The Foundation of Emotional Innovation
It may sound rather simple, however, emotionally intelligent innovation is a skill that often needs to be sharpened over time, much like insights professionals often develop consumer empathy techniques. Strategies might include practicing active listening, seeking feedback, engaging in self-reflection, and using techniques to manage stress.
First, there are some core principles to build the foundation of emotional innovation:
- Innovation is emotional: Emotional innovation moves beyond technical solutions to focus on how products or services connect with people’s hearts, making them more meaningful and successful.
- Emotions fuel creativity: Positive emotions can enhance cognitive processing, while a strong emotional environment drives creative thinking and innovation.
- Emotional intelligence is key: The ability to understand and manage your own emotions and those of others is a critical leadership skill for fostering an innovative workplace.
While it may be easy to chalk this whole concept up into simply creating a more positive environment for innovation, through the leadership, team and culture, via an atmosphere of psychological safety and experimentation, it’s a bit more complex than that. Especially in this accelerated age of AI, robotics and smart technologies, it’s easy to overlook the human emotion factor and focus everything on process.
But as Forbes noted in its article, “Here’s Why Emotions Are The Secret Sauce Of Innovation,” “Innovation is not just a cognitive process. It’s emotional. It requires doing something new or novel, and that can be scary because it requires the courage to enter the unknown and it involves learning from experimental failures. Many of us learned as children that success comes from making the fewest mistakes. We learned to avoid making mistakes and looking stupid. We also developed emotional defensives to protect our views of ourselves – to protect our ego. Protecting our ego and fear are the two big emotional inhibitors of innovation.”
The Forbes piece further explores the topic: “How do we begin to see new things that others don’t see? As importantly, how do we perceive reality more accurately – see what we do not usually see? How do we have the courage to explore the unknown? How do we create something new? We have to overcome our fears of failure in order to iteratively learn… We must be more open-minded and less emotionally defensive when our views are challenged by others or by new facts. We must reflectively listen in a nonjudgmental manner. And to do all of that, we absolutely have to manage our emotions and be emotionally intelligent about our and others’ emotions since innovation is a team sport.”
Elevating Emotion to Innovation Outcomes
During FEI25, Craig Dubitsky, Founder and CEO at Happy, held a session on, “Activating Emotional Innovation.” Dubitsky is an innovator with a proven track record of reinventing customer experiences. By incorporating emotional innovation into branding and product development, he effectively solves customer problems and elevates outcomes. In this session, he shared his expertise and insights, covering: defining innovation: realizing technical innovation only occurs when hearts and minds are involved; bringing new life to an organization by manifesting an idea and making it real; reviewing lessons learned from challenger brands being acquired by large corporates; and achieving emotional innovation by learning to solve for the area “under the curve.”
Getting to the Heart of Innovation
So if we accept during this rapid rate of change, to put aside tech and process for a moment, just how does this relate to the organization’s emotionally intelligent view of innovation? It remains important to be emotionally agile, with leadership, team and culture at the forefront.
Activating this involves using emotional intelligence to foster creativity and drive innovation, which requires increasing self-awareness, strengthening empathy and active listening, and learning to regulate emotions. By understanding and managing one’s own emotions and connecting with others on an emotional level, individuals and teams can build courage, enhance cognitive processing, and create a more trusting environment where innovative ideas can thrive.
As Forbes advises, “Organizations must confront these emotional enablers and inhibitors through leadership role modeling, culture, human development and by implementing research-based processes that individuals can use to manage their ego and emotions. Organizations must design their work environments to reduce fears, insecurities, and other negative emotions. One important component is to create an environment of psychology safety.”
Video: “Activating Emotional Innovation” featuring Craig Dubitsky, Founder and CEO at Happy, courtesy of FEI25.
