One of the people I work with used to work for the Government in the “Commercial Ready Grant” program, assessing new high-technology companies. One of her tasks was assessing, and developing frameworks for “innovation centres” like the Australian Technology Park. The idea behind these parks is that small, high-tech businesses benefit from being co-located. Which is, essentially, the argument that gets made about why there are so many innovative start-ups in Silicon Valley.
But there’s obviously more to it than that - there are plenty of non-innovative start-ups in Silicon Valley as well, and there are innovative start-ups that happen outside of these hot-spots.
It seems pretty self-evident that there has to be something about the people who work at the company as well; and there has to be something about the company culture.
It’s the way in which all these factors combine that seems to encourage innovation.
After thinking about it I’ve come up with what I think are the 4 key factors, and I’m interested in feedback…
1) Location - location is important. The innovator has to be in an area where they can attract like-minded people to come and work for them, and there’s ample opportunity for the cross-fertilisation of ideas. The people who work for the company have to be able to hang out with other innovative people who don’t work for the same company. Often all you need for a radical new solution to a problem is just a completely different way of looking at the problem.
2) Company culture - It’s not enough to say “we’re an innovative company”, the culture has to encourage it. That goes beyond the “we’re not afraid to try things and fail” mantra that most companies think is the bedrock of innovation. You’ve got to be prepared to look stupid, or silly. I think there’s a good reason why the really innovative places always look like they’d be really fun places to work - it’s because you can’t really come up with a left field idea if you’re not prepared to do some daft things. I think most people are more afraid of looking silly than they are of failing.
3) The people - Culture is all about people. So the people working for the company have to be more than good team members - they have to be friends, they have to trust one another, they have to enjoy spending time together. No one is going to suggest a disruption to the status quo unless they know the people they work with are going to support them.
4) Engineers - This is the factor where I’m going out on a limb a bit. I think any truly innovative company has to have what I’d term an “engineering mindset” This doesn’t mean all the people working there have to *be* engineers, they just have to think like them for two key reasons
- Engineers believe that *all* problems can be solved, and should be solved.
- Engineers know that no solution is absolute. The world changes - the solution that worked best last year - has probably been superseded.
It’s this approach to the world that drives invention, and innovation.
