How do you create a culture of innovation? Well, from my experience you're really not creating a culture. It's a mistake to think you can create a culture from one moment to the next. When I say "take action" I mean let's talk about what specific steps you can take as a leader that will help create space for innovation, encourage innovation, recognize those who are innovating and help make it fun.

Making space for innovation is important if your culture is like many where people are continually feeling the pressure to deliver on their daily work. Often this feeling is one that your team will allow to be a reason they don't follow an idea that feels like a distraction. The often mentioned Google 20% time example runs into roadblocks fast when folks simply can't imagine having a day a week to spend on something outside their iteration and basic development responsibility. We used events like a Hack-a-thon to create a day dedicated to allow folks to create teams (often outside their existing product teams) and pursue an idea outside their normal work. These type of events create space for innovation.

Encouraging innovation can come through events like challenges in addition to those mentioned above like a Hack-a-thon. Challenges are more specific problems to be solved, often over a longer period of time and leaving creativity in how to solve the problem. We used challenges to outline problems like "how would you predict XYZ given these preexisting data" and leave folks to use languages and technologies to solve however they want (as a team or individually). Our first challenge was a success on many levels - not only did many people participate and expose the group to many different new technologies. Also, an unexpected team (the QA automation team) actually solved the challenge best and gained recognition for their technical capability.

Exposure and recognition helps everyone who participates gain benefit and share the work they've done. At the end of our Hack-a-thon, we have everyone present and working prototypes are the main focus. At the end of our challenges, each team shows what they tried and what the result. As a bonus here, we include others outside our department to judge and recognize participants so they not only feel their peers see their work but other executive leaders as well.

Making it fun helps sustain the energy and keep things going. We created a video parody of a popular song, and spliced videos together from all the participants. When we showed the video at the final presentation, it roused all sorts of team spirit. We included events that weren't always work related to lighten up the mood. We have introduced a paper airplane contest as an annual affair and changed the rules to keep it interesting (fly the farthest, longest hang-time, etc).

We held a foosball tournament to mix-up the people to allow them to get to know one-another. It doesn't always have to be work, weaving in some fun can help keep it light. I've had folks say "I learned more about what other people do during the foosball tournament than in my first six months of working here."

Follow-through is important to help continue to encourage innovation. We assigned executive sponsors to the projects that folks wanted to pursue beyond an event like a Hack-a-thon to help make sure it continued to get support. We have had projects started in an event that have gone on to become tools we use internally (Office Navigator to get from one point to another in the office, for example). These projects require someone to continue to support the development effort, run interference to get resources or time, and just help folks see that the senior leadership still wants to see it continued. We assigned out many different folks to be executive sponsors, and it helped use pursue over a dozen projects after they got started.

There's a "what I learned holding a Hack-a-thon" post as a stand-alone because there are many things I've learned in the experience of getting our team together and make these events successful. We've come to a point where people love Hack-a-thon and we run them regularly with our development teams. We've held them annually and it's been referred to as the highlight of the year by many on my team.

Taking action as a leader to help create space for innovation. You are also responsible for encouraging and rewarding the behaviors to kick-start the culture. Your follow-through will help folks realize you mean it, and you want to sustain the energy. Your folks will fill in the space if you give them the nudge and keep supporting them.