19 Effective Strategies for Encouraging Repeatable Innovation in Teams
Innovation is the lifeblood of successful teams, but fostering it consistently can be challenging. This article presents expert-backed strategies to encourage repeatable innovation within your organization. From creating psychological safety to implementing structured methodologies, these approaches will help teams unlock their creative potential and drive continuous improvement.
Create Psychological Safety with Micro-Interest Management
After coaching executives for over 20 years and building teams across finance, pharma, and tech, I’ve learned that repeatable innovation happens when you create psychological safety combined with what I call “micro-interest” management.
The breakthrough came when I worked with a biotech leadership team that was stuck in analysis paralysis. Instead of micromanaging their R&D process, their CEO started asking strategic questions: “What assumptions are we testing?” and “What would change your mind about this approach?” This shifted the team from seeking approval to seeking better solutions.
The key is distinguishing between micro-interest and micromanagement. Micro-interest means challenging assumptions and evaluating options without dictating outcomes. When leaders ask, “Why is this important?” and “What other options did you consider?” rather than, “Do it this way,” teams naturally become more innovative because they’re solving problems, not just following orders.
I’ve seen this work consistently across industries. A fintech CEO I coached saw 40% more innovative solutions from his team when he stopped giving answers and started asking better questions. The team began bringing multiple options to meetings instead of seeking permission for predetermined solutions.
Bill Berman, CEO, Berman Leadership
Run Reverse Brief Challenges
One of the best ways we’ve found to encourage innovation is by running “Reverse Brief Challenges” — a structured, repeatable process where team members pitch the problem rather than the solution.
Instead of starting with a creative idea and retrofitting it to a client need, we flip the model. Teams are asked to bring real client challenges — “low budget, tight turnaround, needs to engage 200 remote staff” — and the wider team collaborates to prototype solutions. The twist? The more constraints, the better.
This approach consistently achieves two things:
1. It turns every client brief into an opportunity for innovation.
2. It builds a culture where fresh ideas aren’t just welcome — they’re expected.
We’ve used this method to launch several of our most successful activities, like “Target 10” and “The Deceivers,” and because it’s team-led, the buy-in and creative energy are baked in from day one.
Charles Berry, Co Founder, Zing Events
Flatten Hierarchy to Encourage Cross-Functional Input
One of the best ways to encourage innovation within a team — and ensure those ideas lead to repeatable, tangible results — is to create a culture where anyone can suggest anything, regardless of title or department. At our company, we actively encourage this kind of cross-functional input by removing the invisible fences around job descriptions when it comes to problem-solving and idea generation.
One great example: our receptionist once suggested a change to our payroll system. At first glance, it wasn’t part of her role, but she had experience with the process and had noticed inefficiencies that others overlooked. Her suggestion led us to explore a new provider that not only improved speed and accuracy but also significantly reduced errors. That change saved us time and money, and it never would have happened if we’d kept innovation siloed within departments.
This approach works once people see that they have permission to speak up, no matter where they sit on the organizational chart. And as those ideas lead to real change, the more they tend to contribute. Over time, this builds a repeatable innovation cycle: ideas are shared and celebrated, and the habit becomes ingrained.
If you want your team to be truly innovative, flatten the hierarchy. Give everyone a voice, especially those who aren’t usually asked. You’ll be surprised how often the best solutions come from the least expected places.
Rob Reeves, CEO and President, Redfish Technology
Use Organized Brainstorming with DiSC Model
In the case of teams, I will always be keen to offer an atmosphere where they feel free to innovate. My best strategy that I have learned to encourage innovation is the use of organized brainstorming sessions supported by powerful models like DiSC. The participants of the team can present ideas based on their respective strengths, which makes them feel like they own it and are part of the team through such meetings.
I was working with one of the clients in a technology startup organization, and we initiated an innovation hour every month. During these meetings, we were all free to contribute ideas irrespective of our position, and the most promising ones would be voted on, thus allowing us to delve deeper into them. This structure helped in developing new product features that were not only innovative but also suitable to the strengths and objectives of the team.
The secret is to be consistent and make innovation a regular habit of the team. When innovation is incorporated as part of the culture, it becomes a repeatable process, thus resulting in long-term success.
Uku Soot, Organizational Growth Strategist, IPB Partners
Rotate Team Members into Reverse Roles
Rotate team members into reverse roles for short cycles. Instead of adhering to defined job functions, we occasionally assign engineers to take on product manager duties or ask marketers to shadow support roles. This isn’t about filling gaps; it’s about forcing a temporary perspective shift that sparks unexpected insights.
When someone’s brain is rewired to think like a user, a strategist, or a designer, even briefly, they start identifying friction points, inefficiencies, or novel ideas they’d never notice in their usual role.
