In today’s intensely competitive global economy, innovation has never been more important for business success. Most experts acknowledge that innovation can be the shot in the arm companies need. Yet, how do you create a company that unleashes and capitalizes on innovation?
Innovation increases the likelihood of a business succeeding, however most people don't know where to start. People often think of innovating as just invention.
Innovation does not necessary require a large budget or investment in Research and Development (R&D). It's also about new ideas and responding to new trends and market conditions, or making improvements to products and services that already exist.
In many cases, innovation may be driven by the need to solve customer problems or to pursue new opportunities. How innovation creates workable solutions for problems that matter depends on you, but here are a few suggestions for making your business more innovative:
Step out of your comfort zone
To lead to successful innovation, you’ll have to embrace the unknown , you have to taste the failure and overcome the fear of criticism . Business leaders who operate both personal and professional life , they use their own trick to make it stable , but before you become successful you should know how to get out from comfort zones and take the risk.
How do you start stepping out of your comfort zone?
First, take small steps away from what’s familiar and into areas that are not so recognizable. Take new risk to explore something new
Connecting with customers for ideas
· While there are no sure-fire way to guarantee success in creating great ideas, one of the best ways is to listen to your customers.
· Connecting and listening to your customers can assist in emphasising and generating ideas on how both product and service delivery can be improved.
Connecting with customers may include:-
· conducting a market scan to better understand the environment in which your business is operating in, including an analysis of your competitors
· understanding the importance of marketing and branding for your business
· offering your customers channels in which to easily provide you feedback on your products and services
· conducting market research to better understand how your customers use your products and services.
· Creating an online strategy or one that extends into social media may be a way to collect valuable ideas and connect with your customers. A focus on both product and service delivery is vital as they are equally important in innovation.
· Be open to the feedback, and take decisive action based on what you’ve learned.
Condone—and, oftentimes, reward—failure
You do not start the day intent on steering your company toward failure. Yet, innovation’s occupational hazard is characterized by failure, which is why creating and supporting a culture of successful innovation requires courage. On top of that, patience is needed because your business may not see immediate results. Once courage and patience are in place, you must condone – and sometimes reward – failure. All three foundational elements are part of your company’s culture of successful innovation.
Consider your own company’s efforts when it comes to creating and supporting a culture of successful innovation. If your company is small and nimble, a lack of resources might hold you back from creating a culture of successful innovation. Gainesville-based Fracture has limited resources, yet its leadership and employees find creative ways to infuse innovation into the company’s product line and business processes. Fracture owes its continued growth and success to creating and supporting a culture of successful innovation.
Conversely, your company might be big and bureaucratic, with plenty of available resources. Change occurs slowly at this company, and often with limited success, because adapting a culture of innovation can be unwieldy and untenable. Yet, big and bureaucratic companies can, and do, foster a culture of successful innovation. Verizon placed big bets on Google’s Android for smartphones and on fiber optics for landlines. The company continues to seek new ways for wireless networks to run everything, including cars and refrigerators. That’s because Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam sees small “pots of gold” – from product innovations to process innovations – throughout the company.
Fortune follows the brave, at least in theory. What happens in real life with innovation depends on the courage and patience of business leaders. That’s because successful innovation often results after small – and sometimes large – setbacks occur. Determined innovators persist in spite of failures; yet, persistence often leads to winning outcomes for companies willing to exercise courage and patience. Failure is not the desired outcome in business, yet successful innovation calls for lots of small, timely missteps.
Balance creativity & imagination with operating structure & business process
Before achieving this balance, companies must take an important step on the path to achieving successful innovation. That critical step is to marry solvable problems with workable solutions. It is in our nature to be creative, and our imagination is poised to run wild – if only we let it – to arrive at possible solutions. Some of us (engineers, take a bow) are adept at solving problems with pragmatic solutions, which is great because workable solutions springboard successful innovation. Given that most of us are creatures of habit who crave structure, it is no secret that processes rule the day in the land of business. The innovation process, then, balances what is natural for us to do with how we prefer to operate.
This is exactly the case with innovative companies like Apple and IDEO. Apple’s genius lies in the company’s ability to arrive swiftly and correctly at the crux of a pressing problem. Then, Apple being Apple, it refuses to settle for half-baked solutions; its employees find – in the words of the late Steve Jobs – “beautiful, elegant solutions that work.”
The design firm IDEO’s ingenuity is on par with Apple. IDEO conducts brainstorming sessions in which it requires participants to produce scores of ideas in mere minutes. This impossible time limit and audacious quota forces participants to submit top-of-mind thoughts and ideas, including “way-out-there” ideas. IDEO then subjects the brainstorming’s outcomes to detailed scrutiny and exhaustive evaluation.
