I said in my earlier posts
from the Idean 2013 UX Summit that innovation means intrapreneurship, so if they want innovation company leaders need to get past their often unrecognized resistance to
having their employees act entrepreneurially.
If we’re going to get to a place where real innovation
can happen, over and over again, we have to come to terms with
the realities of innovation. And we also
have to provide for the real needs of employee/entrepreneurs.
Because I
passionately believe that creating an environment in which real innovation
is possible over the long haul starts with motivating employees. And the best way to do this is to think of them as customers – and make sure their customer experience (CX) is what it needs to be.
Employees are
customers because they have to buy that the company they work for truly wants them to be
intrapreneurial, and that their efforts will be supported. They have to buy that a possibility really
exists for their innovative work to be adopted and for them to get recognition
for it.
Management wants
innovation – they want employees to create value. But value has to be created on both sides.
An entrepreneur is out
there in the world conquering the new. If you want the same drive from your employees
– if you want to foster intrapreneurship as the road to innovation – you have
to figure out how to treat your potential intrapreneurs. You have to know what’s going to be in it for
them. And you have to set them up to be
successful.
And more money isn’t
likely to be the answer, by itself. You
need to create a CX for your employees that makes them feel valued and rewarded
for making an intrapreneurial effort and confident the effort has a chance to
be more than just a waste of time and energy – and that they won’t be punished
for the inevitable hiccups along the way.
The bottom line is –
Embracing innovation means embracing employee entrepreneurism.
It isn’t a question of
unleashing employees without control or direction. It is freedom. But it’s not license for everyone to do
anything they want wherever and whenever they want to.
The flip side is – once
management creates the context, employees have to step up and step into being
entrepreneurial.
In my next post I’ll talk
about a few things that I think need to be part of a company’s employee CX to
enable a pervasive entrepreneurial mindset and produce real, recurring
innovation.
This is the third of four posts on innovation, entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship from Idean's 2013 UX Summit.