IT Management Slideshow: How to Increase Innovation within Your IT Teams

Start from the Beginning

Ask questions during job interviews to get sense of candidates' collaborative talents, instinct for disruptive thinking, etc.

Make Sure that Innovation is Everyone’s Job

Don't restrict generating new ideas to those who are the designated stars, or otherwise coming from developmental side of IT.

Dispense with Status Quo Culture

Encourage all of your IT team members to ask good questions&#151questions that challenge accepted truths.

Expand Industrial Perspective

Get employees to read trade journals and reports covering industry segments outside your own, to get a sense of relevant, transferable and disruptive best practices.

Get Out!

Visit another department or company location. Take impromptu brainstorming sessions to a place no one has ever been, to inspire fresh thinking/new ideas.

Build Teams with Complementary Skills

Some people are whirling-dervishes of great ideas, others are introspective discoverers and still others who contribute thorough supportive research and strong feedback. You need all kinds to make innovation work.

Observe and Engage

In person, or via social media resources, make sure employees are watching and interacting with customers to tap into crowdsourcing.

Institutionalize

Make sure innovation-based goals are part of every employee's evaluation, and tie in performance bonuses, raises and incentives to the accomplishment of these goals.