Ways to Encourage Innovation in Tech Project Teams

The more mistakes a team makes, the more quickly they learn and more resilient they become… yet so many of the teams I work with are terrified of making a mistake! They have so much on their plates that they’re singularly focused on crossing things off their lists so the thought of experimenting with a new approach and having to redo it is soul-crushing. OR They’re operating within a prove-your-worth culture in which mistakes are attributed to personal failure and incompetence. OR There is no appetite for risk and the only acceptable way of working is to do things the way they’ve always been done. OR any number of other reasons top performers make themselves small instead of taking a risk that could be a win. This is bad for business. And for morale. When mistakes are seen as part of the process, teams feel safer taking risks, which leads to creative solutions and faster progress. Leaders need to focus on 3 things to encourage experimentation so their teams will risk making mistakes in pursuit of a win: 𝟭. 𝗙𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲-𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮����𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 When we meet failures with compassion, we soften the emotional blow and decouple it from identity. With compassion, the individual is not a failure (fixed mindset)… they’re an innovator who tried something that failed (growth mindset). ❇ Tip: Normalize mistakes and conversations about mistakes by conducting regular retros for missteps, large and small. Emphasize the key learnings and takeaways, not the flawed logic or approach. No blame, no ego threat, no identity crisis, no problem trying it again another way. 𝟮. 𝗖𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗮 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 When learning is valued over perfection, teams are more willing to experiment, try new approaches, and push boundaries. ❇ Tip: Reinforce growth mindset as a core cultural tenet. Encourage team members to set personal development goals and allocate a budget to it. Even a small contribution can have symbolic & cultural value. Reward effort and improvement, not just outcomes and encourage voluntary share-outs or team-wide trackers. 𝟯. 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗮 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 Experimentation increases both the absolute number of failures and the failure rate. AND Done with systems, strategy and intention, it also accelerates growth, discovery and successful solutions. Establishing a system for experimentation allows teams to test ideas in controlled, low-risk environments where failure is seen as a step toward success. ❇ Tip: Implement a process for innovation sprints in which team members are encouraged to suggest & test bold ideas with clear guidelines on how to analyze & iterate based on the outcomes. These shifts to culture and process can have a massive impact. Teams that are encouraged to make mistakes ✔ learn more quickly, ✔ are more resilient and ✔ are more likely to take smart risks that can lead to sustainable, step function success.

Should you try Google���s famous “20% time” experiment to encourage innovation? We tried this at Duolingo years ago. It didn’t work. It wasn’t enough time for people to start meaningful projects, and very few people took advantage of it because the framework was pretty vague. I knew there had to be other ways to drive innovation at the company. So, here are 3 other initiatives we’ve tried, what we’ve learned from each, and what we're going to try next. 💡 Innovation Awards: Annual recognition for those who move the needle with boundary-pushing projects. The upside: These awards make our commitment to innovation clear, and offer a well-deserved incentive to those who have done remarkable work. The downside: It’s given to individuals, but we want to incentivize team work. What’s more, it’s not necessarily a framework for coming up with the next big thing. 💻 Hackathon: This is a good framework, and lots of companies do it. Everyone (not just engineers) can take two days to collaborate on and present anything that excites them, as long as it advances our mission or addresses a key business need. The upside: Some of our biggest features grew out of hackathon projects, from the Duolingo English Test (born at our first hackathon in 2013) to our avatar builder. The downside: Other than the time/resource constraint, projects rarely align with our current priorities. The ones that take off hit the elusive combo of right time + a problem that no other team could tackle. 💥 Special Projects: Knowing that ideal equation, we started a new program for fostering innovation, playfully dubbed DARPA (Duolingo Advanced Research Project Agency). The idea: anyone can pitch an idea at any time. If they get consensus on it and if it’s not in the purview of another team, a cross-functional group is formed to bring the project to fruition. The most creative work tends to happen when a problem is not in the clear purview of a particular team; this program creates a path for bringing these kinds of interdisciplinary ideas to life. Our Duo and Lily mascot suits (featured often on our social accounts) came from this, as did our Duo plushie and the merch store. (And if this photo doesn't show why we needed to innovate for new suits, I don't know what will!) The biggest challenge: figuring out how to transition ownership of a successful project after the strike team’s work is done. 👀 What’s next? We’re working on a program that proactively identifies big picture, unassigned problems that we haven’t figured out yet and then incentivizes people to create proposals for solving them. How that will work is still to be determined, but we know there is a lot of fertile ground for it to take root. How does your company create an environment of creativity that encourages true innovation? I'm interested to hear what's worked for you, so please feel free to share in the comments! #duolingo #innovation #hackathon #creativity #bigideas

