In i4cp's newest report, Human Capital Practices that Drive Innovation, human capital professionals were asked to rate their organizations' effectiveness across eight types of innovation, including often overlooked elements such as product development and process effectiveness innovation. By creating an index of effectiveness scores, combined with i4cp's Market Performance Index rating for each respondent, i4cp was able to determine the top ten human capital practices that not only drive innovation, but are also correlated to overall market performance.

The ten best ways HR can improve workplace creativity and innovation (you’ll need to provide your own drum roll): 

10. Reward innovation via more engaging work and/or autonomy.

9. Track innovation talent at both the college undergraduate and/or graduate level.

8. Put in place a formalized or structured idea/innovation review process.

7. Provide internal training in creativity and innovation practices.

6. Put in place discrete budgets to fund innovation projects external to the enterprise (i.e. to generate ideas or products from non-employees).

5. Have a formal program to find and promote creative/innovative programs, products, or ideas.

4. Tie individual bonuses and/or salary increases to innovation.

3. Include innovation as a major competency in leadership development plans.

2. Define and promote organizational values related to innovation.

1. Use technology-enabled collaboration/social media tools to share knowledge. 

A more detailed examination of these findings can be found in i4cp's Human Capital Practices that Drove Innovation (i4cp membership required). Also contained within that report are more recommendations of actions that can be taken to improve innovation, and further examples from some of the leaders in innovation today: IBM, Qualcomm, Flextronics, 3M and Sony Pictures. Innovation may seem uncontrollable, but it turns out that there really are ways you can harness it at your own organization.