Innovation can rise from the bottom up

Barring a few real-life fairytales, big changes in businesses often take place at the top. The reason for this is simple. Even if good innovative ideas manage to get past intense office politics, they more often than not will die on the chief executive’s desk – unless of course those ideas require zero or minimal investment.
You can go to your boss with a brilliant idea, but it better not require Bt10 million to implement. Studies show that executives will kill a costly proposal 90 per cent of the time unless it represents or fits in with something they were already planning to do. You might consider the executives cowardly, but they’ve been trained or groomed to avoid risking huge amounts of money on subordinates’ ideas. In other words, you can’t totally blame the CEOs for playing it safe.
In this new era, however, innovative ideas from the lower ranks are needed more than ever. The era of grey-haired executives making all the do-or-die decisions for their companies is lapsing into history. The more employees are kept in the dark regarding ambiguous changes, the more uncertain a firm’s future looks. The more involved the workers are in shaping the company’s course, the more likely the firm will navigate hard times and come out on top.
Businesses typically thrive on connections and vision. In most cases management teams usually have connections that count, giving them a considerable advantage over general employees in this area. But when it comes to vision, there is no guarantee that executives have better ideas than their staff. For one thing, the latter comprises a larger group, and many heads collaborating is better than one head thinking alone. Not even the smartest executive knows everything.
Today, companies that don’t innovate will assuredly weather storms. New features appearing among the social media are presenting daily challenges to the mainstream mass media. The entertainment industry is confronted by the free content found online in both legal and illegal forms. Even telecom giants and makers of hi-tech gadgets must keep one eye constantly on what the latest technology can accomplish or risk going bankrupt in the blink of an eye. Product deliveries via drones are being tested, and who dares say that won’t play a major role in the future retail industry?
There are also issues that concern employees. Executives’ proposals for change can overlook certain labour aspects, whereas a revamp that workers help design can better answer key questions. Among them: What does this particular innovation mean for my career path? Will it help the entire staff or just some people at the top? Most important of all, if employees initiate innovations, or at least help map them out, a natural stumbling block can be removed – the resistance that normally accompanies every change. 
The new business environment cries out for executives to engage their employees like never before. Old-style management, in which those at the top decide everything, might still work in labour-intensive industries like construction or textile manufacturing. But businesses that rely on a degree of staff sophistication will always benefit from staff input. Unless bosses are extremely young and thus already familiar with the latest technologies, they need innovative ideas and advice from their employees. It’s the younger people who know not only the trends, but also how to utilise them best.
It’s been said that the ideas able to transform an industry never originate from within that industry. This may be because industries rarely embrace innovation proposals from “downstream”. It’s time to change that way of thinking. The businesses of the new age demand it.