I am constantly thinking about how to foster innovation in my product organization. Building teams that are experts at execution is the easy part—when there’s a clear problem, product orgs are great at coming up with smart solutions. But it’s impossible to optimize your way into innovation. You can’t only rely on incremental improvement to keep growing. You need to come up with new problem spaces, rather than just finding better solutions to the same old problems. So, how do we come up with those new spaces? Here are a few things I’m trying at Duolingo: 1. Innovation needs a high-energy environment, and a slow process will kill a great idea. So I always ask myself: Can we remove some of the organizational barriers here? Do managers from seven different teams really need to say yes on every project? Seeking consensus across the company—rather than just keeping everyone informed—can be a major deterrent to innovation. 2. Similarly, beware of defaulting to “following up.” If product meetings are on a weekly cadence, every time you do this, you are allocating seven days to a task that might only need two. We try to avoid this and promote a sense of urgency, which is essential for innovative ideas to turn into successes. 3. Figure out the right incentive. Most product orgs reward team members whose ideas have measurable business impact, which works in most contexts. But once you’ve found product-market fit, it is often easiest to generate impact through smaller wins. So, naturally, if your org tends to only reward impact, you have effectively incentivized constant optimization of existing features instead of innovation. In the short term things will look great, but over time your product becomes stale. I try to show my teams that we value and reward bigger ideas. If someone sticks their neck out on a new concept, we should highlight that—even if it didn’t pan out. Big swings should be celebrated, even if we didn’t win, because there are valuable learnings there. 4. Look for innovative thinkers with a history of zero-to-one feature work. There are lots of amazing product managers out there, but not many focus on new problem domains. If a PM has created something new from scratch and done it well, that’s a good sign. An even better sign: if they show excitement about and gravitate toward that kind of work. If that sounds like you—if you’re a product manager who wants to think big picture and try out big ideas in a fast-paced environment with a stellar mission—we want you on our team. We’re hiring a Director of Product Management: https://lnkd.in/dQnWqmDZ #productthoughts #innovation #productmanagement #zerotoone

One of the clearest signals of whether a transformation is working isn’t in the plan - it’s in the conversations happening in your teams. So pay close attention to the frequency of healthy debate, constructive challenge and openness to new and divergent ideas that takes place. If the frequency is low… …there is the risk of creating the illusion of performance because people readily ‘understand’ each other, agree on everything, collaboration seems to flow smoothly and there is a collective sensation of progress. However, the opportunity cost is teams gets trapped in their own paradigms, opportunities get overlooked, risks ignored - and ultimately their output becomes derivative not innovative, performance diminishes as opposed to improving and compounding. If the frequency is high… …there is a level of psychological safety that allows for team members to be more objective, to speak up with relevant ideas, to constructively challenge each other, and bring their diverse perspectives and experiences to the table - in the knowledge it won’t be held against them. This opens up the opportunity of reframing the paradigm, and connecting different perspectives and ideas. Ingredients for creativity, innovation, resilience and performance. You see homogeneous teams might feel easier, but easy doesn’t translate into Performance. Here are a few ideas to experiment with your teams… 1. Intentionally foster a team environment that replaces scepticism with intellectual curiosity, an open and learning mindset.   2. Consider how you can create a ways of working that allows all ideas and perspectives from everyone in the room to be heard. 3. Encourage dissenting perspectives. Surrounding yourself with people who are willing to disagree with you and challenge your perspectives and each other. 4. Consider whether you may need to invite others to that creative or idea generation meeting to ensure you get a broader perspective. 5. De-stigmatise failure through sharing past mistakes and celebrating lessons learnt. 6. Institutionalise a team culture of healthy candour. Candour is one of the key attributes to improving the quality of output, levelling up creativity and enabling effective collaboration. What would you add? #transformation #culture #psychologicalsafety

