Cross-sector perspectives on creating an innovation culture | Event summary

Leaders from across sectors gathered at a roundtable convened by The Whitehall & Industry Group to share how they have embedded greater innovation within their organisation and how that practice can lead to improved policy and service delivery.  

The session started with opening remarks from Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT)’s Transition and Transformation Director Jenny Hall and the Cabinet Office’s Director of Modernisation and Reform Sapana Agrawal.

DSIT was created in February 2023 with the goal of cementing the UK as a science and technology superpower. The department has ambitions to become the most innovative government department. This drive reflects the government's modernisation & reform agenda which includes innovation as one of its five missions.

During the session, delegates discussed how to embed innovation within an organisation through organisational culture and leadership practices. 

Key Takeaways

• Innovation must be tied to an organisation’s objectives.
• Embrace learning itself as a key outcome.
• Create an open and safe environment where all feel comfortable sharing ideas and trying new things.
• Be transparent with which ideas move forward and why.

Defining innovation

Delegates shared their understanding of the term innovation and its use within their organisations. They agreed that each organisation tends to have a different definition of innovation based on their needs and ambitions, but most definitions included the following two elements:

1. A novel approach. For example, a new process, idea, or product
2. A goal. For example, generating value, enabling people to operate differently, or achieving better outcomes

Delegates also emphasised the need to align innovation with an organisation’s objectives, strategies, skills, and recruitment. It helps to have a short-term and long-term vision when defining your approach. Innovation is about people, culture, and continuous improvement.

Creating an innovation culture

Innovation is both a social and technical exercise. Therefore, the culture within an organisation impacts both the appetite for and acceptance of innovation. This culture must be embedded from the top down.

The delegates offered the following practical methods to create an innovation culture:

• Encourage social connection to allow all ideas to come forward.
• Give people permission and encouragement to innovate while simultaneously providing guardrails to prevent harm.
• Create sandbox environments to give people license to innovate. These can remove costs and boundaries where hard costs may usually be incurred.
• Celebrate success to enable a learning culture. For example, show frontline staff when their ideas are considered by the executive committee.
• Balance celebrating the effort of attempting to do something different with feeding back lessons learned.

Delegates agreed the word “failure” was unhelpful when attempting to embed innovation within a culture. Using this term makes an environment psychologically unsafe. Instead, leaders should focus on how learnings can inform next steps. A learning culture can help move away from blame culture.

Attendees also emphasised the importance of transparency within the innovation process.  Some ideas will work better and be taken forward and some will not. Leaders should be clear what the barriers and thresholds are and share which ideas are being taken forward and how. This shows the people who put their ideas forward the respect they deserve.

Leadership behaviours

Attendees raised that leaders need to work alongside colleagues and lead in a different way to create an innovation culture. Junior staff want to innovate and share their views on how things can be improved, but they need to be in a culture where they have the power, backing and space to raise ideas without being scared of being negatively affected as a result.

According to delegates, leaders should embrace the following behaviours:

• Acknowledge the potential need to tolerate a short-term loss for a longer-term gain
• Avoid being patronising. Consider the use of reverse mentoring to ensure all voices are heard.
• Make space for innovation by stopping other activities.

The delegates also discussed common questions they grapple with when considering how to involve senior leadership, including the following:

• How can you get senior leaders to acknowledge that they might be wrong and that they might not have all the perspectives on board?
• How can you get buy in from the top at the start?
• How can you get concrete guarantees from leadership to support the innovation agenda?

Innovation as business as usual

Delegates discussed how innovation is embedded into and becomes stable within daily operations.

To embed innovation as part of business as usual, leaders need to:

• Make the business case clear – that’s an essential, not a nice to have.
• Commit to innovation as an ongoing effort.
• Define success as learning not just accomplishing.

Next Steps

Embracing diversity of perspectives is vital to increasing innovation. As a new department develops its approach to diversity and inclusion, how can it build innovation and learning expectations into this work from the very beginning?

Measurement is a big focus. Across government, sentiment is used as metric for success. Success on innovation will be reached when civil servants feel supported to take up and deliver their own new ideas.

For leaders to deliver innovation and stability, they need to build an evidence base and ensure leaders have the skills to lead a more innovative organisation.

For all of this, collaboration is a key enabler, and it is vital to learn from organisations across the wider public sector, as well as industry and academia.