In many companies the scenario looks similar: there is an idea box, an intranet form or a contest for improvements. For a moment there is enthusiasm, proposals come in and photos from the award ceremony circulate. Then everything goes quiet. Ideas end up in an Excel file, the program remains in slide decks and everyday work quickly returns to old habits. The most interesting part of the story, the one between the moment of saying “I have an idea” and the moment of “this is how we do things here,” usually stays invisible.
The book Employee Innovation. From Bottom-Up Ideas to Organizational Routines by Dr Agnieszka Padzik-Wołos, published by Kozminski University, examines exactly this hidden part of the process. It is a story of employee innovation seen not from the level of slogans but from the everyday practice of organizations: from the first spark, through implementation, to the moment when a new solution becomes an obvious routine.
Three stages on the way to a routine
The author is one of the first to systematically describe the entire process of reaching a routine. She structures it in three stages: the emergence of an employee innovation, its implementation and its anchoring in the organization when the idea stops being a project and becomes the new standard of operation. Each of these stages has its characteristic paths and logic, as well as a set of factors that help, slow down or derail the innovation. This mapping of processes and conditions is one of the strongest elements of the publication.
Particularly interesting is the way Dr Padzik-Wołos shows the ambivalent role of the same categories: organizational culture, resources and rewards. These are not simple pluses or minuses in a table. They can act as a strong boost when they give meaning and energy to innovation programs or as a quiet background that derails everything. A culture that formally promotes creativity and learning can in practice favor peace and predictability. Resources intended to support innovation turn into a trap when no one adjusts production or sales goals and there is never time to work on improvements. A reward system meant to build a sense of agency may create frustration if rewards are random or available only to a narrow group.
Against this backdrop, the concept of seven levers and seven traps in employee innovation programs emerges. These are not abstract labels but a distillation of specific organizational stories in which bottom-up innovations truly became a source of change or, conversely, got stuck at a dead end. It becomes clear that the success of a program does not depend only on the number of submitted ideas but on how these levers are configured: permission to experiment, real support from supervisors, time built into the work schedule, clear reward rules and a well-defined role for coordinators and ambassadors.
Research from the inside and organizational everyday life
The publication is based on several years of inside research conducted in four large organizations from different industries. Interviews with line employees, shift leaders, managers and people responsible for innovation programs create a multidimensional picture of organizational reality. On one hand there is pride in an idea that simplified a process, improved safety or made life easier for the whole team. On the other there is fatigue caused by yet another initiative competing for attention with daily goals and concern that after the initial excitement the program will disappear just like previous ones.
The described pathways are very concrete. They often begin with a simple observation: “we do this in a way that could be different.” Then comes a discussion in the team, a first trial, searching for allies and finally a confrontation with procedures and the formal system. If the innovation program is well designed and the levers work, the idea can undergo a pilot phase, be tested, documented and integrated into instructions and systems. At some point it stops being “Anna’s or Mark’s idea” and becomes simply “the way things are done here.”
It is at this moment that the concept of routine returns, which the author consciously reframes. Routine is not the opposite of innovation but its natural endpoint. It means a repeatable and recognizable way of working shared by many people that gives the organization efficiency and predictability. Without changes in routines, innovations remain marginal as one-off actions, pilots or good practices that disappear with the first organizational shock or managerial change.
A new perspective on employee innovation programs
From a management perspective this reframing is important. It shifts the focus from “how to encourage people to submit ideas?” to “what can be done so that these ideas have a chance to become the new normal?” Dr Padzik-Wołos offers not only a language for describing the phenomenon but also a framework for rethinking existing programs. It helps identify whether they rely on real levers or mainly on symbolism and communication campaigns, whether they build shared responsibility or shift the burden onto initiators assuming they will somehow manage on their own.
This book is valuable for HR professionals, continuous improvement specialists, lean or kaizen practitioners and managers who balance performance pressure with a declared culture of innovation. It also serves as useful reading for management students, showing how organizational concepts such as employee innovation, routines and culture translate into the everyday work of people at different levels.
Employee Innovation. From Bottom-Up Ideas to Organizational Routines does not promise quick tricks or easy wins. Instead, it offers a clear map of the process: three stages of reaching a routine, the network of connections between culture, resources and rewards, and the seven levers and seven traps that can strengthen or undermine any initiative. After reading it, it becomes easier to ask more precise questions in one’s own organization, not only about how many ideas there are in the system but which of them truly became part of everyday work and what consciously or unconsciously made that happen.
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The book (in Polish) can be downloaded from the Kozminski University repository website.
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Media contact: Paweł Siwek Science Communications Officer 📧 [email protected] 📞 +48 668 610 534
