Innovation and Change Management Theme > Enabling and Facilitating Innovation

How does an organisation become more innovative?

Innovation is key to the growth and success of any organisation. So, how does an organisation become more innovative?

It starts with your people.

According to a benchmarking study conducted by Treehouse, senior leaders from top organisations agree that an innovative organisation is characterised by having at least 66% of its people actively engaged in innovation. These employees are either active facilitators and enablers of innovation or they contribute to shaping the setting and culture in which innovation can grow and flourish. Let’s look at this in more detail in a condensed overview of the Treehouse Enabling and Fostering Innovation Competency model.

Enabling Innovation – innovating oneself or facilitating others to innovate. An innovation catalyst:

Employees know how to use tools and techniques to generate ideas and support innovation.
They can identify innovation opportunities in their own area.
Skilled in achieving a balance between dedicated innovation activities and other tasks, both in terms of time and funding.
Foundation-level experience in the process, behaviours, tools and techniques used to innovate.
Able to facilitate small or simple activities independently.
Skilled in evaluating innovation proposals, including risk and mitigations.
Advanced level experience in the coordination of people, planning, and design within innovation workshops and programmes.
Leads assessments of innovation proposals.
Mentors and coaches less experienced employees.
Extensive knowledge of how to deliver innovation, including how to focus on people to create breakthrough innovation.
Chooses opportunities based on a well-defined risk portfolio.
Expert-level experience in leading innovation programmes and enabling a culture of innovation, with a clearly articulated vision for the future.

As our research indicates, for an organisation to be innovative, two-thirds (66%) of its employees need to be either fostering or enabling innovation.

Are they?

How innovative is your organisation?

Organisations can become bogged down by innovation initiatives that deliver little to no genuine innovation. To understand how to overcome the challenges to innovation and maintain genuine innovation practices we first undertake an Innovation Cultural Audit.

Treehouse’s Innovation Cultural Audit is based on the 4Rs and identifies how innovative your organisation is, and pinpoints areas that require focus. You can choose to segment the results by department, line of work, or organisational hierarchy.

See the audit sample provided below. Excluding the statements relating to Respect, all other areas received over 50% negative ratings. Notably, the Reciprocity pie chart stands out as an area requiring attention. The report’s detailed analysis reveals a gap in support and resources, which are essential for fostering a truly innovative team.

The Reciprocity scores imply there is a gap between what the organisation expects in innovation and what employees think they can deliver. Do they need innovation or facilitation skills development or streamlined processes or a different tone for business case presentations?

The results of the Innovation Cultural Audit will determine what actions could be taken to improve your organisation’s innovation capability.

The audit informs both our Enabling and Facilitating Innovation and Fostering Innovation Courses, telling us the areas to focus on.

The path to innovation

Innovation is what we at Treehouse call a ‘fat word’ – a word that is open to interpretation and means different things to different people. Innovation has become such an overused word that it has almost lost all meaning.

At Treehouse, we define innovation as the result of bringing an idea to market for business benefit. It spans invention to implementation and applies critical thinking to solve problems and make the most of opportunities for internal and external customers.

Without innovation, organisations stand still and eventually get left behind. We can all name companies that were once pioneers in their sector but withered away due to failing to innovate. Time waits for no one.

For innovation to occur, people need to see a path out of their current mental rut and be awakened to think differently. If your organisation is stuck in a fog of mental fatigue, we can help. Our Enabling and Facilitating Innovation and Fostering Innovation Courses help your organisation identify what is holding you back, remove the barriers and rediscover your foundations of innovation.