This approach helped us discover an onboarding flaw in our product experience that we’d missed for months. It wasn’t a UX expert who flagged it, but a backend developer temporarily wearing the product hat.
Innovation becomes repeatable when people are routinely nudged out of their cognitive comfort zones and see the system from a new angle.
Mitchell Cookson, Co-Founder, AI Tools
Implement Reset Reviews for Fresh Thinking
Formalizing permission to rethink is crucial. It is essential to cultivate a culture where innovation is not a one-time event or restricted to a select few. Instead, it should be a process that begins with providing every team member structured opportunities to challenge assumptions and reframe problems without waiting for a groundbreaking idea.
For our organization, we achieve this by incorporating “reset reviews” into project cycles. At key milestones, we ask the team to propose what they would do differently if they were launching the same project today. These suggestions are based on the data they have already gathered.
The primary objective is to alleviate the pressure of defending past decisions and to create an environment for fresh thinking without judgment. It also provides space to recognize when incremental improvements have run their course and when it’s time for a more radical shift.
This approach works repeatedly because it embeds innovation into our operating rhythm. It doesn’t rely on a burst of inspiration. Instead, it builds a habit of revisiting assumptions and learning while in motion.
Over time, it trains people to view their work as a prototype rather than a finished product. This mindset shift is where repeatable innovation truly begins; when teams see iteration as an integral part of their job, not an exception.
What makes this strategy particularly effective is that it balances creative freedom with accountability. You’re not simply asking people to be more innovative; you’re providing them with a framework that rewards thoughtful risk-taking and continuous improvement.
David Pickard, Global Chief Executive Officer, Phonexa
Start Small and Build Innovation Culture
Take it slow. Often, leaders attempt to encourage innovation from the top down. Instead, take it slow and start by taking a few months to observe.
Sit in on meetings, shadow your team, and interview them informally. Identify recurring pain points. Are there duplicated workflows, sluggish development, or siloed knowledge sharing?
Once you fully understand the people, work culture, and available technology, consider what small changes will make your team more efficient. One of the first changes I implemented was to automate parts of our QA testing.
The goal was to alleviate frustrations for our frontend team. It saved us hours each week and demonstrated that leadership is about addressing current issues, not piling up new ideas.
Starting with a small change builds buy-in for larger efforts. Continue making small changes and improving operations until things stabilize. You will gain more free time that your team can use to innovate.
Other teams will notice this progress and desire it. Over time, the entire workplace culture will change. People will become more receptive to change and generate better ideas for innovation. Eventually, innovation becomes a repeatable process with consistent results.
Jay Speakman, Chief Technical Officer, CustomWritings.com
Conduct Low-Risk Work Trials
Giving employees room to experiment without fear of failure is most important. I build in small windows of time for what I call “low-risk work trials,” time slots when team members can test new ideas; whether it’s a technical solution, a process tweak, or even a new client-facing approach.
While nothing is guaranteed, we do see repeatable results in a majority of cases. Your team members are your experts after all; you hired them for their knowledge. When you let them speak and innovate, you reap benefits.
Fomenting what has been learned happens during a structured review cycle. After the trial, we meet to discuss what worked, what didn’t, and what specifically is worth developing further. We document this in a shared drive. It prevents innovation from being just random doodling and turns it into a methodical part of how we operate with tangible outcomes.
As a leader, demonstrating curiosity is key; it’s contagious. If I’m asking questions, showing interest in innovation, and not jumping in with the solution too quickly, my team mirrors that behavior. Over time, you build a culture where productive innovations are normal.
Adam Bowles, Web Strategist & Business Development, Act360 Web & I.T
Establish Test-and-Transfer Sprints
One of the most effective ways I’ve found to foster innovation and make it repeatable is by creating a structured space for experimentation without tying it to immediate ROI.
We’ve built a rhythm around what we call “test-and-transfer sprints.” Every quarter, our team picks one problem, tool, or idea that’s just outside our usual scope (AI workflows, SERP formatting trends, voice search patterns) and we test it in a low-stakes environment. No pressure to “succeed,” just pressure to learn something useful.
The key is what happens after. We evaluate what worked, document it clearly, and ask: “Could this be scaled or systemized across other client accounts?” That’s how we turn a one-off experiment into a repeatable asset. For example, a simple internal test on entity-based content tagging eventually became a core part of our AI search optimization framework.
Innovation thrives when teams feel safe to explore, but it scales when you build processes that capture, share, and refine those ideas over time.
