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April 17, 2006
On the importance of rewarding risk-taking behavior
On the Heads-Up! on Organizational Innovation blog, Robert B. Tucker of innovation consulting firm The Innovation Resource has written a guest post describing the link between risk-taking behavior and innovation, pointing to the specific example of Whirlpool and Maytag. In the end, companies that establish a risk-taking culture - such as Whirlpool - will be more successful and innovative than those that do not. However, the challenge is identifying how to change the overall work environment so that innovative behavior is rewarded:
"If you're now looking for different behavior, you have to get clear on exactly what actions, decisions, cultural norms and values you've been rewarding - and then look for ways to incent different behaviors going forward. It won't be enough to have your CEO speak about the importance of innovation as one of the company's 17 top priorities and expect people to suddenly alter ingrained habits. You'll need to do lots of things to get the word out that expectations are changing, and that not innovating is the greater risk to one's career."
With that in mind, Tucker provides a few ideas of how companies can alter their cultures to reward innovation:
(1) Steer clear of monetary rewards as a way to get attention.
(2) Publicize examples of innovativeness from your own people
(3) Seek out those who care deeply about identifying problems customers have that they aren't solving very effectively using existing products
Tags: innovation risk culture strategy
Posted by dominic at April 17, 2006 5:52 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig
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