Resource:How to build inclusive movements that fuel a culture of innovation

"Innovation" defines itself as "a new idea, device or method". We in this fast moving world experience a rapid change in science, ideology and thought process, hence it is a fact that innovation in each sector helps to enhance features, reduce flaws and invite creativity in the concerned field. Injecting a series of innovation in an organization leads to start a trend or "culture of innovationin that organization, which helps to keep its members active, in trend and most of all helps them to be creative and allows them to think from a different perspective. Here are few basic inclusive movements that will help to ignite the culture of innovation in an organization.

Introduction

Clearly, to start up with a strategy to start these movements, it is necessary to have an enormous potential, potential to be ready to tighten up seat belt to blast-off for innovation. To start an innovation, all you need is a clear mind with a clear goal. Once you are set with the goals, just move forward and start basic steps to implement, promote, educate, and enhance your movement. Get the required permissions, look out for supports (even if you face rejections, keep trying), search for funds, find the correct team and finally get set and launch your movement. Remember, this will require lots of patience and a spirit to keep moving on until the goal is reached. 

Finding a Need and Goal 

In order to create a successful, inclusive movement, one must first have a need on their campus that is not being fulfilled by the administration as well as a clear, well-defined goal. To identify a need on campus, it is important to speak to a range of faculty, staff, and students to ensure that a majority of people's opinions align to one specific need. Whether that is a need for a new design space, a new major, or more interaction between disciplines, it is very important that a majority of people on campus believe in your cause. Once a wide range of people on campus believes in your movement, all that is needed a clear, well-defined goal. Once your goal is well defined, you can then begin presenting this idea to important faculty members who can help champion your movement. 

Academic Permission and Support 

[Ryan]We didn’t have any permission in the early going for the idea. After doing the Landscape canvas (a UIF activity you will do later), we noticed many groups working separately to create their own spaces. That led to an idea that we began pitching to leaders across campus. One of them was interested in helping and then it took off!

This gets to a core belief of mine that goes like “it is easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission”. Often times i have found when working on projects, whether at Microsoft or school, that when you go asking for permission, most people want to stop you. When your projects are large in scale and challenge the way things are done, it is scare for people who may be comfortable and it is in their best interest to stop you. 

Obviously this comes with risks. You want to make sure what you are doing will not cause a large negative outcome or else you risk getting into serious trouble. Luckily though, almost everything fellows have done is better for everyone involved once it is complete. 

The place this does not work is with safety and compliance concerns. As I mentioned on the phone, we had experts from the fire and police department come in to help with those concerns such as ventilation and making sure we had proper entrances and exits in case of fire. 

As far as support, we were supported by as many different groups across campus as possible. This included the colleges of Engineering, Business, Libraries, and Architecture, Office of Technology Development, various local K - 12 schools and businesses. This support ranged greatly from helping design classes or workshops to actual funding support. We worked very closely with this group early on to influence the design of the space. Our idea was to involve our “customers” (students, businesses and professors) as early in the process as possible so we could make the space as good as possible. We did not want to build a 25,000 square foot space and find out that our customers did not like it .

Cost

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Leadership

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Launch 

This step actually starts from the very beginning of your movement. The first launch is when one finally decides to start the culture of innovation. But as an overall process, the launch is one of the final steps that is to be taken up to start the movement of innovation. It is important that before the launch, all the legal and academic permissions are obtained and all resources are collected ( the 3M resources- Man, 'Machine', and Material). It is important to have a team organized and an organization chart needs to be created beforehand.

After this, the final part of the launch comes into existence, which involves Plan-Do-Check-Analyse (PDCA) which is a closed loop procedure which involves the following:

Plan:   Plan out the required guidelines and checklist for the members of the team. Having this created, designation of responsibilities to the team members must be carried on.

Do:   Start to implement your movement, engage your team members to continuously work to reach your movement to a number of members and help them to achieve their desired goals.

Check:   Monitoring your progress is an important part of your launch, you would not know whether your movement is a success or a failure until and unless you keep a check on your progress.

Analyse:   Check your progress and filter out your pros and cons of your movement and take steps tore-plan your movement so as to eliminating the cons and taking over the advantages of the pro. Repeat the PDCA to have a successful running movement of innovation in the organization.

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