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Innovation is the hot topic
Everyone is talking about it
And we're regularly seeing published lists
of the most innovative companies
We can do things like
access the Internet from a pair of glasses
Technology is providing new ways to hail cabs, watch movies
and even rent apartments
So the truth is
if you want to excel in today's world
You have to innovate
The problem is most people think about innovation
solely in terms of new products
Just the word innovation brings forth images
of creative types
brainstorming groundbreaking ideas behind closed doors
and many companies are struggling to
define innovation on their own terms
and understand how it applies
on a day-to-day basis
Innovation is actually simpler and far more accessible
It's about doing things differently
to produce better, more efficient
and valuable outcomes for the evolving needs
of your business and your customer base
At ORC International we have developed a unique approach
to help companies measure the
extent to which they are building an internal culture of innovation
Innovation can drive employee engagement
and where there is engagement, innovation can flourish
so the relationship seems reciprocal
Companies that successfully combine an engaged workforce
with an environment that stimulates innovation will achieve creative engagement
and our model helps companies determine where they sit on each of these dimensions
So companies really should be striving for a working environment where they have
creative engagement
Employees are not only given the opportunity to innovate but are also
emotionally connected to the organization so the ideas and
suggestions
will continue to bring out the best and drive high performance
At the opposite end, employees that are not given the opportunity to innovate
and are not feeling adequately inspired or connected to the company
will bring neither the benefits of engagement nor innovation
Companies that sit here are suffering from low performance
then we see companies are missing an opportunity and suffering from loss
potential
these are companies that perhaps engage their employees they are willing and are
able to go the extra mile they're committed, yet the working environment
doesn't encourage
or inspire innovation and finally we're seeing some companies that are high risk
in terms of their innovation
they are encouraging employees to innovate without emotional attachment to the
company
so the ideas they generate may not be aligned to company strategy
or business advantage
innovation can be measured as part of an employee engagement survey
and we have a validation index which includes questions to measure different
aspects of innovation
such as the extent to which employees are encouraged for being creative
and coming up with better way to doing things and also whether the culture
reward such behaviors
we also ask questions to understand do employees feel the company embraces risk
that it learns from mistakes and understands that failure is part of innovation
these are all very important parts of building an innovative culture
the approach that we have allows you to benchmark your results
against other companies to see how you compare every year we conduct a survey of employee
opinion in nineteen countries around the world
and our survey measures a number of different themes including employee
engagement
well-being diversity and of course innovation so the results are very
interesting globally we have an overall employee engagement index
59 percent whereas the innovation index sits at just 49 percent so
globally we're seeing there's a lot of room for improvement
in terms of building an innovative culture within different companies
but we're seeing very big differences by country
india and china two big burgeoning economies really doing very well in terms of
innovation
and also engagement so not only are they managing to connect their employees with
their work and to their organization
but they're also encouraging their ideas and embracing this theme of creative
engagement
at the opposite end of the scale we have Japan at the bottom of the ranking both
on engagement
and innovation so a lot of work to do there the US is sitting in the middle of
the pack doing reasonably well in engagement
but room for improvement on innovation particularly compared to China and India
and with china set to overtake the US as the world's biggest economy in the next 10
to 15 years
this really is a wake-up call for US companies to look for ways to
embed engagement and innovation within their companies
look for ways to generate and inspire ideas from their employees to close the
gap
companies that are able to embed innovation into their everyday activity
are really reaping the rewards in terms of a more engaged workforce
that better able to attract and retain talent particularly Millennials
Millennials seem to be more open to change more creative
more tech-savvy and they want to be able to put that creativity to work for
employers that values it
rather than stifles it they are also benefiting from more
and better ideas high levels of productivity and ultimately
better organization performance we're also seeing more companies involve
their employees in new product development
new product development is traditionally done by speaking to your customers asking
what they want what they like and what they would like you to develop in the future
but this topic development often falls down because customers don't know what
they want
until they see it employees are really an untapped resource
in many companies they're closer to the customer can see market trends
and have a close eye on the competition so research approaches that
involve employees in new product development are proving to be very
fruitful
look out for more from ORC international in 2014 as we share some exciting
approaches to employee new product development
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