Creativity and Innovation

Creativity and Innovation (Part 4)

How to Increase Innovation in your Teams

The way we commonly work creates barriers to creativity and innovation in teams.  In this fourth blog by Dom Moorhouse of Method Grid and Paul Wilson of Provelio, we set out how Method Grid can be used to break down those barriers and create an environment that positively encourages value-adding and risk-reducing activity.

Five common cited barriers to innovation are:

  • Not enough time
  • No clear processes
  • Insufficient resources or skills
  • Poor collaboration
  • Short termism

Whole industries can get stuck in the old ways of doing things with each new generation repeating past mistakes (or “reinventing the wheel”) and/or generally not improving ways of working fast enough.  The resolution of this state of affairs involves innovation and to innovate effectively you need to:

  • Capture your current processes
  • Analyse and reflect upon their effectiveness
  • Identify ideas to improve
  • Implement the new ideas and monitor
Method Grid is a collaborative platform that allows your whole team to capture what they do and how they do it.

Simply doing that allows the team to get excited about what they do well, what they don’t do at all or where they know they could improve.  The very act of uploading what you know and sharing it is a powerful force for getting the team to think innovatively.  Sharing is the start of the innovation process as the team can sit back, reflect and work out where things go right or wrong.  Inevitably, ideas emerge (and at a rate and quantity that is more than you imagine) because it is a safe environment with everyone being honest about the starting point.  You can then start to select and prioritise the improvement ideas.  It may be as simple as stopping something you currently do.  These conversations often locate duplicate inefficiencies and lead to your finding you have skills in the team you were unaware of.

Time is not a barrier to innovation.  At Provelio, we have found that teams create time if they are excited and committed to a shared goal or purpose; we have found that Method Grid is a great solution for getting the team focused and sharing.  Once that type of solution is in place, innovation flows freely and “lack of time” ceases to be the excusing issue.

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