Guides to Innovation at Scale: Incentives, Recognition, and Rewards

One of the key hurdles that a business must conquer to improve its innovation efforts is employee engagement. The whole process is going to require buy-in from at least some of your workforce, so actively giving reasons for participation is a critical consideration for any innovation manager.

In this guide, we’re going to look at the different ways in which organizations meaningfully engage employees in an innovation process. Remembering that monetary reward isn’t the ‘fix all’ some may believe, we’re also going to look at examples of other effective incentives.

The Importance of Challenge Planning:

The starting point of getting an incentive right is communication. The greatest benefits can be attached to an innovation Challenge, but if the intended audience aren’t made aware of what these are, they’re less likely to engage in the process.

By discussing incentives during the Challenge planning process, the communication is much easier to manage. As part of our Challenge planning process at Wazoku, we recommend clients discuss this midway through the process.

To begin with, we establish who within the organization is responsible for running the Challenge, followed by a decision on how the question is phrased. Once these foundations are in place, the next stage looks at the audience, and that’s where incentives come in. Operating in this way allows an organization to give enough context to the Challenge and attach an appropriate incentive to it, whilst also ensuring that this isn’t an afterthought.

What you’ll find in the guide

Above, we’ve explained the importance of incentive, recognition, and reward in getting crowds motivated to participate. In the guide we’ll also explore how they can be used in different contexts with specific examples for each.