If You Want To Grow Your Organisation You Must Learn How To Innovate
Innovation is often seen as a tricky word. While everybody agrees that innovation is essential to be successful and looks at names such as Apple to support their claims, innovation seems to be something easier said than done.
Understanding innovation (not just invention)
One of the mistakes people make is failing to understand how to innovate, is that they think of innovation as being an overlapping term with invention. Innovation is not invention; it is the process of renewing, remaking, creating new ways and new usages for older products.
One concept that goes hand in hand with innovation is dynamic product. A product that is dynamic adapts to market trends and even sets them. Companies that manage innovation to make such products are practically guaranteed success and market growth.
Why should organisations be interested in innovation?
Organisations that do not innovate risk lagging behind the competition. Those not interested in innovation will see their market share diminish, their products grow stale, and their customers turn their backs on them. Innovation is as much about staying afloat, as about growing your organisation.
How to innovate
In order to create dynamic products, you need to modify the way you do business. A culture of innovation has to be promoted and supported. What does this mean? Employees (Intrapreneurs) must be encouraged to share, and crowdsourcing is also a solution when in search of new ideas.
Managing intellectual property in an innovative way also helps. Let users, clients and potential clients contribute, but be careful about the notions you intend to stamp your mark on. Leave room for creativity, criticism and build on it; many great ideas often stem from it.
Make sure the innovative products you intend to launch on the market have the following features:
- Offer an advantage
- Are compatible with what it is already known
- Are simple enough to use by the average user
- Can be offered as small trials
- Can be observed in action
Barriers to innovation
One of the reasons why so many organisations seem to lack the knowledge of how to innovate is represented by the barriers that naturally come, as follows:
- There are never enough funds for innovation
- There is a culture of risk avoidance within the company, preventing innovation from taking place
- Companies tend to maintain their ‘status quo’, refusing to change structures and organisations as the need arises
- There is never enough time for innovation
- Companies do not identify the right criteria for measuring innovation performance
If you are serious about growing your organisation then you can not allow any of these barriers to stop you from allowing innovation to flourish. Take the time to find solutions to these barriers and then allow your organisation to grow.