How to Unlock Team Creativity

In hospitality, it’s easy to fall into the trap of surrounding yourself with people who think like you, work like you, and see the industry the same way you do. It feels good. It’s safe. But if you’re always nodding in agreement, you’re probably missing out on the friction that creates real innovation. The most creative ideas I’ve seen didn’t come from think tanks or “like-minded” masterminds, they came from tension. From culture clashes. From a designer arguing with operations. From a marketing team questioning the sacred cows of the brand. If your team always agrees, you’re not pushing hard enough. Here’s some tactical advice to shake things up and get those creative sparks flying in your hotel, cruise line, or destination team: 1. Rotate departments once a month. Have your marketing staff shadow housekeeping, or your GM sit in on the reservation desk for a few hours. Cross-function breeds empathy and fresh thinking. 2. Bring in outsiders. Hire someone with zero hospitality experience for a project or brainstorming session. Fresh eyes don’t carry your industry’s blind spots. 3. Build a “devil’s advocate” into strategy meetings. Assign someone the role of challenging every major assumption. Not to be annoying, but to strengthen the idea through pressure. 4. Force discomfort in brainstorms. Ban industry lingo. Encourage unpopular opinions. If your team’s not squirming a bit, you’re not in the right creative space. 5. Get honest guest feedback from people not in your demographic. If your hotel mostly serves couples, ask a solo traveler. If your cruise attracts boomers, listen to Gen Z. That contrast is where upgrades are born. Comfort feels good, but it doesn’t move the needle. Innovation happens when things get uncomfortable. And in this industry, the ones willing to lean into that tension are the ones rewriting the rules. ---- I’m Scott Eddy, keynote speaker, social media strategist, and the #15 hospitality influencer in the world. I help hotels, cruise lines, and destinations tell stories that drive revenue and lasting results—through strategy, content, and unforgettable photo shoots. If the way I look at the world of hospitality works for you, and you want to have a conversation about working together, let’s chat: scott@mrscotteddy.com

I've scaled AI and cloud across industries. Yet the real lever? Shaping a culture where innovation is instinctive, not an initiative. Here’s how I do it Tech alone doesn't drive change. It's the human element that sparks true innovation. Here's what I've learned about fostering a culture of innovation: 1. Embrace curiosity at all levels Encourage questions, exploration, and continuous learning 2. Reframe failure as feedback Create safe spaces for experimentation and iteration 3. Cultivate diverse perspectives Innovation thrives when different viewpoints collide 4. Empower decision-making Trust your team to take calculated risks 5. Celebrate small wins Recognize progress to maintain momentum 6. Connect tech to purpose Help everyone see how innovation impacts the bigger picture 7. Foster cross-functional collaboration Break down silos to spark unexpected ideas 8. Lead by Pizza Model the innovative mindset you want to see and award teams with Pizza parties. Remember: The most powerful tool in your tech stack is the collective mindset of your team. Shift your focus from just implementing new tech to nurturing the innovative spirit of your people.

Leaders: To combine the power of technology and human innovation, you need to empower your team to move quickly and learn fast. Here’s how I’ve seen this done well: 🤝Two-pizza teams Change happens faster when small teams with diverse skills work and iterate together. Think of Amazon’s two-pizza team rule: No team should be so big that you can’t feed everyone with just two pizzas. This model works because teams are small and it unites a diverse skill set (like a designer, an analyst, a product person, and an engineer). Together, they move quickly in iterative cycles. ⏪Use an outcome work-back orientation The agile approach to software development isn’t just for building products. I’ve used agile across workflows throughout my career, including for legal queues. Encourage your team to start with the outcome they want to achieve and work backward, then adopt an agile mindset to pursue those outcomes. You might not get it right the first time. But the more you experiment and make mistakes, the more you’ll learn. Which leads to… ♻️Create a culture where it’s okay to fail This mindset requires courage and patience. You likely won’t get to a lightning-strike moment all at once. Instead, you allow your team to experiment and find better ways forward. It takes time for these small differences and small benefits to compound. In the long run, you build trust with your team and unlock success. This is why I’m so passionate about what #AI will unlock for marketing. With AI, marketers are empowered to move from hypothesis to campaign to outcome very quickly. Compounding growth loops will become the norm. If you want to combine the potential of technology and human innovation, you need to start by asking how you can bring about the change and set your team free to fail, learn, and get better 1% every week. What’s been the difference maker for your organization in bringing together game-changing technology and courageous team members? #Leadership #TeamCulture #Innovation

