5 Steps Toward Creating A Culture Of Innovation

By Gil Allouche, Vice President of Marketing, Qubole

“We value a culture of creativity and innovation.”

These words, or something like them, appear in almost every company’s About Us or Corporate Culture page. Whether or not it’s true is an entirely different story, as everyone throws these words around so much they’ve been reduced, unfortunately, to inflated buzzwords. The majority of companies invest lots of money in R&D and show off a new version of an old product as proof of their innovation. Sure, that may be one facet of creativity, but really it’s so much more than that. Creating an innovative culture is about encouraging employees to think differently, rewarding creative approaches and inspiring change.   

Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon, once said: “...if you think of [opportunity] in terms of the Gold Rush, then you’d be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.”

There is an expression that defines insanity as doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. In this sense, we can label many of today’s businesses as insane.

They try the same old approach over and over again hoping to come up with a breakthrough idea. They refuse to adopt new thinking and are thus doomed to fail

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