UK business letting ideas 'slip through fingers'

Vodafone UK has called on British businesses to do more to encourage their staff to put forward innovative ideas.

Working Nation, a report commissioned by Vodafone UK, paints a dismal picture. More than half (54%) of the 2,020 workers surveyed said they are not encouraged to be creative or to present ideas to managers. 70% said their companies do not have a good reputation for rewarding innovation. 24% said they never even bother to tell anyone about their bright ideas.

George Cox, Chairman of the Design Council, who is currently carrying out a review of the role of creativity in UK business on behalf of the DTI said of the research: "In a world where innovation is going to play an increasing part in economic success, Vodafone's latest research puts the task facing the UK into perspective. Companies - and indeed public sector bodies - need both a culture for encouraging new ideas and a process for evaluating suggestions and doing something about them".

Senior managers are much more likely to be rewarded for innovative ideas, than other staff. Two-thirds of senior managers said they are formally encouraged to come up with ideas to develop products and services, compared with less than half of other workers.

The sectors that do least to encourage and capture ideas - transport, manufacturing and utilities - are those often viewed by some as under-performing in the UK. Here, two-thirds of staff spend no time at all coming up with ideas, with 14% of utilities workers and 9% of manufacturing workers associating innovation with redundancy.

Half of respondents see an open-door policy as the most conducive to the free flow of new ideas, with only 14% citing suggestion schemes. Over-55s are the most likely age group to come up with an idea at least once a day.