5 ways to boost innovation at work

 By: shivraman radhakrishnan

"Innovation distinguishes between a follower and a leader," Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of Apple had been known to say. In tough economic times, companies and teams need to innovate to survive. However, driving team members to innovate is not always an easy task for the modern-day manager. Shreya Roy speaks to a few managers on ways to get the best out of people.

 Be in tune with the market

 

The market is changing at a breakneck speed. Managers need to encourage their team members to be in touch with what is going on, not just within the organisation, but also outside. "In our team, everyone is expected to know what competition is doing to the industry," says Anil Warrier, director-talent acquisition, SAP.

 

Create thinking spaces

 

While some do well walking in a park, or sitting at their desk, it helps to have a room, or an area specifically designed and equipped with tools or technology that can help innovative thinking. Mindtree, for instance, has a dome, built specially for its product development team, with touch interface systems and a detached environment, to help spur innovative thinking.

 

Incentivise innovation

 

Incentivising innovation and giving people a designated outlet for expression help spur innovation. Pooja Gupta, VP for human resource, Myntra, says, "We have a programme called big ideas, where we encourage anyone to walk up and present an idea that helps solve a business problem." The best ideas are taken up by the company and employees are given rewards such as iPads, etc.

 

Include in key deliverables

 

Letyour leaders know that innovative thinking is not an added bonus, but an integral part of the requirement. Ravi Shankar, chief people officer, Mindtree, says, "We make driving innovation within teams a key deliverable of our leaders, and it is part of their KRA."

 

Give staff the freedom to err

 

People are not likely to innovate if they live in fear of severe consequences for going wrong. Allow people the freedom to make mistakes, learn from them, and build ownership, HR managers say.

5 Things You Didn't Know Your Android Smartphone Could Do

By Cory Gunther from Gotta Be Mobile

While smartphones still can't make my morning coffee or do any of those crazy things we see in futuristic movies, technology just keeps getting better, and we have more and more features than ever before.

When you think about a smartphone the general features or tricks come to mind. Playing games, browsing the web, taking photos, or even advanced things like learning the name of a song with Shazam or SoundHound. Those features are nice, but below we've decided to share five or so slightly more advanced things you probably didn't know an Android phone could do.

Nearly everyone these days has a smartphone of some sort. They have awesome features like doubling as a flashlight, to being your own personal WiFi network. Then there's things to make life easier and more convenient by opening your car doors, to even measuring the speed of moving objects. We cover those and more in the list below.

Become a Mobile Hotspot for WiFi

One feature that millions of users still don't know about is making a WiFi hotspot, or sharing the connection from your phone to nearby devices. Essentially you can use that fast AT&T or Verizon 4G LTE network to act as the internet connection on your Laptop, home PC, or even an iPad while out and about.

Read: How to Use the Galaxy Note 3 as a Personal Hotspot

If you head to settings > tethering & hotspot > and enable the hotspot feature your phone will share its connection with nearby devices. As a reminder, many carriers charge extra for this, so double check before you start streaming movies to your laptop.

Start Your Car

Home automation is pretty popular these days, but technology isn't stopping there are is also attacking the automotive world head on. These days we can actually use our Android or iPhone devices to actually start our car. That isn't all either. You can lock or unlock the doors from hundreds of miles and miles away, and even open the trunk or check vehicle status information. "Start, Control, or locate your car from virtually anywhere with your smartphone"

Viper SmartStart comes to mind, but other car and alarm groups are also diving in head first with this type of technology. The Android app needs a bit of work, but still works great for those using a newer Viper Alarm system.

For more details or to check it out yourself head to the Google Play Store.

Measure Speed & Distance

Have you ever wanted to measure the distance of a hole while golfing, or for other activities? Smart Tools is a group of Android apps that can measure the distance between two objects, and they even have an app to measure the speed of moving objects. Smart Distance will measure the distance, then once you know how far the Speed Gun app will give you the speed of any moving object.

 

Tape Measure or Bubble Level

If you've ever needed to measure something while on the go and only had a smartphone, or want to quickly level a frame while hanging a picture, we have that covered too. Smart Tools entire pack has a measure tool, or you can get the free measure tool app as well.

Bubble level apps are a dime a dozen, but getting one with multiple angles, locks, and alerts once you're level isn't as easy as you'd think. One simply titled Bubble Level is a good choice, as is iHandy Level Free. These are a few more simple apps that work as useful tools for a variety of uses.

Google Goggles

Instead of heading to Google search and typing in what you're looking for, imagine being able to search the entire web with an image. This isn't anything new, but Google Goggles is an app that will scan an object using a phones camera, then search Google for more details. I've tried searching wine bottles, landmarks, to even scanning and finding more details about a painting from an Art gallery.

This also doubles as a barcode and QR code scanner, and Goggles will even translate text from one language to another, which is extremely helpful if you're traveling abroad. Books, paintings, CDs, business cards and more can all be scanned and recognized. It's quite powerful and useful all at the same time. Get it from the Google Play Store.

Others

There's also tons and tons of health and fitness related advanced features our smartphones have. For one, you can use the camera or flash for a heart rate monitor. A feature that recently made the highlight list of the new Samsung Galaxy S5.

I personally use my phone to check and board flights with Google Now. Users can set their home DVR, control their BitTorrent downloads, ordering pizza, or even paying for my food and gas using Google Wallet or ISIS Mobile payments.

We'd love to hear what kind of advanced features or neat little tricks you do with your phone in regards to real-world tasks, so drop us a comment below.