Overview

On this page, we will discuss:

What Is Workplace Innovation?
Design Thinking and Workplace Innovation

Reflection

We've just explored the definition of innovation, but what about workplace innovation? What words come to mind when you think of workplace innovation?

What Is Workplace Innovation?

As discussed in the previous section, a closer look at the definition of "innovation" at the organizational level shows an expectation of a successful outcome which takes the form of product, process, position, or paradigm innovation. This results in gaining a competitive advantage or market share; hence, we often hear that organizations need to innovate to survive in today's competitive environments.

Nevertheless, focusing on innovation beyond economic or market gain directs us to view innovation as a social process, through which employees can improve the quality of their own work-life and add value through improved performance towards the organizational mission.

Throughout this lesson, we'll use the term "workplace innovation" to refer to workplace innovation led by employees.

Definition: Workplace innovation is the employee-led social process of mobilizing new ideas to create better work (Carey, 2017).

Goals of Workplace Innovation

The twin goals of employee-led workplace innovation are to improve:

quality of work-life for employees, and
organizational performance for employers (Totterdill, 2020).

Image with three circles, connected to each other with colourful swirls. Middle circle: "Workplace Innovation". Left circle: "Quality of Work-Life". Right circle: "Organizational Performance".

In Dortmund/Brussels' Position Paper on Workplace Innovation, workplace innovation is defined as "a social process which shapes work organisation and working life, combining their human, organisational and technological dimensions. Examples include participative job design, self-organised teams, continuous improvement, high involvement innovation and employee involvement in corporate decision making. Such interventions are highly participatory, integrating the knowledge, experience and creativity of management and employees at all levels of the organisation in a process of co-creation and co-design" (Dhondt et al, 2012, p. 2).

Video: Importance of Workplace Innovation to Employees

We interviewed Tyrenny Anderson, Innovation Strategist & Coach at TACT (Tyrenny Anderson Consulting & Training) and a Program Director for the Workplace Innovation Network for Canada for her perspective on the importance of workplace innovation to an employee and how you can best leverage it to support your career growth:

What does workplace innovation mean to you?
Why should an employee care about workplace innovation?
How have you leverage job crafting in your own career?
How can an employee best approach their employer about there ideas for innovation?
How to tell if an organization supports workplace innovation?

For closed captioning, click on "CC" or the subtitles button at the bottom-right of the video interface (beside the gear icon), or download the transcript (PDF | DOC).

Trouble viewing this lesson video? Try refreshing your browser. You can also access the Workplace Innovation Interview video on MyMedia.

Design Thinking and Workplace Innovation

In PD3, we learned about design thinking, and in particular the innovative, creative, and collaborative "Enterprise Design Thinking" approach created and implemented by IBM. Keep this approach in mind as you explore workplace innovation in this module. Some instances of design thinking are examples of the social process of employee-led workplace innovation, and some are not.

As stated above, workplace innovation is a "social process of mobilizing new ideas to create better work" (Carey, 2017). At the centre of this modality, we find the employees and the organization. Employees can participate in workplace innovation through job crafting and innovation adaptation (we'll learn about these later), which in turn enhances employee satisfaction and, often, organizational success.

Design thinking is a human-centered problem-solving approach, whereas workplace innovation includes organizational practices that centre around employee-led innovation.

Benefits of Design Thinking

Design thinking, specifically, is one methodology which can support workplace innovation by better understanding a specific problem and the key stakeholders' experience. It incorporates very specific tools and strategies (i.e., ethnographic observation, empathy maps, as-is scenarios, big idea vignettes, etc.). These tools help us to better understand the user and their experience of the problem to design better solutions.

To enact design thinking principles, it is best to have a design thinking mindset, which includes:

empathy,
creativity,
collaboration, and
iterative communication.

These qualities are also highly important to workplace innovation, which we will explore throughout this module.

Design Thinking cycle image with text Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test, Implement. Arrows link the terms, indicating the process is iterative.

References

Carey, T. (2017). Why, who & “wow”. WINCan. https://www.wincan.ca/why-wow

Dhondt, S., Oeij, P., Totterdill, P., Howaldt, J., Hootegem, G., & Gramberen, M. (2012). Workplace innovation as social innovation. The Dortmund-Brussels Position Paper on Workplace Innovation, 26-27. https://wp.workplaceinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Dortmund_Brussels_Position_Paper_on_Workplace_Innovation_26th_June_2012.pdf

Totterdill, P. (2020). What is workplace innovation? European Workplace Innovation Network (EUWIN). https://workplaceinnovation.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/What-is-Workplace-Innovation.pdf