No Ideas? You're Not Alone
If you're in a group, you'll have a better shot at being creative
Payoffs. Some managers are also trying to inspire employee creativity the old-fashioned way. Gary Carini, a professor of management at Baylor University's Hankamer School of Business, found that companies that offer financial rewards for business ideas have seen worker "idea outputs" increase by up to 40 percent. At Interminds, a San Francisco consulting firm, employees who come up with ideas that save the company money are awarded half of the first year's savings. An executive assistant earning $38,000 a year recently devised a way to automate the system for tracking field reps and was awarded a $152,000 bonus. "Every single employee has ideas," Carini says. "We say let's get these folks eyeball to eyeball in groups and create an atmosphere that says ideas are good and you're going to be rewarded for them."
Not everyone is convinced dangling bonuses in front of workers is the best way to inspire collaboration. "It won't work in the long run," Florida says. He believes employees will learn that hoarding ideas for personal gain is the fastest way to a quick buck. (Wait, isn't that the American way?) For purists who support collaboration for collaboration's sake, bottom-up innovation isn't something managers can do piecemeal. Employees in the future will either be empowered or they won't. Whether managers think they can compete without creative workers, of course, is up to them.
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