Google’s approach to encouraging innovation ranges from allowing engineers to spend 20% of each week on projects they find interesting to opening direct channels between company executives and employees. But can every company be a Google?

Innovation has always been fundamental to engineering and an agreement is widespread that a culture of innovation is paramount to attaining a competitive edge globally. Work environments that support innovation present opportunities for inventive engineers to design products heralded for their creativity and original approach. But innovation does not come without risk, and failure can occur just as readily as success.

To recruit innovative engineers, companies must find the right candidate with a history of ingenuity, resourcefulness and willingness to go beyond their comfort zone. To retain these innovators, employers need to look at many factors, from incentives to corporate cultures, in an effort to encourage and reward innovation while also planning for the potential setbacks that innovation inevitably brings.

Recruiting Ingenuity

For engineering positions that call for inventive thinking, robotic, computer numerical control and factory automation supplier FANUC America Corp. seeks candidates who show excitement about their work.

“When they talk about the products they’ve worked on for other organizations with great passion, those are the crusaders who are really pushing for something different,” says Karen St. Louis, human resources director for FANUC America. (Its parent, FANUC, is ranked by Forbes as the world’s 35th most innovative company for 2014.) “They are tenacious about getting that idea across and gathering the support to implement that change.”

St. Louis acknowledges that such skills aren’t a priority for every position. But for the jobs that demand innovative thinking, FANUC America looks for a pattern of risk-taking and creativity along with demonstrated examples from using new ideas to solve problems, unconventional thinking, and doing things out of the ordinary to try to master a problem.

One challenge for talent recruiters is assessing how a candidate executed the innovative experiences that he or she touts. “It is challenging to make sure that we are understanding the innovation piece correctly, putting the right value on it and finding the right fit in our organization,” St. Louis added.

Many large, established industrial companies have valued engineering innovation for decades; what has changed is how companies present themselves to job seekers.

“Competition for these individuals is tough as more and more tech companies enter the field,” says Martha Tateosian, 3M's Global R&D engineering manager. 3M ranked 22^nd out of 50 most innovative companies by The Boston Consulting Group. continually adapted its brand image and messaging to emphasize the company’s qualities. The idea is to excite job candidates about what’s possible as engineers and technical professionals, Tateosian adds.

Evolving workplace dynamics also play a role in recruiting the right engineer. Today's engineers are working with teams that are more diverse with respect to interests, backgrounds and capabilities, reports St. Louis. “The pace is much quicker, of course, within that environment of multiple and competing priorities.” (Read more about the accelerating pace of engineering in our recent article “Research Finds a Strong Pulse of Engineeering.”)

Retaining Innovative Engineers

To retain innovative talent, company leadership is responsible for establishing a work environment that promotes innovation and not simply pay lip service to the concept, says Amy Smith, an executive coach based in Neptune Beach, Fla. She learned about engineering innovation as a trainer for Apple. At Apple, Smith asserts, innovation wasn’t just a policy or word; it was the way people performed and behaved in their daily work activities.

“There were incentives to think innovatively, and you saw the support from executives and upper management in their actions,” she says. Incentives ranged from cash to travel awards. For a time, Apple offered paid “experiences” that allowed employees to work at another office or with another team for up to six months.

"People loved the opportunities to share knowledge, to meet and connect with others within the organization," Smith observes. "That program was a big morale booster and motivator for employees.”

In her role as executive coach, Smith has worked with clients who say they place a premium on innovation but fail to follow through. “There may even be an innovation portal where they indicate , ‘Submit your idea and we will pay you if we use it,’ but it falls flat on its face because the executive team took no actions to back up their words.”

One client wanted to change its company culture. But that sort of effort has to begin with a true willingness and buy-in from a company's executive team, she explains. After all, management has to be willing to invest time and money, because culture change does not happen overnight. What's more, once culture-change programs are in place, management needs to take objective measures to gauge their effect. For example, employees may be surveyed through an independent third-party with the results made available to every participant.

FANUC’s St. Louis agrees with the need for executive leadership buy-in to create a culture that encourages innovation. “Our leadership knows it has to create an environment of risk taking that is appropriate for the role,” she reports. . Practices include providing “stretch assignments” that push engineers to think creatively, and periodic competitions. In this way, even though the company may be looking for new ideas in a particular area, leadership opens the competition to the entire workforce.

“While we have had a few great ideas that we are able to capitalize on, we get a lot of other ideas that we’ve been able to deploy in other ways,” St. Louis says.

3M gives employees access to corporate resources and earmarks 15% of an employee's work time to explore any topic that intrigues them (the latter practice has been in place since 1948). Tateosian says that not only do these practices help engineers learn and grow, but the culture of innovation can lead to breakthrough ideas for the company.

Arthur Fry was on innovation time when he developed Post-It Notes for 3M. Source: WikipediaPerhaps the most famous example is 3M scientist Arthur Fry, who invented the Post-It note in 1974 based on an adhesive invented by another 3M scientist, Spencer Silver. The Post-It note invention occurred during Fry's 15% "innovation" time.

While freedom to create at work sounds good to most engineers, business leaders realize that innovative solutions need to be managed from a risk standpoint.

“Innovation happens when we listen first and then work collaboratively with the team to address our client’s needs,” says Tim Haener, executive vice president/project manager for J-U-B Engineering Inc., a civil engineering firm. “Understanding the problem in the context of the big picture enables us to find solutions that don’t use a cookie-cutter approach.” He implies that as client budgets tighten, expectations grow that solutions must add value over the long-term.

“The key is to work hand-in-hand with your client to understand the risks associated with out-of-the-box solutions and agree to equitably share in the risks and rewards,” Haener adds. That means educating professionals in how to work with clients on scope, budgets and contracts that allow for innovation.

For all its successes, a culture of innovation can lead to failure. One look at the recent withdrawal of Google Glass from the market and its planned redevelopment under another division shows that even the most innovative companies don’t always hit the mark — at least not right away.

To recruit and, more importantly, to retain innovative engineers requires an enterprise-wide commitment to practices that encourage coloring outside the lines while balancing risks with rewards.

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