Innovation in the Workplace

Kim Chan

14 years ago

Innovation In light of the new year, I thought it would be the perfect time to introduce a term you may or may not be familiar with – innovation. The word “innovation” is quickly skyrocketing in the business world; it’s everywhere. According to businessweek.com, it “has become the rallying cry of every product manager, the pursuit of every design consultant, the autocomplete of every press release writer.” But what does it really mean? Innovation technically means to introduce a new idea, or to take an existing idea and make it work better. Innovation in the workplace tends to refer to the process of introducing something new. This process starts from the origination of an idea and goes on to the transformation and implementation of that idea, taking into account the system on which the process unfolds.

Innovation in the Workplace – Do it like Google

“You can’t do today’s job with yesterday’s methods and still be in business tomorrow.” -Unknown

What many businesses do not know is that innovation at work is the most important aspect of a business. It makes businesses stand out among the market place and helps them grow. Without it, businesses have less chance of attracting a customer base.

According to healthguidance.org, few successful companies understand its meaning. The most successful companies encourage innovation in the workplace. For example, Google allows their staff to spend 30% of their time pursuing their own creative interests which has lead to innovative ideas such as Google Maps and Google Adsense, which have genuinely changed the way we live and made Google in phenomenon more than a search engine.

Encouraging innovation with OneDesk

The best ideas often come from customers who use a company’s product or service. As seen in the example of Google above, employees also often come up with great ideas. OneDesk helps encourage innovation in the workplace. With this social business application, customers, employees and partners can collaborate in one single application and submit feedback and ideas to a company. The company can then turn the feedback into actionable items and the entire team can watch as the ideas are implemented and transformed into reality.