Designing innovation in business begins with intention. Every venture wants to be financially successful, but fewer have the drive to change their sector. It is time to discover how your small business or entrepreneurial mind will contribute to advancement. If you want to be the next thought leader and inventive mind in your niche, solopreneurs and small businesses can curate an innovation culture with these fundamental principles.

Know Your Culture and Redefine It

If you are unfamiliar with your workplace culture or how you approach your company as a solopreneur, now is the time to consider it intimately. You can only rework a brand to be innovation-focused if you know how to tackle adjusting the existing cultural structure.

Numerous models attempt to explore this intangible subject, but one example is the Competing Values Framework. In this exercise, you can see where your SMB falls on the matrix and move it to a section that supports innovation. The categories include:

  • Clan: People-oriented and collaborative.
  • Market: Competitive and task-driven.
  • Adhocracy: Planners and creativity-focused.
  • Hierarchy: Stable and bureaucratically controlled.

There are pros and cons to each model. Still, recognizing your current culture is to understand its main characteristics so you can nudge it toward adhocracy — the innovative quadrant. 

Encourage Setting Attainable Goals

Goals that are nebulous or too domineering create a discouraging atmosphere. The metrics feel too grand, and the effort required to obtain them feels like climbing a mountain without the proper preparation.

Employees’ relationship with goal-setting in your organization directly correlates to their feelings about innovation. The less frequently you and your staff reach goals, the more likely the team will not want to push themselves to greater or more inventive heights.

Workers begin to view projects without feeling accomplished about progress if goals are not attainable. If someone in your SMB has a big idea that could change the industry, they may view it as too far out of reach to voice. You can set a precedent. Set practical goals that amount to big-picture, highly influential gains. This way, the staff sees the value of progressive efforts and feels satisfied with gradual achievements. They will look for dynamic sources of inspiration and insight. It trains their minds to understand the small steps required to innovate.

Embrace Autonomy and Dismiss Bureaucracy

Recall when you were first allowed to execute a new task at work without hovering supervision. It permits you to grow and find novel solutions to problems. These moments support innovation. 

Embracing independence does not eliminate the potential for high-quality collaboration central to innovating.

The more prominent the agency is within an SMB, the more its workers feel empowered. This involves:

  • Eliminating micromanaging
  • Increasing trust
  • Fostering leadership opportunities 
  • Becoming active listeners

You want to eliminate strict hierarchical structures because they are often rigid, making workers feel excluded and dismissing their influence. Assuming company managers are the only individuals with innovative ideas is flawed logic. Become more purpose- and values-driven. It allows workers to more easily align their interests with the SMB’s objectives and priorities.

Balance Feedback and Deliver Recognition

Many employees keep their ideas close. People fear they will not receive adequate recognition or higher-ups will chastise and not value the concept. Implementing an innovation culture requires employees to feel inspired to share their ideas without fear of failure and judgment.

Trust develops when there is a balance and positive feedback structure within an SMB. Critiques should be constructive and actionable, delivered alongside encouragement and reminders of what someone is doing well. The rewards and cheers allow feedback reception to improve and instill workers with confident communication skills. All of this happens because an entrepreneur decides to deliver praise.

Bring Curiosity and Optimism to Everything

Many companies want to create homogeneity, ensuring everyone thinks and feels similarly about corporate procedures and structures. Close-mindedness often leads to disruptions. Instead, SMBs must discourage groupthink entirely. 

Forcing people to think too similarly restricts curiosity, preventing innovation in business. Companies that allow employees the freedom to be curious and hopeful about their ideas and dig deeper are more likely to receive optimistic, relevant suggestions from an authentic place.

Additionally, prohibiting curiosity eliminates the chance for growth opportunities. Resistance to newness creates corporate stagnation, where people become too settled in their ways. The complacency translates to clients as products and services become stale and outdated. Creating a workplace that encourages self-education, nobody will have a desire to become better at their profession.

Promote Diversity and Inclusion for Belonging

SMBs need to think globally while staying small, and diversity is the best way to obtain unique perspectives from countless voices and backgrounds. It makes your company more well-rounded and forward-thinking to provide a platform for individuals who may have previously received workplace discrimination or judgment for any specific trait. Creating more inclusive workplaces fosters belonging, honesty and communication.

Diversity, equity and inclusion are pivotal for connecting with customers and justifying the relevance of your innovative ideas to a broader audience. People feel their voice matters in an organization prioritizing democratized idea generation and mindful communication.

Solidifying Innovation in Business

A business of any size can embrace imagination and collaboration with effort. Innovation rarely happens naturally — the environment and attitudes must spark the thought processes. Fortunately, you can invest time and resources to forge an open-minded, future-focused workplace where fresh ideas arrive frequently. If your SMB or business undertaking employs these principles, you will see innovation organically rise out of your workflows.