How To Create An Innovative Environment

Innovation is vital for the development of any organization, cultivating and embedding a creative culture and environment will make drastic positive effects on your organization. Despite new ideas and thoughts being spontaneous, there are changes that leaders can take to encourage new ideas within the workplace, for example:

Inspiring environment
Relaxed workplace
Energetic atmosphere
Diverse workspace

Inspiring Environment

Firstly, to create an innovative workplace is making the workplace itself inspiring. It needs to be inviting and motivating to help your workforce create new ideas, otherwise a lifeless and dull environment is no place for a revolutionary product to be born and the advantage gained in accordance to the expense is incomparable. There has been a significant rise in the number of non-territorial 'flexible' office designs rather than individually assigned workstations. Such innovations in workplace design are intended to facilitate organizational change, improve user satisfaction, increase efficiency, and lower costs.^[1] To sum up, creative ideas are generated in creative spaces which are simple small changes with hopefully successful results.

Relaxed Workplace

To stimulate innovation in your organization, establish a relaxing and comfortable environment free from stress and chaos. Employees should feel at ease while at work as a stressful-mind set is never going to allow the mind to be creative or imaginative. Being flexible with your employees and allowing them to have time-off to relax, gather their peace of mind and relieve them from stress is essential for the growth of any business. It will design an innovative environment which is as far away from stress as possible. It was concluded that the motivation level is affected negatively by perceiving stress as high and low levels of stress decreased the employee performance,.whereas moderate levels of stress maintained the performance at maximum.^[2] Leaders should in fact insist that employees break from routine and take a break. In conclusion, after making the workplace itself interesting, the overall atmosphere of the space should be comfortable and stress free.

^[1] Theo J M Van der Voordt and Anne van Dortmont and Shauna Mallory-Hill, Evaluation of innovative workplace design in the Netherlands (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005), 160-169

^[2] Muhammad Saleem et al., Innovative workplace behavior, motivation level, and perceived stress among healthcare employees (Pakistan: Pak J Commer Soc Sci, 2015), 438-446

Yang Yang and Alison Konrad, Diversity and organizational innovation: The role of employee involvement (Wiley Online Library, 2010), 1062-1083
Pamela McCauley Bush, Transforming your STEM career through leadership and innovation (UK: Academic Press, 2013)