How do you foster a culture of innovation? Here’s 50 ways to make a start…from ideas champions at http://bit.ly/cxHcGP .  Of course the foundation for innovation is the organisational culture which is needed to support the level of creativity and risk taking required.

Staff need to believe that they are valued as innovation requires employees to have intrinsic motivation. Being innovative, developing new approaches, ideas, products etc requires more than the basic – “come to work” reward. It asks us to care enough about who we work with, and who we work for, that we will apply our intellects towards difficult issues, new opportunities or enhanced ways of doing things. Each of these asks us to take a risk and put our ideas out into the public domain.

There are many reasons why innovation is so uncommon but to me the key one is the culture of many businesses that need to change to innovation.