Corporate wellness is a difficult goal to achieve, especially these days when you don’t know what social, environmental and economic challenges are around the corner. In his widely watched TED talk, Changing Education Paradigms, Sir Ken Robinson, PhD, asks; ‘how do we educate our children to take their place in the economies of the 21st Century given that we can’t anticipate what the economy will look like at the end of next week?’ His answer: you need to focus on the goals of creativity and innovation.
When applied to business, Robinson’s answer still holds true. According to a recent report from MIT Sloan Management Review and the Boston Consulting Group, called The Innovation Bottom Line, there are five common practices among businesses that are profiting from sustainability initiatives, and two of these come down to innovation: ‘they’re prepared to change business models’ and ‘they collaborate with people and groups outside their organization.’ So how can you encourage creative thinking and innovation in your workplace on a daily basis?
According to Steve Jobs, who is well-known for his business innovation, ‘creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘Wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.’ Jobs created time for ideas to be informally kicked around, and designed the Pixar buildings to encourage people from different departments to run into one another.
Also, Google allows their engineers 20% of their work time to pursue Google-related projects that they feel personally invested in, meaning that workers get a day a week to engage with the project they are most excited about. This practise has led to the development of ideas such as Gmail, Google News and employee shuttle buses, and inspired other businesses to do the same.
Finally, reading gives you the time you need to think quietly and be exposed to ideas at work. According to an Inc. article about creating time to think, making ‘reading a priority’ helps you to slow down and become inspired. App-creating company 37signals holds a monthly discussion about what people are reading, and Maria Popova’s wildly popular blog, Brain Pickings, started when she was working at an advertising firm, and sent out a regular email to her co-workers that included a diversity of cultural news and information, everything from ‘a new piece of research into biomimicry to a haiku by a Japanese poet.’ Innovation doesn’t happen by accident, we need to give it space to develop.
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