Participatory innovation is a whole new way of innovating!
Participatory or open innovation is defined as “a structured management approach that aims to stimulate and facilitate the creation, implementation and dissemination of ideas,” explains Muriel Garcia, the head of participatory innovation for the La Poste group.
Collaboration at the heart of Innovation
In fact, the “participatory” part leads to management that permits, and even encourages, risk taking and new ideas. This process involves encouraging and promoting employee initiatives. A study from Innov’Acteurs found that 76% of employees want their companies to help them innovate more on a daily basis.
In addition, participatory management needs to promote cooperation, synergy between employees and, as much as possible, complementary skill sets, in order to boost innovation.
“You can invent by yourself, but you can’t innovate without others” – Hervé Sérieyx
The idea of “innovation” involves encouraging creativity and promoting new ideas, of course, as well as implementing these ideas. Without innovation, the idea can’t go anywhere and there can be no innovation.
Trust and training
For participatory innovation to take place, employees need to trust each other. Management is one part of this, of course, but there also needs to be training and support for the creators, from the moment they come up with an idea all the way through to the implementation.