Amber Wang, Co- Founder & Data Scientist, PressRoom AI
Document Failed Experiments in Idea Graveyard
Creating structured failure templates:
Instead of just celebrating success stories or brainstorming new ideas in a vacuum, we actively document failed experiments. We focus on:
1. What was tried
2. What didn’t work
3. Why it didn’t work
4. What we’d try differently next time
We then store these in an internal “idea graveyard” that’s searchable by topic or goal.
This approach achieves two things:
1. It gives people psychological safety to try bold things because they know failure isn’t the end, but a resource.
2. It builds institutional memory. Instead of reinventing the wheel or repeating old mistakes, team members can mine these past efforts for patterns, edge cases, or overlooked angles. Innovation becomes less random and more cumulative.
Over time, this library has become a surprisingly valuable strategic asset. Some of our most successful product improvements emerged from revisiting ideas that initially failed, but only because the context or technology had changed.
Treating failure as a data set, not a dead end, has helped us create a system where innovation doesn’t depend on bursts of brilliance but flows from persistent, informed iteration.
Roman Milyushkevich, CEO and CTO, HasData
Allow Teams to Control Projects
I have never seen teams make such a leap into new thinking as when leaders step back and allow a team to take control of a project and run it to completion, even if the path is somewhat untidy. Schools are more prone to micromanaging in terms of deadlines and strict approval processes, yet the breakthroughs that can be replicated have been realized when employees have room to set the agenda and establish their own yardsticks of success.
This is what I observed two years ago when a group of teaching assistants transformed a pilot tech club into a successful digital skills program by simply allowing them to tinker and share the results of their experiments openly. It was not hindered by a high wall of paperwork because the management only provided a transparent budget and a green light to test, review, and change wherever necessary. This approach continued to spread as other teams were influenced and began their projects in the same manner.
The repeatable component is the ability to share the learning, not just the outcome, between teams. Every group produces a lightning summary or delivers a demo in the staffroom, and the ideas are not forcibly spread. Individuals begin to view innovation as the property of an individual and not a box to be checked off by the headteacher.
Authorizing teams to experiment, giving them the time to do so, and then celebrating what works (and what does not), is the way to make innovation endemic rather than exceptional. It is here that actual change is inculcated and lingers until the next challenge.
Mark Friend, Company Director, Classroom365
Build Cross-Functional Innovation Sprints
One of the most effective ways to foster innovation within a team — while ensuring repeatable success — is to establish a structured ideation framework supported by cross-functional collaboration. This means setting up a consistent process where team members from diverse roles come together to brainstorm, prototype, test, and refine ideas using clear checkpoints and feedback loops.
For instance, a digital commerce agency that handles Shopify and WooCommerce builds internal “innovation sprints” into their monthly workflows. In each sprint, developers, designers, and marketers tackle a client challenge by proposing quick-win ideas, validating them through A/B testing, and documenting the outcomes in a shared repository. Over time, this process leads to a library of tested solutions — such as performance-optimized product pages or AI-driven upsell modules — that can be adapted and reused across future projects.
Such a system not only sparks creativity but also eliminates guesswork in scaling successful tactics across different clients or platforms.
Key Tip: Innovation thrives on process. Create a repeatable framework for testing and learning — so great ideas don’t stay one-time wins.
Priyanka Prajapati, Digital Marketer, BrainSpate
Foster Open Collaboration and Experimentation
Honestly, I think it comes down to creating a space where people want to speak up and try stuff. I’ve always pushed for a culture where no idea is too small or too out there because half the time, the breakthrough comes from a throwaway comment on a Zoom call or someone asking, “What if we just…”
But the key is consistency. You can’t just say “we value innovation” and then shut things down when it doesn’t work the first time. I make sure we test, learn, adapt and if something shows promise, we build it into the process. That’s how you get repeatable results. You back your team, give them room to move, and when it clicks, you systemise it without killing the magic.
Innovation doesn’t come from pressure. It comes from freedom and trust.
Jm Littman, CEO, Webheads
Create Space for Ideas and Experimentation
One of the best things you can do to foster innovation in your team is to create a culture of open collaboration and experimentation. In practice, this means allowing a team environment where members are free to share ideas without fear of being judged, and trying out new ideas is allowed, even encouraged.
The challenge we face with making this sustainable and repeatable is creating regular brainstorm or “innovation sprint” sessions. These should be structured in a way that everyone can participate, whether it be round table brainstorming, smaller breakout brainstorm sessions, or even individual time to think through ideas. A paramount aspect of this process is that these sessions not only provide an opportunity to brainstorm ideas, but also welcome failure, and you must encourage team members to try new ideas. It’s important that failure is seen as a means for growth and self-learning, not something they must shy away from.
