How Innovative is your workplace?

Following our previous blog post on why use a digital agency  we found it important to look at what creates an innovative environment - as its particularly important for a digital agency. We liked the work of Goran Ekvall, a professor at the University of Lund, Sweden in the field of organisational psychology who is an expert in this area.

Ekvall identified 10 dimensions:

• Challenge
  How challenged, emotionally involved, and committed are employees to the work?
• Freedom
  How free is the staff to decide how to do their job?
• Idea time
  Do employees have time to think things through before having to act?
• Dynamism
  The eventfulness of life in the organisation?
• Idea support
  Are there resources to give new ideas a try?
• Trust and openness
  Do people feel safe speaking their minds and offering different points of view?
• Playfulness and humour
  How relaxed is the workplace-is it okay to have fun?
• Conflicts
  To what degree do people engage in interpersonal conflict or 'warfare?"
• Debates
  To what degree do people engage in lively debates about the issues'?
• Risk-taking
  Is it okay to fail?

The following chart shows an example of an innovative company compared to a stagnant one:


We felt it would be interesting to see how other people rank their organisation, although not as scientific as Ekvall's study see how your company does based on your opinions: