Staff Training in Innovation Techniques and Idea Generation Strategies

Dorothy Riddle (2000), cites a lack of staff skills as being the single biggest impediment to innovation success, and states that “Investment in training will benefit the firm in the long run by eventually reducing the time needed to identify new opportunities and increasing the degree of certainty in the solution selected”. She sees five areas in which training is critical:

• Stimulating creativity - e.g. how to think outside conventional or traditional assumptions, the ability to make connections between seemingly unrelated areas, the use of brainstorming, and making linkages between ideas.

• Assessing innovation options – the ability to evaluate and assess an idea for appropriateness and feasibility. This requires skills that are opposite to creativity, such as agreeing on a single option, identifying pro’s and con’s, performing root cause analyses etc.

• Focusing on the customer – innovations are effective only if they are acceptable to your customers. Focusing on the customer involves assessing customers needs, and examining trends in other industries that may have implications within your own organisation,

• Designing new services - analysing the service flows to identify opportunities to streamline, add value, or establish service standards and assessing your own service delivery both as an organisation and as an individual or work group.

• Implementing change – innovation is a change process and the following can help assure success; establishment of timelines for the roll-out (launch) of new innovations; establishing a time for reviewing the roll-out; and selecting best practices to enable staff to practice successful implementation.

Typically training programmes relating to creativity and innovation include:

• The organisations approach to innovation and creativity, including any company policies or procedures

• Brainstorming techniques

• Lateral thinking strategies e.g. DeBono’s six thinking hats

• Using everyday ideas to create new concepts

• Reward and recognition practices for new ideas and innovations.

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