o meet the challenges of climate change, we need to innovate.

Some of the technologies we’ll need to decarbonise are yet to be proven – and many more are yet to be discovered. So what can we do to find the solutiHoons we need for the future?

The good news, according to Professor Scott Stern, an innovation expert at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, is we all have the power to innovate.

“Having an innovative mindset is within every single individual – we just have to unlock that potential,” Scott says.

Here's how you can nurture innovation:

1. Empower your team to take risk
Scott says it’s essential to build a culture of trust and experimentation.

“Companies that innovate ultimately empower their workers to take risk,” Scott said.

“And they not only give them the power, but also the resources and capabilities to do it. Then they let them build out that innovation pipeline over the course of their careers.

“It's about building trust, building psychological safety, building a culture within your organisation in which there are no ‘bad’ ideas. Then you need to seek out and nurture the great ideas.”

2. Be open to new ideas and ways of working
“Both innovation and entrepreneurship can be learned and can be taught,” Scott said.

“It does take a willingness on the part of individuals to say they're willing to open themselves up to new ideas, to thinking about their organisation in new ways, to working with new types of partners and doing new things.”

“And that's going to be scary – it might mean that things are going to change.”

3. Test two, choose one
You may think that coming up with a great idea is the hardest part, but Scott says sometimes the biggest challenge can be having too many ideas.

“The most important challenge that entrepreneurs face is not coming up with a great idea,” Scott said. “It's in making proactive choices about how to translate their idea in a way that creates meaningful value. So the challenge isn’t always ‘what do we do?’, often it’s thinking of too many things to do.

“We have a technique that we call test two, choose one. It’s best to focus on a smaller number of choices, harnessing the power of learning and experimentation to test them out, and then quickly identifying a feasible and practical route to go.”

4. The power of partnership
“One of the most striking facts that we know about innovation and entrepreneurship is that it’s very concentrated in specific regions around the world. And what we’ve learned from these places is that no one person or organisation is in charge of innovation,” says Scott.

“It takes collaboration between business, government, universities and entrepreneurs.

“And so that’s where initiatives like the MIT Regional Entrepreneurship Accelerator Program (MIT REAP) can help. We look at how moving beyond a single organisation can drive meaningful change. We bring groups of people together and allow them to move beyond their traditional organisational boundaries.

“They learn to work together in a new and different way. And in doing so, it extends and accelerates the individual's organisation, their careers and their passion.”

see more on
https://www.riotinto.com/en/news/stories/how-to-be-an-innovator