We’ve all had boring jobs at one point or another, but companies have quickly realized the importance of harnessing – and profiting from – the creativity of their employees.

Of course, in certain businesses, day-to-day creativity is expected.  But in industries as diverse as pharmaceuticals, transportation, and energy, companies are realizing that some of the best ideas can very well emanate from within.

While Google has long been known to famously allow its employees ’20 percent time,’ or one day a week to pursue side projects (the company has recently sunsetted this policy), time allotted for employees to pursue projects can indeed deliver results to the bottom line.

Here are some considerations for jumpstarting your organization’s focus on harvesting new, business-building ideas:

Start online, before going offline.  Take it to the community:  post an announcement via your company’s online community, and target champions – managers or whole departments – whom you are certain could serve as positive representatives of the initiative.   You need not engage the entire company at first either – perhaps just certain groups in the online community first, then gather relevant feedback which you can use to further promote the program.  People prefer to see results first before jumping headfirst into uncertain waters.

Create an incentive program for creativity.   The prize needs to be more than just an online badge or a trophy given out at the All Hands Meeting at the end of the quarter.  If an employee’s idea leads to real business results, a financial incentive will speak volumes of the senior management’s commitment to motivation, morale, support, and the future of the business.  Engage the PR department for additional out-of-the-box ways to motivate employees, and how such results can be communicated effectively.

Don’t just talk the talk:  show results.   New employee programs are often greeted with a yawn.  Once launched, continue to communicate the progress of the program via your company’s online community and in small meetings, capturing the lifecycle of an employee’s idea as it becomes a reality.  This will incentivize other employees to join in and generate even more ideas.

IBM is another company that is a proud proponent of employee innovation, whether or not such innovations make it out the front door.  Each year, at the company’s annual Lotusphere conference (renamed Connect), the most exciting part of the conference – at least for me, as a former industry analyst – was the personal tour I would receive of a handful of ongoing projects developed by researchers at IBM labs in Cambridge, Mass., Tel Aviv, Sao Paulo, and other cities.  Always staged in a windowless room far away from the main conference sessions – no cameras or recording devices allowed! – I learned of diverse projects, including one aimed at monitoring employee social media usage and another that seemed to serve as an internal Kickstarter-like crowdfunding campaign platform.  I would later learn that the social media usage product, while not a formal IBM offering, was piloted at a few clients for evaluation.  Kudos to the IBM researcher who developed it!

Final Thought:  Your employees are your best resource for new business.  Motivate, inspire, and most importantly, compensate them for delivering creativity and profits.  It’s just good business, in addition to good karma.

Want more info?  Expand your horizons with additional reading. 

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ChangeU: independent study…

Centre for Innovation Studies, Imperial College, London

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/innovationstudies

Articles related to the study of the innovation process and the impact of knowledge creation.

Harvard Business Review’s 10 Must Reads on Innovation

http://hbr.org/product/hbr-s-10-must-reads-on-innovation-with-featured-article-the-discipline-of-innovation-by-peter-f-drucker/an/11363E-KND-ENG

Books on innovation, including articles written by Peter Drucker.

How To Innovate:  A Step By Step Guide

http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/30/smallbusiness/how_to_innovate.fsb/

From a reporter for Fortune Small Business, a guide on planning and adopting innovation in an organization.