5 Tips How You Can Become a Better Innovation Manager

Innovation is the oxygen of any company. So, the impact Innovation Managers have on an organization’s business growth is tremendous. Not only that, your team members look up to you as their mentors too.

That’s why are sure that you strive for the best results possible! But we also get that it’s not as easy as it sounds. While there is no doubt that you put your maximum effort into being the best, we share 5 tips that will help you become a better innovation manager & make your work even more successful. Let’s dig in!

5 Ways to Become a Better Innovation Manager

1. Build a Culture of Openness

As an innovator, you should be open to anything and everything; rigidity restricts innovation. Openness is the key to creating a company culture that supports creativity, which is very important to make innovation happen. To enable this mindset, stimulate trust and open communication among your team members, and encourage everyone to share their ideas no matter how silly they think it is. Also, give them the room to experiment with those ideas and assure them that it is okay to not succeed on the first go. Never let them give up without trying! You’ll be amazed at the results you’ll get!

2. Remove the Fear of Failure

Companies often hesitate to try things out because they are unsure of the outcome. But success seldom comes without failure. Some of the most successful inventions or brands of today even have a history of failure. Just think about Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). Its founder, Colonel Sanders, failed multiple times and did not become a millionaire until he was 62! Another great example is Apple. The company went a massive downhill after the founder, Steve Jobs, and Apple parted ways in 1985. But since their reunion in 1997, Apple proved to be one of the biggest brands on earth by 2011!

So, first, you make yourself ready to face failure and then assure others that it is okay to fail. But at the same time, you dig into what went wrong, fix it, and try again. Keep a stock of other options in case the original plan is not worth another shot. In short: be prepared to think on your feet and come up with quick alternatives.

Watch what Steve Jobs had to say about failure back in 1994:

3. Encourage Open Innovation

You might have a team of brilliant minds but you cannot deny the existence of excellence outside your team or organization. So, why not take advantage of that? There are plenty of engineers, entrepreneurs, innovators, scientists, and skills teams, that can provide your team with fresh perspectives from their wide array of experiences and expertise. Besides helping you solve some of the challenges of your business, this beyond-the-border interaction opens doors for new business opportunities.

4. Take Feedback from Your Entire Team

Feedback is invaluable in every stage of innovation management — right from ideation to the final product, and even after rolling it out to your customers. It only pushes you towards improvement. Apart from internal assessments, expand your horizon and ask employees from other departments what they think of a particular idea or product. Taking direct feedback from customers is also very insightful. They guide you towards their exact requirements, and by making those adjustments you create more value for your customers.

5. Trust your Team

Last but not least on your way to become a better innovation manager, you need to consider your team. It is very obvious that as the team leader it is your responsibility to supervise and double-check. But overdoing it does more harm than good. Constant monitoring leads to spoon-feeding, which kills the creativity of your team. This way your team members will never feel confident enough to take full ownership of their tasks — they will always be dependent on you, thus creating more bottlenecks and putting more pressure on you. So, know when to step back and give your army their own sweet space — they will appreciate it and your innovation agenda too!

Do you have more tips and tricks that you already practice and are not on the list? Get in touch & let us know!