How to foster innovation at work

When Piyush Gupta took over as the CEO of DBS Bank in Singapore in 2009, he said DBS needed to think of itself not as a bank, but as a technology company providing banking services. Gupta challenged his entire workforce to raise their innovation game.

Gupta and his team invested significantly in technology, restructured to improve collaboration, and, most critically, drove a series of cultural interventions to encourage innovation friendly behaviors. Over the next 15 years DBS Bank transformed from an under performer in its local market to the best performing bank in the world. How did Gupta and other leaders who look to foster innovation do it?

As a researcher, advisor, (DBS was a consulting client of mine from 2017 to 2019), executive, and now teacher, I have spent 25 years practicing and studying disruptive change. Here are some essential takeaways for nurturing disruptive teams.

Recognize the importance of teamwork

Innovation stories typically celebrate charismatic leaders like Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos. That sometimes leaves leaders thinking they have to carry the reins of disruption, or need to find a lone genius to drive disruption.

Innovation isn’t the job of the few. It’s highly dependent on teamwork. For example, in the 1960s, Procter & Gamble launched Pampers disposable diapers, which went on to become the first brand in P&G’s storied history to cross $10 billion in revenue. Vic Mills (a decorated scientist) chartered a team led by Bob Duncan (whose grandfather played a key part in the development of Tide laundry detergent) that included researchers like Harry Tecklenburg, who went on to have a 30-year career at P&G and wrote a wonderful retrospective about the launch of Pampers in 1990.

The job of the leader isn’t to be charismatic and do the work alone, it is to create conditions that enable teams to do disruptive work.

Embrace uncertainty

One key to success is to recognize that disruption is predictably unpredictable. Julia Child’s 1961 book Mastering the Art of French Cooking enabled a broader population to enjoy French dishes. Her pioneering cooking shows on television further brought cooking to the masses. Her story echoes every disruptive journey I have studied. Most notably, success required overcoming false starts, fumbles, and failures. She started working on Mastering the Art (with coauthors Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle) in 1951. The goal was to publish the book in 1953. It took an extra eight years, two publisher switches, and one stinging rejection in 1959 that almost killed the project.

While you can’t predict the specific path a disruptive innovation will follow, you can predict there will be twists and turns along the way. That means that leaders need to make sure that their environments accept and encourage the kind of intelligent failure that accompanies disruptive success.

Celebrate failure

Disruption’s predictable unpredictability also means leaders need to make sure that their environments accept and encourage the kind of intelligent failure that accompanies disruptive success. One technique that can help is to have a formal ceremony to celebrate failure. That’s what Finnish gaming company Supercell does. Every time a team successfully launches a new game, everyone gets together, and cracks open a beer. Every time a team admits defeat and decides to shut down a project, everyone gets together and pops a bottle of champagne. The “reward” for the failure is greater than the reward for success.

Saying cheers to failure has two clear benefits. First, it shows that a good, not bad, thing has happened, encouraging other teams to continue to push frontiers. Second, it shows that the effort is finished.

Many organizations suffer from what I call “zombie projects.” The walking undead. Projects that everyone knows will not move the needle but they shuffle and linger on, sucking all of the life out of the organization. Zombies exist because failure carries such a stigma that organizations avoid killing projects. Saying cheers to failure stops zombies from ever spawning and allows teams to move onto the next project—which might actually be the disruptive innovation for which your company has been searching.

Accept risk

Pursuing disruption is risky. The first reference to gunpowder appears in the book The Kinship of the Three in 142 CE. Its development over the centuries involved alchemists, blacksmiths, peasants, gunners, philosophers, and scientists. There were farmers and fighters experimenting with different uses. There were leaders allocating time and money and directing work. As one historian noted, success required the work of “daredevils, visionaries, madmen,” many of whom found “not fortune but disfiguring burns and death.”

The burns are more metaphorical today—doubts from colleagues, the pain of a hypothesis proved wrong, the discomfort that always accompanies doing something new—but they still sting. Doing new things is hard. Having things not work out as expected is painful. Disruptive innovators question the status quo. Some people inside organizations love it, some are indifferent to it, some actively seek to subvert or sabotage it. Disruption casts a shadow.

When you see someone in your organization who is pushing disruption, encourage them. Celebrate their courage, and tell them how much you appreciate their work. It’s a small thing, but big things come from a collection of small things.