Growth is the fundamental goal of every enterprise from its inception. Startups can face
challenges in increasing their market outreach due to the industry of the already established
enterprises and competition from new players, thus leaving them with only one option: to invest
in creativity as a way to achieve cutting-edge innovation. Established enterprises still have a
competitive edge over startups when it comes to innovation since they have resources at their
disposal. Therefore, startups only remain with the option of leveraging team creativity to
innovate with their limited resources. A team leader can initiate and build the culture of
innovation in their startups using Adrian Brown's ideas of a creative organization since it is less-
resource intensive but result-oriented.
Free-flowing Information
Transparency and open culture, which manifests in the free flow of information, are some
ways to achieve the desired level of exponential growth in the startup ecosystem. Establishments
that uphold transparency regarding their ways of doing business by adopting the culture of
sharing information openly with employees have overtaken big companies as the best workplace
environments (Aytekin & Yildiz 8). Free-flow of information is one of the multiple ways of
creating a horizontal organization-a practice that often helps to foster employee engagement.
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Employee engagement is a practical way of eliminating the traditional command structure in an
organization. Therefore, it is essential to restructure the relationship between the leadership and
the lower cadre of the staff.
The steps to ensure that there is a free flow of information includes setting in place
measure, such as encouragement of employees to provide feedback regularly. There should be
regular discussions of feedbacks during periodic meetings because employees need to understand
that their seniors are willing to listen to their ideas and grievances (Pei & Ruiliang 17). The
management should also prioritize the open-plan office arrangement to enhance collaboration
among workers. It becomes easier for an employee to approach their seniors directly and vouch
for their ideas without fear. A shortened channel of information flow makes it impossible for
vital messages and ideas to fail to reach the decision-making echelons.
Welcoming New Ideas
The constant development of new ideas is the only sure way to stay relevant in the
dynamic business environment. Service approaches that are relevant today are likely to become
obsolete soon. It is integral that a business leader should create a work environment that is
receptive to new ideas. A team leader should implement a clear system that mentors workers
concerning the best approaches to submit their ideas for review (Robles 124). A leader can
create a slack channel for employees so they can submit their ideas without fear. Alternatively,
the management can make it a routine that workers present their ideas concerning the things they
feel the organization should do differently as a way to improve product or service delivery and
other areas such as customer relationship marketing. The leaders should not make employees
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feel victimized, and it is in such situations a simple approach such as a suggestion box can be
ideal.
Another way that a startup can leverage the innovative minds of its employees is to make
experimentation a priority. Team leaders within the startups should get the opportunity to inspire
their members to do things differently and gauge the results obtained to determine whether these
ideas can generate better results or if they are infeasible (Robles 126). Regular meetings are
necessary where every employee is allowed to share with their task-team members the different
strategies they have in mind, or the ones they have already tested and have the results. Creating a
culture where experimentation has value since the outcome of these ideas can restructure the way
an organization operates towards a positive impact.
Nurturing Good Ideas
A startup should establish appropriate infrastructure and approaches to enable the
management to recognize the actual value of ideas vouched by the employees. Once an
employee presents an idea that sounds feasible, it is upon the leaders to deliberate on the way
forward regarding the manner to nurture it (Ahmed et al. 23). Leaders should formalize
innovation as a program with an established structure. Innovations fail when they happen at the
whims of the leaders under an informal arrangement.
Employees engaged in innovation programs deserve leadership support. Leaders need to
track the progress of projects and also create an enabling environment like proper scheduling to
ensure that workers engaged in a particular innovation program have ample time to concentrate
(Ahmed et al. 24) The culture of constant learning is key to ensure the workforce has updated
knowledge in their specialty and are cognizant of emerging trends in the market. In sum,
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leadership should provide resources in terms of time and money to the employees to enable them
to conceive great ideas.
Accepting Risk-taking
A startup should encourage risk-taking because great ideas underlie uncertainties. The
ability of leaders to understand the essence of calculated risks in a company demonstrates that
the startup is forward-thinking. Every failed project offers an important teachable moment in
corporate governance and decision-making (Milam 11). The first action towards success with
innovation is inspiring the employees by letting them appreciate that failure is inevitable in
experimentation, and that it is not harmful. It is rewarding to capitalize on the creative acumen of
employees who feel supported and energized to try new ideas in their minds.
Additionally, a business that provides a platform to its employees to experiment should
define smart risks and set limits to the far an organization is willing to handle uncertainties.
Risks should not be significantly disruptive when the firm does not have enough resources to
deal with its unintended consequences (Milam 13). Minimizing the effects of jeopardy that
comes with risk-taking is a brilliant idea in management. Therefore, communicating limits to
risks and ensuring that they remain observed is key to business continuity.
Rewarding Innovation
A business should reward creativity and innovation as an approach to invoke extrinsic
motivation among workers to become even more enterprising in conceiving better ideas. Every
firm should create their customs idea management system that keeps records of the specific
employee who conceived an idea (Euster 405). The employee should remain engaged in the
development and implementation of the idea, so they feel engaged throughout the project. An
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employee feels satisfied when the management recognizes their input by engaging them all
through the process of implementing the idea they developed.
Another way to incentivize innovation is by giving rewards to the employees. Workers
need some form of recognition that could be a rank promotion, wage increase, flexible working
hours, further education, or that which they request, provided the company can manage the cost
(Mansor 19). Such activities should take place once the proposed innovative idea proves to be
positively impactful to the company. Rewarding employees is the most certain way of expressing
gratitude for their efforts.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Adrian Brown's five principal ideas of establishing a culture of creativity
and innovation in an organization are ideal for startups since it is both result-oriented and
economical. Startups should leverage workers' creative potential because they do not enjoy vast
resources wherewithal to compete with established corporations. It takes a lot of effort and
willpower to promote transparency and free-flow of information, but it a feasible idea because it
invokes the extrinsic motivation of employees to contribute towards a company's growth.
Welcoming new ideas and nurturing the best ones offered by employees creates an enabling
environment for innovation. Businesses should take calculated risks since the greatest ideas
underlie uncertainties. Rewarding innovation is another prime extrinsic motivator for employees
to conceive and develop creative ideas. Innovation is achievable for startups if they create an
enabling environment and work with motivated employees.
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Works Cited
Ahmed, Umair, et al. "Nurturing innovation performance through corporate entrepreneurship:
The moderation of employee engagement." Studies in Business and Economics 13.2
(2018): 20-30.
Aytekin, M., and B. Yildiz. "The Effects of Confidence, Information Sharing and Innovation in
Business Performance." International Journal of Academic Research in Business and
Social Sciences, vol. 6, no. 12, 2016, doi:10.6007/ijarbss/v6-i12/2469.
Euster, Joanne R. "Innovations: Creativity, innovation and risk-taking." College & Research
Libraries News 48.7 (2019): 405-406.
Manso, Gustavo. "Creating incentives for innovation." California Management Review 60.1
(2017): 18-32.
Milam, Joe. "How Proper Information, Effective Risk Management, and Legacy Capital Can
Solve the Funding Gap." The Journal of Private Equity 21.3 (2018): 9-13.
Pei, Zhi, and Ruiliang, Yan. "Cooperative behavior and information sharing in the e-commerce
age." Industrial Marketing Management 76 (2019): 12-22.
Robles, Elizabeth. "How to identify disruptive new businesses." Review of Business & Finance
Studies 6.1 (2015): 121-130.