The key to successful innovation is to “toggle” back and forth between problems identified and solutions proposed. Doing so allows the innovation process to move forward in producing solid outcomes. Along the way, it is important to commit to the testing of product prototypes; forget about perfection and beauty, just build something ugly, but functional. Use IDEO’s three “R’s” to guide your prototyping efforts: rough; rapid; and right. Or, in today’s parlance: “wash; rinse; and repeat.”
Balancing creativity and imagination with operating structure and business processes can be achieved. An innovation culture and solid operating processes can happily coexist within your company. It just takes stepping outside of your comfort zone to get there. Doing so is proof positive of the valuable outcomes that can occur when you focus on making your business more innovative.
1. Individual innovation
The first kind of innovative culture is one built around the continual innovation of its individual stakeholders. This is perhaps what you or I think of when we envision dreaming up a new invention or process that will turn an industry on its ear and make us a billion dollars. It's also the easiest type of innovation culture to build in a larger organization.
"It's exactly as it sounds--you build a corporate culture where anyone can suggest an idea and start a project," Blank said. "Some companies use a suggestion box. Others like Google give employees 20 percent of their time to work on their own projects."
It's a good environment for innovation, Blank said, but not a great one.
2. Process improvement
This kind of innovative culture feels a little more corporate, and a little more familiar. Companies introduce new versions of products and services, tweaking each time to make them better or more lucrative.
"Car companies introduce new models each year, running shoes grow ever lighter and more flexible, Coca-Cola offers a new version of Coke. Smart companies are always looking to make their current products better--and there are many ways to do this," Blank said. "These innovations do not require change in a company's existing business model. This is what companies typically do to secure and defend their core business."
Like individual innovation, however, this is what good companies do--not great ones.
3. Continuous innovation
Now we're getting to the harder cultures to create. A culture of continuous innovation requires a company to create new elements in its business model.
"For example, Coke added snack foods, which could be distributed through its existing distribution channels," Blank suggested, and, "The Amazon Kindle played on Amazon's strengths as a distributor of content but required developing expertise in electronics and manufacturing."
If you can build a culture of continuous innovation, Blank suggested, you've reached the ranks of the great companies. But there's one level higher.
4. Disruptive innovation
Disruptive innovation is the hardest kind of culture to build within an organization, precisely because disruptive innovation can upset the organization's advantages. That's why it's usually the purview of startups, who have nothing to lose as a result of progress, and everything to gain.
"It's the automobile in the 1910s, radio in the 1920s, television in the 1950s, the integrated circuit in the 1960s, the fax machine in the 1970s, personal computers in the 1980s, the Internet in the 1990s, and the Smartphone, human genome sequencing, and even fracking in this decade," according to Blank.
The most extraordinarily innovative organizations, according to Blank, are those that shepherd disruptive innovations, and do it over and over and over again.
ONE IDEA CAN CHANGE YOUR WHOLE LIFE
If Steve Jobs ever thought that he is very poor and he has no power to bring any change in his life then he couldn’t be CEO of APPLE , LOVE THIS QUOTE “BORN FOOL AND POOR IS NT YOUR MISTAKE BUT DIE AS A FOOL AND POOR IS YOUR MISTAKE” Which is most branded company presently in World . If he can’t even he has neither money nor qualification still he could then why you can’t.
MY PAPA ALWAYS SAY ME ONE THING – “NEVER LET OTHERS TO DOWN YOU , MAKE YOUR OWN IDENTITY . YOUR IDENTITY SHOULD NOT YOUR FAMILY BACKGROUND OR HOW MUCH MONEY YOUR PARENTS GET OR PROFIT YOU HAVE OR WHO IS YOUR BOY FRIEND OR HUSBAND . YOUR IDENTITY SHOULD BE “WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT YOU ARE DOING BUT IT DOESN'T MEAN YOU'LL CHOOSE LESS FOR YOU , CHOSE THE BEST ONE FOR YOU AND MOVE AS PER THAT. BE PROUD ON THAT .” That’s why my family background is Land lord family background ,still my papa make his own identity. If needed he can drop out his college life and start his own business like many business man in India , many businessman are not highly educated but have better knowledge than a commerce student. So proud to be yourself and what you are doing , so I am proud what I gonna do and what I AM. I DESERVE BEST .
I have faith that “IF I’LL BE WORK HARD I CAN BE LIKE STEVE JOBS SO WHY I THINK LESS ABOUT ME .” I’ll never give up , I may be a woman but strong as a man . I can do anything and no one can protect me to do that. I born to win and I know what I sacrifice for that.
I’LL WIN ONE DAY AND I AM NOT WEAK , I AM CAPABLE.
Articles defines me and my life-
1) My life is like open diary-http://poemstoryshayari.blogspot.in/2013/06/my-hostel-life-from-12th-class-to-whole_4604.html
2) Time has all answer - http://poemstoryshayari.blogspot.in/2014/12/time-has-all-answers.html
3) Why I write blog - http://poemstoryshayari.blogspot.in/2014/04/why-i-write-blog.html
4)
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