Another key way to enable innovation is to empower your team to have time and opportunities to experiment. This is what we do. Often, the workplace is so busy that staff tend to feel they must do the same things day in and day out. However, scheduling time to experiment, whether hourly in the week, or as a specific “innovation day”, creates opportunities for more creative thinking outside of work hours. You will also want to enable your team by providing them with the tools needed, such as access to new technology, established resources for learning, and the ability to share knowledge across departments.
In conclusion, celebrating small wins and sharing success stories is an excellent way to keep up the momentum. Whenever a new idea or experiment yields a positive outcome, it is critical to recognize it in team meetings, internal newsletters, or with a simple shoutout. This will motivate the team and reinforce the importance of innovation as part of the team’s DNA by showing that creative thinking has led to actual results. The more teams are able to create an innovation process that is repeatable, collaborative, experimental, and recognized, the more likely they are to develop new ideas that can be added to their growing toolkit for success.
Gianluca Ferruggia, General Manager, DesignRush
Leverage Structured Improvement Methodologies
Introduce friction budgets for key projects. This is a counterintuitive idea: instead of optimizing everything for speed and simplicity, we deliberately build in a small, predefined amount of acceptable friction that forces the team to think more critically and creatively about how they solve a problem. Think of extra time, complexity, or even resource constraints.
Most people assume innovation comes from removing barriers. But in practice, a little resistance creates sharper thinking. When we give our team members complete freedom, they often default to familiar solutions. However, when we say, “You’ve got five days, limited access to tools X and Y, and this unusual user constraint; go,” that’s when the truly inventive ideas surface.
The key to making this repeatable is setting clear boundaries: the friction needs to be intentional, not overwhelming. It should challenge assumptions without derailing morale.
We’ve used this approach for testing new client onboarding flows, compliance automation, and even content strategy. The results are consistently more thoughtful than if we’d just asked for “fresh ideas” in an open brainstorm.
So, if you want innovation you can count on, don’t just give your team a blank canvas. Give them a canvas with just enough resistance that they have to design their way out of it.
Luke Patterson, Co-Founder / Senior Mortgage Broker, Koalify
Conduct Intentional Structured Brainstorms
One of the best ways to encourage innovation and achieve repeatable results is to leverage structured improvement methodologies, such as Lean Transformation or Six Sigma. These proven methodologies provide a clear framework for identifying opportunities, testing new ideas, implementing improvements, measuring outcomes, and achieving repeatable results.
For example, when using Lean Transformation, the world’s #1 improvement program, a Value Stream Mapping project requires the team to create a future state map. To encourage innovation, the project team needs to take the time to research best practices and emerging trends before creating their future state map. This research can involve internet searches, AI inquiries, visiting other organizations, and asking stakeholders what they would like to see.
This structured approach ensures innovation is not left to chance but becomes an ongoing, repeatable process. It enables teams to continuously drive meaningful improvements which leverage research and align with organizational goals.
Mike Loughrin, CEO and Founder, Transformance Advisors
Implement Client Shadowing Process
One of the best ways to encourage innovation and make it repeatable is through intentional, structured brainstorms. When done right, they create a safe space for creative thinking while also anchoring ideas to real business goals.
The key is to go beyond the typical “free-for-all” approach. I’ve found that setting clear objectives, bringing diverse perspectives into the room, and giving people time to prepare beforehand leads to more thoughtful, actionable ideas. We also treat brainstorms as part of a larger innovation process — not just a one-off meeting. That means capturing ideas, testing them quickly, and looping back with results so the team sees their input being valued and put into motion.
When brainstorms are part of a culture that rewards curiosity, fast feedback, and cross-functional input, they become not just a creative outlet — but a reliable engine for innovation.
Dylan Schwartz, Sr. Marketing Manager, Animoto
Build Culture of Psychological Safety
Innovation thrives when you view problems through your client’s eyes. To achieve this, you need your team to start shadowing clients and customers. When they hear frustrations firsthand, they naturally propose improvements that matter. It’s a quick trigger for insight and empathy.
This can be as simple as sending them to sit in on sales calls, attend real client meetings, or even experience the onboarding process themselves.
The real breakthrough comes when you systematize it. Package it into a repeatable process: shadow, brainstorm, test, refine. This approach provides your team with a reliable path to follow, and over time, it pushes them out of the theoretical and into the tangible.
Paul Carlson, CPA & Managing Partner, Law Firm Velocity
Introduce Friction Budgets for Key Projects
One of the best ways to encourage innovation within a team is through building a culture of psychological safety.
Create an environment where team members can feel safe to share bold ideas without fear of failure or judgment. Then pair it with a simple, repeatable framework for testing those ideas.
This approach can encourage accountability and creativity. With time, it can turn innovation into a habit, not a one-off event.
In short, if there is a safer space and a clear process, it can lead to consistent innovation.
Nir Appelton, CEO, The CEO Creative
