Innovation is a critical part of growth—but making bold bets and persevering despite setbacks, criticism and uncertainty can be risky. By providing your employees with psychological safety, an innovation-centric purpose and encouragement to persevere, you'll create more successful companies.

Innovators need to balance the importance of innovation with a careful consideration of how it can be executed effectively. Leading innovators recognize that fear is one of the greatest obstacles to innovation and have invested in building corporate cultures that pair the infrastructure necessary for success with a thoughtful design of employees’ emotional journey.

We found that companies with an innovation culture and employee experience are more successful at innovation than other companies. And fear is a constant for almost all practitioners. But there are big disparities in the nature and intensity of that fear, as well as in how companies temper its negative impact.

Five fundamentals of innovation culture

Organizations wishing to build a thriving culture of innovation need to be systematic and intentional. Our client experience has shown that all high-performing innovators embrace to various degrees five dimensions of innovation culture.

Believe and value: Innovation is a central value among the world’s 50 most innovative public companies. These leaders then implement their stated values in the on-the-ground employee experience. One industrial company has made innovation one of its four core values, which it describes as a moral responsibility to employees and shareholders.

Frame and champion: The CEO is responsible for building optimism and encouraging risk taking by framing innovation as fundamental to the organization’s success. By sharing stories of past, present, and future innovations (both from within and outside the organization), leaders can help employees see what is possible.

Signal and symbolize: Leading innovators understand that symbols have great power and that companies can use symbols to reinforce the primacy of innovation. Ten times as many practitioners at these companies than those working at less mature innovators report such practices, including (but not limited to) visiting sites where innovators work frequently; giving frequent public speeches about innovation; displaying innovations prominently in company facilities and offices; having employees wear T-shirts with slogans about innovation; holding events with celebrities who are associated with innovation; etc.

Show and ritualize: To make innovation a routine and not just an occasional event, companies should establish routines and rituals such as innovation days, hackathons, or meeting-free days in which senior executives lead or at least participate to signal innovation’s central role.

Shield and empower: Innovation inside most organizations is often emotionally fraught. Among average and lagging innovators, fear, anxiety, and frustration rank as the feelings employees most associate with innovation; joy, inspiration, and courage are among the least. Fear can motivate actions--but only if it's managed well.

Conclusion

To create a culture of innovation, managers should provide employees with psychological safety, an innovation-centric purpose, and explicit encouragement and rewards. Only by addressing the fears that hold people back from experimenting can companies build a true innovation culture. Leading innovators understand that innovation will always entail risk and that their employees do feel fear and do need the innovation equivalent of protective gear if they are to dare scale the rock face of uncertainty.