Your company’s best ideas aren't missing. They are just staying silent. Right now, every boardroom is consumed with the future of work, AI integration, and the relentless pressure to deliver results. In this era of disruption, we know that innovation is survival. But we are ignoring the oxygen that makes innovation possible: 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁. I recently delivered a keynote titled 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙏𝙧𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝘼𝙙𝙫𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙜𝙚, drawing on my experience working with corporate leaders to build high-performing teams. The pattern I see constantly is that we demand agile, innovative teams, yet we maintain environments where people are fundamentally afraid to speak up. Trust is not a "soft skill." It is a foundational business strategy. If you want to unlock the collective intelligence of your team, it starts with how you lead. Here are three shifts you can make right now: 𝟭. 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀. You don't need to be the smartest person in the room. In fact, if you are, you're a bottleneck. Shifting from directing to inquiring unlocks your team’s capability. 𝟮. 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲. The fastest way to shift team dynamics is for the leader to be the first to say, "I got this wrong" or "I don't know." When you acknowledge your own blind spots, you instantly move the culture from hiding to learning. 𝟯. 𝗥𝗲𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿𝘀. If you only praise the "yes men," that is exactly what you will multiply. Actively encourage, celebrate, and reward the people who bring constructive disagreement to the table. I share this because I’ve lived both extremes. Over my years in corporate leadership, I’ve built teams where deep trust fuelled incredible growth. But if I’m being courageous enough to be honest here - earlier in my career, under intense pressure to deliver, I was also the leader who inadvertently created a toxic culture of silence because I thought my job was to have all the answers. Learning that hard lesson changed everything about how I coach leaders today. In the age of AI, human-centric leadership is your ultimate competitive advantage. You have to create a culture where it is safe to speak up, so that it is safe to scale up. That's exactly what I do today. I work with leaders to find the intersection between high performance and high trust. What is one way you encourage your team to challenge the status quo? Follow Adeline Tiah for more content on leadership and reinvention

𝗨𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗚𝗲𝗻𝗶𝘂𝘀🤝 In many organizations, there's a tendency to listen only to the loudest or "smartest" voice in the room. But what if our greatest potential isn’t found in one person, but in the space between us? When we limit ourselves to a single perspective, we miss the opportunity to tap into the unique experiences and ideas of the entire team. True innovation isn’t just born within us—it’s sparked by collaboration and diverse insights. Many organizations still overlook the collective talent at their disposal. But how can we change that and truly harness the power of collective genius? Here are a few ways: 🔸 Encourage Open Dialogue: Create a safe space for all voices to be heard. Actively ask for ideas, especially from the quieter members who may hold valuable insights. 🔸 Foster Cross-functional Collaboration: Bring people from different departments and backgrounds together. The most unexpected and innovative solutions often come from diverse perspectives. 🔸 Rotate Leadership Roles: Give team members the opportunity to take the lead on different projects. This allows hidden talents to emerge and builds confidence in individuals across the board. 🔸 Embrace Curiosity Over Certainty: Ask more questions than give answers. Curiosity drives exploration, and exploration fuels innovation. 🔸 Recognize and Celebrate Diverse Contributions: When people feel valued for their unique input, they’re more likely to bring forward their best ideas. Make recognition a habit, not an afterthought. 🔸 Leverage External Insights: Sometimes the best ideas come from outside the team. Encourage team members to network, learn from industry experts, and bring those fresh perspectives back to the table. When organizations embrace the full potential of every individual and nurture collective genius, they unleash powerful innovation and growth. What strategies have you seen work well to foster collective brilliance in teams? #teamwork #collectivegenius #brainstorming #careerdevelopment

