Keeping tabs on innovation without losing productivity

In an engineering team, innovation is welcomed in many forms:
- New programming languages;
- New architecture layouts;
- New processes guiding the flows from concept to production;
- New tools;
- …

The challenge is how to keep innovation present without productivity losses.

My theory is that it is a self balancing act.

We shouldn’t fear the productivity loss while giving team members time to play with new stuff.

Approaching the subject in a simplistic way (many times the only one top managers know), if I give my team a day off in the week just to try new stuff without imposing any kind of rules, this will lead to a 20% decrease in productivity, one in five week days won’t be productive.

Let’s be even bolder and say that nothing of what is tested on this free-to-play day is usable in production.

Allowing your team members to play with new stuff is an awesome boost in motivation, they get a day to move away from the week long tasks they are knee deep into and clear they minds playing with the new tech toys. This motivation boost alone, in my opinion, will be enough to compensate the 20% linear decrease in production hours.
Have you observed a bored team member working? And a motivated one? Is it that hard to understand the productivity diference?

Ok, you may now be thinking, “there are a lot of ways to keep motivation high without losing a day of work” and you may be right. If you read this older post you will see that the space for experimentation is only a small contribution for the overall team motivation.
(Although personally this is my favourite, it fuels proactive creativity in an unparalleled way)

This is where the other gains in innovation come into play.
For sure some percentage of the new things your team members play with in this space you create for innovation will be, sooner or later, usable in production.

Technology moves at a fast pace, as you certainly know, and you wouldn’t want to be left behind using outdated technology. Have you heard what happened to Research In Motion (the Blackberry parent company, now named after the device) this last couple of years?

There’s no space in technology for companies that won’t innovate.

So what kind of stuff can we do to create space for innovation inside our companies?
- The 80/20 initiative used by google, where employees had 20% of their time to engage in projects of their choice is one way;
- Considering that research time in the daily tasks is another way to create innovation space;
- Promoting internal presentations and workshops about new topics that team members are passioned about (while giving presenters time to prepare them);
- Inviting outside speakers to talk about innovative subjects;
- Promoting hackatons inside the company, where team members can form smaller teams and do small projects of their choice.

This are the ones I know and promote inside my teams but I’m sure there are tens of other ways to do it.

No mater how, just do it, your future depends heavily on it.