One of the most important concepts for businesses to understand in the new world of technology is that innovation isn’t just a one-time event – it needs to be embedded within the culture of a company. However, this implies that employees take time away from what they are being paid to do, and many business leaders struggle with how to make it work without compromising efficiency. Innovation as a bottom-up activity is about doing things that go beyond the job description.
Staff may have great ideas about how products and internal processes could be improved, but the reality is that most of these ideas never get off the ground, and those that do tend to get stalled by formal procedures and governance processes characteristic of large enterprises. But while alluring in principle, employee-led innovation is difficult to manage in practice. But in order for innovation from the bottom-up to be successful, it needs constant monitoring and championing from the top.Ī believer in employee-led innovation, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously said, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do”.
Rather, it involves people across the organisation identifying and acting on opportunities, and it manifests itself in a wide variety of outcomes, from new products and services to new business models and new ways of working. Most business leaders view innovation as a key imperative, but what many don’t recognise is that innovation doesn’t just happen through top-down investment in research and development.
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