In the mainstream imagination, innovation requires one of two things: lightning-bolt style sparks of inspiration or enough time and money to continually experiment until you hit on something earth-changing.

In reality, however, innovation is far more rooted in the everyday. Moreover, you can make space for it in your daily routine.

That’s especially true for startups. Indeed, it may actually be more important for startups to bake innovation into their daily routines, given that they’re expected to be constantly be innovative.
With that in mind, here are four simple ways you can make innovation part of your startup’s daily routine.

Set aside non-working time

When you’re trying to build a world-changing business, as most startups are, it’s all to easy to get caught up in the daily grind.

Thing is, innovation seldom happens when you’re doing something task-oriented. Indeed, it’s far more likely to happen when you’re doing something that requires minimal thinking, freeing up your brain to make imaginative leaps and solve problems which have otherwise been evasive.

It’s therefore not the worst idea to put aside some time every day for non-working activities. It can be as simple as a 20 minute hacky sack session at the end of the day, or even ensuring that everyone steps away from their desk at lunch time and eats together.

Use stand-ups to encourage collaboration

If you’re at all familiar with the agile software development process, you’ll know all about stand-up meetings.

While many companies understand how useful stand-ups are for getting quick updates on where individual team members are with a project, some forget how useful they can be for fostering collaboration.

With everyone on their feet, you can pair people up to help each other solve specific problems, or even get the team to suggest rapid-fire solutions to those problems.

Write it down

Have you ever spent the day panicking about everything you need to get done. It can be pretty frustrating and, more often than not, stops you getting through everything you need to.

One of the simplest cures for is to write a to-do list. Not only does bring clarity to your day, it frees up space in your brain that would otherwise be used for reminding yourself of what you need to do next.

It’s also something you can easily implement in your organisation. To bring a degree of accountability, get everyone to send you their to-do list for the day.

As well as the aforementioned benefits, doing so will help you get a sense of where you need to add resources to ensure that there’s time for innovation and creativity.

Make something

In a world driven by process and where management theory dominates, it can sometimes be difficult to get people to unlock their inner creativity.

Well, if you’re trying to force it, that is. One way to unlock creativity in your team is to encourage them to make one thing every day.

It doesn’t even have to be something related to what you’re building. It can be an origami sculpture, a drawing, or even a Lego Millennium Falcon.

Even if they do it passively, it has the potential to spark something truly innovative.

For more ideas on innovation-building habits that you can implement in your startup, contact the Innoway team.