Innovation can be hard to come by, especially during December when everyone is counting down the days until the holiday break. Crowdsourcing ideas is one great way to help get the innovative juices flowing and build camaraderie among colleagues. Here are 3 ways to cultivate and maintain your team's efforts:
Be Realistic: Identify key organizational challenges and use team competitions like a "hackathon" or a full team brainstorming day to allow employees to innovate and overcome the key challenges for the organization. This gives employees ownership of their company and the competition gives the employer solutions to major issues within their organization.
Provide Basic Training: Instead of giving your employees the proverbial fish, teach them to fish. Provide enough comprehensive training to let employees' minds run free to create constructive and innovative solutions to problems.
Be Specific: Frame employee innovation competitions around specific initiatives. Trying to solve one problem at a time focuses employee innovations and allows thoughts and ideas to be more creative. Focused initiatives also make problems seem more realistic to solve. Employee innovation can be a powerful tool to transform your business externally and internally.
For more ideas on how to cultivate employee innovation check out this article from Inc.com.