July trend tracker

Let talent drive innovation

Many organisations would consider innovation a strategic priority to achieve organisational growth and thus competitive advantage. Indeed, in the UK, companies committed an average investment spend of four per cent of turnover per organisation, equalling £19.2bn in 2006[1].

Simultaneously, organisations are continuing to invest in the external recruitment and internal development of ‘talent’ to add to their competitive edge. But how can this talent be harnessed to drive innovation within an organisation?

It’s a leap of faith for organisations to embrace the change required for innovation, and in the majority of large, risk-averse corporations there are significant barriers in place. We see too much focus on narrow mechanisms of innovation: endless meetings with no outputs, ideas forums with no ideas.

A lot of organisations also show a lack of long-term focus. When ideas are generated they are often left to drift without development into strategic solutions, which is often a reflection of investment into creativity rather than innovation. Organisational structures themselves also lead to idea blockages, with overpowering hierarchies leading to an inward focus and top talent deployed to solve internally determined requirements. This is in direct conflict with research into sources of innovation, which suggests that idea generation triggered by end-user customer requirements will produce a far more transformational outcome.

It is also a challenge for talented individuals to work inside a large corporate structure with established processes and procedures, where they are expected to produce innovative transformational solutions. How do these employees engage in conceptual thinking within the existing confines of a large corporate machine?

The main danger from a human resource (HR) perspective is that these individuals become detached from the corporate vision and aims, working independently and ready to move organisations at any stage.

A way of addressing this is the creation of fluidity within existing structures, establishing small working groups and encouraging organisation-wide communication to share knowledge and lessons learnt. Research shows that cross-functional groups are far more likely than individual innovators to output the kind of transformational change that creates a competitive edge. This behaviour should be supported by social-network approaches that allow successful innovation to occur at the edges of organisations where structural barriers are less of a problem and the needs of users become the key focus.

How can HR support the harnessing of talent to drive innovation? Indeed, is it possible for talent to be harnessed in this way through normal HR mechanisms? Perhaps it is more a case of facilitating innovative behaviour across the organisation through open, supportive processes to encourage creativity and the translation of this into innovative results.

The targets and behaviours that are identified and established as the benchmarks for performance within the organisation may not always apply to this group of talented employees.

When a new graduate comes on board, organisations often spend a great deal of time, effort and money to train this individual in the existing processes and required outputs. But what if the new employee was trained to generate different ideas, in a supportive, creative environment? Wouldn’t this provide the organisation with a fresh channel of thoughts and ideas?

Diversity policies, flexible working approaches, segmented talent pools, knowledge management, workforce engagement and creative reward strategies are all ways that HR can support the climate of change required to truly deliver innovative development.

At different stages in the organisational life cycle there is a different emphasis on innovation. In the early stages, success is often driven through the innovation of one individual. As the organisation grows, success is driven through standardisation and homogenisation. When the pressure within the market increases there is a focus on success through new product development, but it is those organisations that are introducing ground-breaking concepts to the market that rely on transformational innovative development.

Not all companies get to this final stage, and some take longer than others to get there, but to those organisations that reach it, the attraction and retention of talented individuals is critical for business success.