Why?
The world around us is changing ever faster. At the same time innovation is no longer just about products or technology. It’s also about services, internal structure and processes, business models, and customer experience… Every aspect of how you do business, must be scrutinized.
Organizations have to keep up if they want to continue to play a significant role in the future. But many of them are struggling with this new speed. If you want to innovate sustainably, everyone has to join you on this mission”.
From within
So how can you respond to this as an organization? Pieter Daelman, CEO and co- founder, shares his vision: “The playing field has become so diverse that R&D alone can no longer provide a complete answer. Moreover, the new speed requires a much greater capacity and flexibility than only an R&D team can offer.”
“If you want to innovate sustainably, everyone has to join you on this mission. Every employee should constantly be thinking about what can be done differently within the organization. That also means that we need to work on a new culture: one where employees are encouraged to think along, take initiative and share their ideas. A culture of employee-driven innovation.
” We believe that the key to innovation sits on the inside of your organization, with your employees”
We are an innovation agency specialized in employee-driven innovation. We believe that the key to innovation sits on the inside of your organization, with your employees. That’s why we help organizations to work in a structured way towards a high-performance innovation culture.
We do this on three levels:
• Facilitating internal innovation projects
• Training of innovation skills
• Supervising the entire culture change trajectory, from assessment to implementation
Evidence based management
Innovation, creativity and culture are very intangible concepts in a business context. Therefore, together with researchers from Ghent University, Erasmus University College (Brussels) and Karel de Grote University College (Antwerp), we developed the Cromax™ framework. This framework summarizes 70 of the most recent scientific insights on innovation culture. It allows us to very accurately map out the maturity level of the organization in terms of innovation culture.
This way, we can design a tailor-made process to take the culture to the
next level. Measuring is knowing right?
” Instead of any kind of bonus plan or team building, it’s better to ask your employees if they want to lend their brains for a while.”
The ROI of employee-driven innovation
Better and more ideas
To fuel continuous innovation, you need a constant supply of quality ideas. One team or a few individuals cannot do this alone. By activating the entire human capital of the organization, you will generate enough influx to be able to choose the right ones. After all, the more ideas you have, the greater the chance that there will be a few brilliant ones among them!
Support for innovation
60% of all change and innovation projects fail due to a lack of internal support. If you want to break through this dynamic, you will have to put the employees themselves at the wheel. Let them think up and design the solutions themselves to streamline the organization. That way, you automatically create ambassadors for that necessary change. After all, these are their own ideas. And colleagues can convince each other much easier than if you try to do this from the top down.
Employee engagement
Finally, employee-driven innovation also increases employee engagement. They feel seen, recognized and appreciated when they are allowed to help think about the future of the organization. Instead of any kind of bonus plan or team building, it’s better to ask your employees if you can borrow their brains for a while.
In times of war for talent, where ‘purpose’ is becoming increasingly important in the choice of employer, it is a unique advantage if you know how to empower your people by letting them help shape the future of the organization.
