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Business innovation takes time

Innovation experts suggest that business leaders need to give their companies time to bring about change.

It can be difficult to implement new ideas and techniques while you go about your daily tasks so you should give your employees space to get creative.  

Working hard for long hours is not always the best way to improve your company as it can stifle new ideas and create negative competition in the workplace.

To get the best out of your employees set them a goal and challenge them to come up with ideas on how to achieve that objective, while you keep an open mind. You should give them time and resources to test these ideas and investigate how other companies deal with achieving the same goal. 

Google tells its employees to spend one day a week coming up with innovative ideas. Some believe that this is wasted time but innovations likes Gmail, Google Earth and Froogle have been developed from such innovation sessions. Obviously not all organizations can afford for employees to spend days innovating but try and allocate some regular slack time to help your employees create as it could really benefit you. 

Remember innovation isn’t free. It takes time, effort and  resources. Scientists, inventors and engineers spend around 15% of their time thinking about their areas of interest. They don’t need permission to do this and this free time often leads to the development of new ideas and technology. 

Leaders must create free time to empower others to create ideas and explore them. It will benefit you and your business.

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