If you are the CEO, the solution is relatively simple.

Step 1 – Communicate your goal of constant innovation to the whole company

This means telling your knowledge workers that, in addition to their current duties, you want them to become Innovation Creators.

This also means changing the way your knowledge workers are managed, giving them freedom to be innovation creators. Google Inc, for example, has taken the practical step of telling all its engineers to devote 20% of their time to a project of their choice.

Not every one of your knowledge workers will thrive in this new environment. Not all of them will have the drive to take the initiative, and work towards solving problems. Your organization will still see an improvement in innovation. Only a small percentage of people who use Linux or Wikipedia contribute. To encourage those people who might step up to the role of innovation creator, you will have to work hard to publicize the success of other innovation creators. People need to see examples they can be inspired by and examples they can emulate.

The biggest hurdle will come from your middle level managers. The managers who wrongly believe that they derive their power and success from controlling information and from micro managing will not thrive in this environment. Managers who deliberately or inadvertently limit their employees by reducing their sense of ownership and by limiting opportunities to grow will not thrive in this environment. You will need to find out who these managers are. You will need to identify the managers who stifle innovation. You have to figure out how to get them to change their ways. If they do not change, in a competitive environment that requires constant innovation, these managers cannot help you. Not every one of your lower level knowledge workers has to become an innovation creator, but every manager has to facilitate innovation creation.

Step 2 – Get rid of the 6 hurdles that innovation creators face

This means creating an environment that encourages innovation:

1. Create an environment where your innovation creators can find out know who is who


2. Create an environment where all your people know what is going on – your strategic objectives, your operational challenges, your competitive landscape and most importantly, your clients’ needs.


3. Wherever possible, give your innovation creators a sense of ownership. If they come up with a great idea, let the whole organization know who came up with the idea. If they propose an initiative, and successfully make the business case to pursue that initiative, find ways to let them run the initiative.


4. Create an environment of reciprocal altruism. Work out ways to give innovation creators acknowledgement for their efforts. Work out ways to give them an incentive to reach beyond their defined roles. Most importantly, give them the power and the confidence to take risks. Giving every member of your team access to tools that publicly display their contributions to the group effort is one way to create an environment that supports reciprocal altruism.


5. Create an environment that encourages dialog and feedback. People in every stage of the production process, or people in every area of a comprehensive service offering must be able to provide direct feedback to each other. In addition, every area of your organization must be able to hear customer or client feedback, loudly and clearly. Innovation is something new that people will actually pay for. Without direct market feedback, innovation that generates a new stream of profits will not happen. In order for an organization to be truly innovative and exhibit emergent intelligence, it must have a system that facilitates feedback.


6. Prime your organization to accept constant innovation: Fostering trust and positive cultural attitudes towards Maverick innovators are necessary requirements for creating an emergent organization that generates constant innovation.

Step 3 – Design a structured platform to supports innovation

After lowering the innovation creator’s 6 big hurdles, you will need to create a structured platform to support that innovation.

In order to accomplish this, you will have to address some Human Resource issues, such as how people are compensated, how they are promoted, and what incentives senior managers have to work with other parts of your organization.

You will also have to deploy a new type of communication tool that does a better job of facilitating group communication than mass emails while simultaneously helping you achieve your goal of reducing the six hurdles. Luckily, for you, that technology has finally become available. As will be explained below, the best tool for the job is an enterprise blogging solution, custom designed for your business model and your business objectives.