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

Risk is not something to avoid. But too often, leaders fail to cultivate it. As a leader who's navigated complex challenges, I've learned true innovation begins where comfort ends. Here's how to encourage risk-taking in your team: 1️⃣ 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗮 𝘀𝗮𝗳𝗲 𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗲 ↳ Encourage transparency without fear of repercussions. ↳ Reward honest mistakes as learning opportunities. 2️⃣ 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲 ↳ Show vulnerability by sharing your own failures. ↳ Take calculated risks and share the process. 3️⃣ 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 ↳ Allocate time and resources for new ideas. ↳ Celebrate innovative efforts, not just successful outcomes. 4️⃣ 𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗰𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗸 ↳ Provide clear guidelines for acceptable risks. ↳ Encourage data-backed decision-making. 5️⃣ 𝗙𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝘆 ↳ Trust your team to make decisions. ↳ Reduce micromanagement; empower independent action. 6️⃣ 𝗖𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗯𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 ↳ Highlight lessons from failed attempts. ↳ Encourage continuous improvement over perfection. Innovation thrives in a culture that values calculated risks. Give your team the freedom to innovate. PS: How do you encourage risk-taking in your organization? __________ ♻️ Repost to benefit your network. ➕ Follow me for more content like this. 🎁 Grab your free infographics: https://lnkd.in/drW22SgX  

By day, I was leading product, then marketing and comms teams in Silicon Valley tech and by night, I did something most people wouldn't (and should!)... Improv and stand-up comedy with a stint at Second City for sketch. Yes, it taught me so many things about writing, story and creativity. More than that...it transformed how I think about story and innovation - individually and collectively as a team or culture. Yes, both will make you funnier. That's NOT even The Holy Grail (which is a classic, amiright?!) Ever curious, I thought, "why can't teams and cultures be like this?" They can. Here's the thing... Innovation and storytelling in teams happen when trust, connection and courage exist. Those first 2 help with courage. If your teams aren't innovating and telling bigger brilliant stories...it's not because they don't have them. It's that humans NEED a net of trust and connection to sustain courage. The biggest innovations, stories, ideas happen when courage fills the air... Leaders, entrepreneurs, any one really....HACK YOUR INNOVATION #1 focus on increasing trust (positive laughter w/o judgment builds connection, trust). When we laugh together, we sew deeper emotional bonds. #2 build team goals and a team net to increase output (stand-up is great and even then you can build with your audience, ex: crowd work, you are creating WITH your audience). THINK improv, it's all YES AND with teams. Two big things to work on: "I got your back." Make your partner look amazing! That means experimentation and supporting new ideas. Relax, you don't have to marry them. Just date them respectfully - you don't have to call them in the morning! #3 Welcome experimentation, humor and reframe what "fail" means - have open convos with teams. 1 and 2 help build a NET. It doesn't mean no bad ideas. It means Bad ideas are welcome as part of a process to get to GREAT ideas. You gotta kiss some ideas frogs to get to those princess ideas (yeah, I changed the metaphor!). WORK WITH ME I help create braver leaders, teams and cultures so people and innovation thrive. From inspirational and humorous talks, keynotes to facilitated learning programs, let's increase brave innovation capacity WHILE making people happier, healthier too. My book, "Stop Boring Me!" is on Amazon and it's all about transformation and innovation with laughter and improvisation. Humor is the ultimate algorithm(SM). Kathy-ism. YOUR TURN How do you channel your laughter into bravery? #keynotespeaker #organizationaldevelopment #innovation #highperformingteams #storytelling #laughter