Five (proven) ways to encourage employee innovation

When I tell people I work at Ericsson, there’s a 50/50 chance their response will be “do they make phones?”. That’s okay. We haven’t made consumer products for years, but unless you’re into telecommunications, how would you know?

Then I explain (with the slightest hint of pride) that back in the 1800s, we did start out by manufacturing some of the first telephones, but today, we actually build and manage mobile networks that support a hefty chunk of global data traffic. 

Without innovation, Ericsson – along with a staggering number of the world’s most successful businesses – would no longer exist. Innovation is not a fluffy concept. It’s a powerful tool for increasing business competitiveness, profitability and employee retention. 

However, earlier this year, McKinsey and Company, announced we’re facing an innovation crisis at a time when it’s more important than ever. The pandemic has changed the business landscape, and according to their report, over 90 percent of executives expect the fallout from COVID-19 to fundamentally change the way they do business over the next five years. A similar number also believe the crisis will have a lasting impact on their customers’ needs.

To successfully adapt to these shifts, companies must become more innovative, and learn how to unlock the wealth of ideas that their employees can offer. But innovation isn’t always easy. It requires insight, resources and commitment. An extensive study from Nielsen found that innovation success is never a “remarkable coincidence”. It requires deliberate attempts to disrupt innovation processes and shake up organizational behavior. 

If you’re serious about encouraging employee innovation, here are some ideas to get you started.

Create a customer-focused culture

As with most things in life, every time we use a product or a service, there’s usually a tradeoff or compromise involved (or at least one thing that could be improved). The little space that marks the point where a product can go from good to great provides fertile ground for innovative ideas. If an organization has the self-awareness to recognize and evaluate customer drawbacks, it gives them a strong advantage. According to research, the most successful innovations stem from a desire to help people overcome day-to-day struggles, and also challenge reasons for non-consumption (or non-use) of a product.

Culture has been described by Forbes as the “secret sauce” for the world’s most innovative companies, and as absolutely imperative for creating a winning customer experience. Putting the customer as the center of everything you do is also a good strategy for ongoing innovation, as it allows you to naturally grow and adapt to changing customer needs. 

There are many things you can do to create a more customer-focused culture, including frequently sharing customer insights and feedback, and explicitly linking customer needs to your companies own culture and vision. At Ericsson, our customers are the center of everything we do, and solving their pain points and challenges is integral to our business strategy.

Give everyone the opportunity to innovate

Innovation should never come from the top down or be restricted to specific teams. It’s been proven that diversity is key to successful innovation, and everyone in your company can bring a fresh perspective to the table.

Google is renowned for encouraging all of their employees to set aside time purely to work on personal projects and explore new ideas, which is a smart and simple way to encourage innovation and boost employee engagement.

In my team at Ericsson ONE, we provide people with dedicated resources so they can pursue their ideas. This includes coaching, funding and access to subject matter experts – and when they’re ready, we connect them with customers to trial product prototypes. Anyone at Ericsson can submit an idea, at any time, through a simple online tool. These ideas are reviewed by a dedicated team and the ones with the most potential are given the opportunity to start building a new business and invited to pitch for investment.

Experiment with new ways to facilitate innovation

I used to work for a company that loved brainstorming. Their favorite thing to do was throw a bunch of people in a room, sit back, and wait for the sparks to fly. Unsurprisingly, it hardly ever worked. Setting time aside for people to innovate is great, but sometimes producing ideas on-demand is virtually impossible. Taking a structure approach to idea generation, at least at the start of a session, is usually much more effective. Here’s a few fun activities to get those creative juices flowing:

• Campfire sessions: this exercise taps into our innate love for storytelling. Through the magical power of sticky notes, participants are encouraged to share and build upon each other’s stories – just like you would do around a campfire. The stories can all be related to a pre-determined theme, which can be anything. Each participant contributes to the story, and at the end insights, learnings and reflections are discussed. This method can be adapted to serve as, for example, an icebreaker exercise, or a warmup to tackling real customer challenges.

• Ask “what if or how might we” questions: at Ericsson ONE, we often kickstart innovation discussions by taking insights and turning them into specific types of questions that are designed to help you identify new, innovative opportunities. For example, and insight could be that the transport industry has a high carbon footprint. You can take this insight, and turn it into a question that opens up the floor for new ideas: how might we transport goods and people more efficiently? Here are some more examples of how we recently used this technique to explore how technology can help build a better world.

• Explore the unintended consequences: this workshop thought starter is designed to uncover accidental consequences of technology in order to identify new opportunities for innovation. Organize participants into small groups and ask them to create a list of five new technologies or businesses. Then, ask participants to write down at least three unintended consequences of each of these new technologies (or businesses). Once they’ve finished, ask the teams to share their ideas.

• Embrace design thinking methodologies: at Ericsson ONE, we often use design-thinking methodologies to find new ways to solve problems and generate original ideas for new innovations. Design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem solving that involves four or five specific stages. During each stage, a mixture of different frameworks are applied to help people find creative solutions to problems. This includes exploring and defining problems that need solving, identifying themes and opportunity areas, brainstorming and evaluating ideas and prototyping, testing and learning.

Ericsson ONE’s four-step design thinking process

For more fun ways to facilitate innovation, head to Hyper Island’s online toolbox.

Don’t just acknowledge ideas – act on them

The quickest way to dishearten innovative spirits is to encourage them to be innovative, then do nothing with their ideas. Of course, it’s never guaranteed that an idea will fly, but nurturing ideas and trying to build on them is extremely important for fostering an innovation culture. Simple ways to do this include:

• Planning further discussions or workshops
• Sharing ideas with new people or different teams
• Reaching out to customers to get feedback on ideas
• Giving people a chance to test their ideas
• Asking people to present their ideas to a bigger group – even if it’s just for inspiration

At Ericsson ONE, our innovators go through a step-by-step process which involves rapidly creating, testing and validating their prototypes, building a minimum viable product, and if everything goes to plan, developing it into a fully-fledged, product, business or solution. Throughout the process, they’re provided with all the resources they need to successfully launch a new venture, including time to develop their ideas, dedicated advisors and training.

Create an intrapreneurship program

As Steve Jobs famously said: “you don’t hire smart people to tell them what to do, you hire smart people so they can tell you what to do.” An intrapreneur is a person who develops new ideas and businesses within a company – and it can be absolutely anyone.

Creating a structured program that allows employees to pursue their ideas provides them with a clear outlet – or sounding board – for new innovations AND shows that you’re serious about it. Intrapreneurship programs are often run by a dedicated team of mentors or coaches, who help employees develop an idea into something more tangible. They also offer support when it comes to other areas of product development, such as marketing or legal considerations. 

By encouraging intrapreneurship, companies can tap into employees’ extraordinary potential for innovation. At the same time, this gives an incentive for people to work on new businesses while leveraging the capabilities and resources of established companies.

At Ericsson ONE, we support our intrapreneurs on their innovation journeys, while developing new products that our customers can benefit from. It’s a win-win for everyone!

Where do Ericsson’s innovators get their best ideas from?

Our intrapreneurs often have their most innovative ideas in unexpected places. Watch the video to find out where.

If you currently work at Ericsson and you have a new business idea, share it with us today.

Further reading

5 key steps to creating an innovation mindset

How design thinking can improve technology forecasting

3 ways that new technologies are accelerating innovation

Learn more about Ericsson ONE.