New ideas are the key to continued business success?
Innovation of products, services and business processes is important to keep a business up to date, competitive and efficient in the chosen marketplace(s) and new idea generation is a key part of that. These new ideas may result in profitable benefits such as the commercial exploitation of a new product or may deliver improved quality or services to clients.
Those involved in a business have new ideas all the time but often don’t act upon them or perceive it as “not their job”. So it is important to recognise the need to formally consider new idea generation.
If your staff feel able to brainstorm and share some novel ideas for the business without fear of ridicule then you will be well on the way to giving permission to innovate by creating new ideas and acting upon them. That doesn’t mean that you take every idea and put it into practice but it does mean that it is given some consideration. Creating innovation requires a funnel of new ideas that can be assessed for implementation or discarded with good reason.
Innovations can be small incremental steps in improving an existing product, service or process or can be a game changing revolutionary leap. World markets now change so quickly that it is impossible to employ all of the skills and capabilities need to stay ahead of the competition. Successful, innovative businesses recognise that they need to look outside, as well as inside, the business to find ideas that will keep the business relevant in a rapidly changing environment. Looking outside the business requires that there some time left over beyond operational delivery in order to work “on the business” not “in the business”. That time can be used to identify great ideas from networks, seminars, competitors, customers and suppliers.
Why is it important to implement new ideas?
Even the best businesses will fail if they don’t move with the times. Consider the bookshops that went out of business as a direct result of the increased competition from online sellers like Amazon. The book shops that still exist changed their customer offering to a book shop experience complete with comfortable seating for clients to browse the books in leisure and a coffee bar to add to the relaxing experience.
Consider how you could cut the costs in your products and services whilst delighting your present and future customers. It will need to become a way of life to take innovation seriously. It can’t be something that is tried once in a while then forgotten because the day job got in the way. The competition won’t stop and neither can the drive to improve through innovation. Consider that competition wont only come from known competitors but also from disruptive and less obvious competitors. Who would have anticipated that the High Street Banks’ would have seen major competition from Tesco and M&S selling financial services.
What technology could disrupt your business model? If you don’t already have an idea then the use of technology scouts or reports could give you valuable early warning of a threat to your business. Innovation can help to provide some answers to these threats but if you haven’t established a successful innovation process and culture within the business it will be too late to develop such a habit when the competition is already taking away sales from your business.
What can you do in your own business?
Aim to set a regular time to bring your team together to think about the future and what improvements you could make, what ideas have come from customer complaints or requests, new technologies which may be relevant or disruptive and create strategic action plans to assess and implement selected innovations.
Consider including innovation in your strategic planning process and updating status at least every 6 months.
Get yourself and team involved in relevant business and technology networks and with the most appropriate universities to get early warnings of potential disruptions to your business and also early identification of opportunities to grow the business through recognising new trends early enough to exploit them ahead of your competition.
Allow individuals with ideas the time to investigate them further.
Develop a stage-gate process to review new ideas as they develop so you can make well thought through decisions about how to proceed or even if to proceed
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