Outerwall Inc (OUTR)’s Culture of Innovation

You’re clearly looking to take advantage of some of these verticals, and what you see as a huge opportunity in automated retail. How do you build out a culture within a company, that people are trying new things and not afraid of failure, and being really innovative?

Di Valerio: We’re lucky because it’s in our DNA, because of how we started the company, both the coin and the Redbox businesses, as well as some of these newer businesses. What we try to do — you mentioned it — allowing people to fail, but to learn from those failures and then keep making the right investments going forward.

We really do try to foster a company where people feel like they have the power to make decisions. They’re empowered to go after businesses, but they also are empowered to make mistakes and then to learn from those mistakes. I think we’ve been successful at that.

We’ve structured, in order to be able to do that, we have a team that’s really focused on the new business innovation. We have teams within each of the lines of business that are focused on that, that continue to extend out our brands and not sit back on our haunches.

Again, it’s a matter of just allowing that openness and really being — as we talk about — being inventive, being intuitive with our businesses, and then also being inclusive, both from our employee base but really also inclusive by understanding what our customers want.

The article Outerwall’s Culture of Innovation originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Eric Bleeker, CFA.

Eric Bleeker, CFA, and The Motley Fool have no position in any of the stocks mentioned.

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