant will run up and take them to the ice cream vendor, who will put a new ice cream upside down in a cup, with a smiley face on it. These are examples of brilliant process innovation. It’s about making your customer happy in a simple but very different way. It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Once people start realizing that innovation is that simple, it frees them up to be creative.
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