How To Create A Culture That Drives Innovation

How to create a culture that drives innovation

- Ellyn Shook And Julie Sweet

Innovation equals survival. It’s well documented that in this age of widespread disruption, companies must innovate continuously, creating new markets, experiences, products, services, content or processes. So how can leaders encourage innovation? It’s more than recruiting the brightest minds. While having the best talent is clearly an asset, people need the right culture to flourish.

Accenture has found that a culture of equality — the same kind of workplace environment that helps everyone advance to higher positions — is a powerful multiplier of innovation and growth. This means that building a culture of equality is not just an ethical imperative, but a business priority. If organisations want to thrive, they have to “get to equal.”

The power of a workplace culture of equality to drive employees’ innovation mindset — their willingness and ability to innovate — is strong. It has more impact than age or gender and leads to an increase in innovation mindset in all industries and all countries. In fact, innovation mindset is six times higher in the most-equal cultures than in the least-equal ones.

Innovation also equals economic potential. Among the more than 18,000 employees in 27 countries surveyed, we found that people are more willing and able to innovate in faster-growing economies and in geographies with higher labour-productivity growth. And the stakes are enormous: Accenture calculates that global gross domestic product would increase by up to $8 trillion by 2028 if innovation mindset in all countries were raised by 10 per cent.

No matter who or where they are, if people feel a sense of belonging and are valued by their employers for their unique contributions, perspectives and circumstances, they are empowered to innovate more.

WHAT’S AN INNOVATION MINDSET?