The question posed at this year’s Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit caught everyone’s attention.“How do we build a culture of innovation that can thrive in any environment, that’s resilient no matter how difficult the environment is or what the conditions are? How can we foster an organizational culture that cultivates new ideas, builds momentum, embraces diverse perspectives, and marshals everything to drive forward?” Holly Ojalvo, the Managing Editor at Fortune Magazine, asked the panel.
Overjet’s CEO and co-founder, Wardah Inam was honored to join Holly Walters, Chief Information Officer for Toyota Motor North America, and Sabrina Clark, Managing Partner at SYPartners, a business strategy and innovation consulting firm for Fortune 100 clients, on stage to share how to drive rapid and continuous innovation in their organizations and in the industries they serve.
The 3 T’s: Trust, Time and Tools
“The way we think about it is 3 T’s: trust, time and tools,” answered Dr. Inam.
“The first is trust, which is fostering trust between coworkers and where people can challenge each other. Without trust, it’s really hard to create a culture where people are questioning each other, challenging each other, and empowering each other to think bigger.”
The second key to creating an innovative culture is giving people time to work on problems. Overjet facilitates hackathons and other blocks of time where people can step away from their daily responsibilities and focus on solving harder problems and the impact those solutions will have.
The third T stands for tools.
“If you think about engineers, you need to have the right tools to be innovating faster,” explained Dr. Inam. “Whether that’s investing in developer tools or investing in internal tools, you need tools that can help build faster, test out new ideas, and experiment.”