You can spend millions on new tech, but without this one skill, you're part of the 70% that fail. Ever watched a child resist trying new food? That's exactly how most employees feel about new technology at work. I learned this the hard way while leading digital changes in my team. The game changer wasn't fancy software, it was understanding how my team felt. Here's the exact playbook that turned my team's tech fear into enthusiasm: 1. Listen first, act later. When team members worry about losing their jobs to automation, show them how the new tools will make their work easier, not take it away. Schedule dedicated 1:1 sessions to document concerns. 2. Keep talking, keep sharing. Set up structured communication channels, bi-weekly tech updates and anonymous feedback systems. 3. Take baby steps. No one learned to run before walking. Give your team time to learn new tools at their own pace. Break training into short, digestible 15-minute daily modules focusing on immediate-use features. 4. Celebrate small victories. Create a weekly "Tech Win" spotlight in team meetings to recognize progress. 5. Know yourself first. As a leader, if you're stressed about change, your team will feel it too. Use established change management frameworks to assess and manage your own readiness for change. The success of digital initiatives isn't measured by technological efficiency, but by how well teams adapt and thrive in their new environment. What's the biggest challenge you've faced when implementing new technology in your team? #Leadership #Growth #Change #Success

The biggest threat to innovation isn't lack of ideas - it's how we handle the silence in meetings. When I first started leading engineering teams, I interpreted quiet rooms as agreement. I've since learned that silence often masks the most crucial feedback your team isn't sharing. The conventional wisdom suggests that quiet meetings indicate alignment or that 'no questions means clarity.' This assumption could be costing your company its next breakthrough. What I've discovered through leading hundreds of innovation meetings: 1. Your most insightful team members frequently hold back their best ideas during group discussions 2. The fear of being wrong in front of peers often outweighs the potential recognition for being right 3. Teams calibrate their responses based on how the first 1-2 people react to an idea This creates a dangerous cycle where innovative ideas die in silence, not in debate. The solution isn't more brainstorming sessions or 'innovation workshops.' Instead, I've found success by: 1. Deliberately seeking private feedback after group sessions - the insights shared in these conversations often contradict the public consensus 2. Creating space between ideation and evaluation - allowing teams to submit thoughts anonymously before any group discussion 3. Actively challenging the first positive responses - this signals that critical thinking is valued over quick agreement The most valuable innovations I've seen didn't emerge from loud, energetic brainstorming sessions. They came from quiet thinkers who initially kept their controversial ideas to themselves. What's the most innovative idea you've seen that was initially met with silence? #techleadership #innovation #leadership

Myth: Team stability equals team performance. Reality: Team adaptability drives innovation. Just watched a project team rotate 40% of its members mid-sprint and deliver their best results yet. The secret? Strong knowledge documentation and rapid onboarding protocols. The ability to adapt to change is crucial. By embracing fluidity and empowering your teams to evolve, you can unlock new levels of innovation and performance. Key strategies to foster team adaptability: ➡️ Invest in knowledge management by creating a centralized repository for project documentation, best practices, and lessons learned. ➡️ Develop robust onboarding processes by ensuring new team members are quickly integrated and productive. ➡️ Foster a culture of continuous learning by encouraging knowledge sharing, cross-functional collaboration, and experimentation. ➡️ Empower your teams by giving your teams the autonomy and tools they need to adapt to changing circumstances. By prioritizing adaptability, you can build teams that are resilient, innovative, and future-ready.

On the best teams, people don’t feel pressure to fit in. They feel empowered to stand out. 𝗗𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿—𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿. Especially in AI, where the implications of decisions and models reach billions, homogeneity isn’t just a limitation—it’s a liability. A few ways to build teams that truly innovate: 🤝 Break the echo chamber. Before group discussions, pair people up to explore ideas. Then do a share-out. This gives quieter voices room to rise—and surfaces edge-case thinking critical to AI fairness and model robustness. 💬 Interrupt the interruption. If someone gets cut off, step in: “Can we let them finish?” This simple nudge builds a culture where all perspectives—not just the loudest—shape the outcome. ✅ Create a “It’s okay to…” list. “It’s okay to ask why.” “It’s okay to challenge assumptions.” “It’s okay to flag ethical red flags in the model.” Explicit permission sparks courage—and courage sparks progress. In AI product teams, we need not just engineers and PMs, but ethicists, psychologists, linguists, and global users. Because building for everyone starts with listening to everyone. #Leadership #DiversityInTech #AI #InclusiveTeams #PsychologicalSafety #Innovation #TeamCulture #ResponsibleAI