Structure innovation - Making the most of your assets

This category looks to optimise the human assets and intangible assets of the company. Effectively, this innovation asks: how do you encourage innovation in your people and your assets?

Often structural innovation is driven by such departments as Human Resources or R&D. But in smaller organisations, the leaders of the business are the key drivers. The result of such innovation should help attract talent, create supremely productive working environments and foster levels of performance competitors cannot match.

When talking about structural innovations it is hard to look beyond Whole Foods a company that works on a principle of ‘radical transparency’. The salaries and bonuses of every employee at Whole Foods are available to be "looked up" by other employees. Co-founder John Mackey instituted the program early in the life of the company, taking a stand to eliminate office politics and personal agendas in favor of making goals visible and attainable. The unusual Whole Foods policy is designed to both encourage conversations about salary among staff members and to promote competition within the company.

Beyond making compensation data available to all employees, Whole Foods also has its managers post their store's sales data at the end of each day and regional sales data every week. Once a month, Whole Foods sends each store a detailed report outlining profitability and sales at each of the chain's locations. The result, all employees are fully versed in the workings of the company and can be truly considered insiders.

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