Innovation is necessary for companies to survive. As this concept dominates the market today, experts have defined innovation and inspired many companies to take the risk and innovate.
In this article, we will learn five innovation quotes that are popular in the business space. Let us examine the message behind these quotes and establish some takeaways.
Let’s start!
1. “Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” (William Pollard)
Innovation is a continuous learning process. It requires organizations to develop a clear understanding of their respective industries. They have to be knowledgeable about their chosen fields to recognize what works and what doesn’t.
As innovation requires learning, a business enterprise must be well-informed about the following aspects:
Familiarity With the Company
First, the employees have to be familiar with their company’s activities, processes, regulations, and culture.
Their awareness and knowledge about the ins and outs of the organization will help them determine whether or not the workplace supports creativity and innovation.
In essence, they will be able to identify which aspects of the business need to be refined. Only then will they be able to pinpoint what modifications are required to achieve a better innovation performance.
Understanding the Competition
Second, enterprises must stay up-to-date with what the competition is offering. Studying rival companies helps organizations come up with products and packages that are attractive for clients.
Not only can they make their products and services stand out, but they can also market their offerings better.
Studying Customer Behavior
Third, learning about what the clients want is essential in achieving innovation success. Taking the buying behavior into consideration, along with their needs and preferences, would help you build the best relationships with them.
With this knowledge, you will understand how to solve their problems well, create products and services that fit them best, and ultimately gain their utmost trust. However, every customer is different, so a unified approach might not work for everyone.
Learning about them more will help you tailor your strategies based on the information that you have regarding your audience.
Developing Innovation Skills
Lastly, there are plenty of innovation skills that you can learn to enhance your innovation process and strategies.
The best example of this would be critical thinking, a skill that allows you to make logical decisions, handle business crises, and review financial reports — things that are crucial and indispensable in managing the business.
2. Innovation is the process of turning ideas into manufacturable and marketable form. (Watts Humprey)
Innovation refers to the process of realizing new products, processes, propositions, or business models to create added value for customers and employees. Simply put, innovation means transforming new concepts into commercial, widespread use.
Nowadays, organizations understand that innovation is a necessity. It helps them thrive in a very competitive and saturated market. Moreover, it gives them a competitive advantage over companies that operate in the same industry.
Five Things to Remember About Innovation:
To explain this quote further, here are five things that we can learn from it about innovation:
- Innovation is a way of obtaining revenue and growth. To effectively respond to the needs of your market, your innovation process — from start to end — must entirely be customer-centric. It’s the only way for your brand to create innovations that would make an impact to your audience.
- Your innovation must be feasible. In other words, your resources must be enough to continuously deliver innovation to the market. Whether it be a process that requires change, or a feature that you want to add to your existing products, your resources must be enough to sustain it.
- The idea generation and selection process are imperative for innovation success. Generating and choosing the best ideas are essential steps towards innovating successfully, so created and selected concepts must be viable, impactful, and strategically-aligned with the business to respond to challenges effectively.
- Your innovation must add value to your customers and employees. Whatever form of innovation you choose, your output must be useful and effective for both your organization and your target audience. If it’s a business model, make sure that it caters to the needs of your clients. If it’s an additional feature, incorporate it with your existing product and service to make your customers happy. If it’s a process within the organization, implement it to contribute significantly to your innovation performance.
- You are what you innovate. Everything that you put out in the market symbolizes your brand, your values, and your company. People will recognize you for it. Hence, your innovation must not only align with your strategies; but also with your vision, principles, and objectives.
3. “Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.”(Steve Jobs)
Steve Jobs phrased his view about innovation in a way that supports this part. It emphasizes how significant employees are when it comes to a company’s innovation efforts.
According to Steve, what happened with Apple represents how successful innovation is a product of systematic research, effective management, and exceptional teamwork.
Realistically speaking, some innovations need considerable funding. However, money isn’t everything, and even investing in innovation labs might turn out negatively.
The people that you have can largely influence your innovation success. Your employees play a prominent part in keeping the business going, and they also can be your source of ideas and support during the innovation process.
Incorporate a culture that fosters creativity. Encourage your employees to share their thoughts on different aspects. Invite them to your brainstorming sessions. Ask for their perspectives regarding the challenges that your organization currently encounters
Moreover, consider their suggestions for improvements, and even their ideas. Many of your employees have enormous potential in terms of innovation. You only have to tap on it and enhance it in the long run.
How to Get Your Employees on Board the Innovation Process
Here are some methods that you can apply to encourage their participation in the innovation process of the business:
- Organize innovation challenges. Don’t forget to define your goals and establish key performance indicators. Set up the challenge, market it, and watch creative ideas flow in.
- Try anonymity in sharing ideas. Some employees want to share their insights anonymously for fear of rejection. Set a feature for undercover identities or create a private inbox where they can freely submit their ideas.
- Motivate your employees to work with other departments to establish a solid innovation strategy.
- Create an idea workshop. This method is time-consuming, but it can bring you viable ideas. Start the workshop with a lecture, discuss the innovation topic, gather ideas, and conduct a feedback phase.
- Make innovation kits. Allow your people to work on their idea, and if it passes designated stages, give them what they need to have it prototyped, even on a small scale. Allow them to present it to you and the organization’s stakeholders for further evaluation.
- Don’t forget to recognize brilliant ideas and credit them if it gets implemented.
4. “Innovation is fostered by information gathered from new connections, from insights gained by journeys into other disciplines or places, from active, collegial networks, and fluid, open boundaries. Innovation arises from ongoing circles of exchange, where information is not just accumulated or stored, but created. Knowledge is generated anew from connections that weren’t there before.” (Margaret J. Wheatley)
Employees are the lifeblood of companies. They are necessary for the growth and success of the business.
However, because of their differences, getting them to collaborate might be difficult. Their diverse backgrounds and experiences can be assets in achieving creative input, but they can also cause struggle too.
Employee collaboration is essential in delivering results. Getting them to work together can make them more efficient and innovative in approaching challenges. When they are more engaged and committed, they achieve a better performance that significantly contributes to the improvement of financial outcomes.
Effects of Employee Collaboration
With employee collaboration in place:
- Teams stay aligned, updated, and unified with the principal strategies of the business. In the process, they become more competitive and knowledgeable in handling various situations that are integral to the progress of the organization.
- They understand their roles better. In effect, they become more effective in performing their tasks and responsibilities in the innovation process.
- The combination of their talents, skills, and expertise creates optimal solutions in solving problems. They get to present unique ideas and discover the blind spots of every given concept.
- Tasks are divided equally, and project delivery time is either shortened or achieved.
- Team relationships improve.
5. “Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.” (Theodore Levitt)
In the tech space, these two terms are often confused with one another. However, as Levitt explains, creativity refers to how our minds produce viable ideas for the business, while innovation means putting these ideas into action.
Creativity is a subjective concept that causes us to generate optimal solutions. Innovation, on the other hand, is concrete and measurable. It comes as a result of an organization’s creative use of resources. It takes place when changes are introduced in stable systems within the company.
Creativity is what makes a business innovative. It is the primary factor that produces valuable business ideas. Innovation turns these ideas into a reality, making it a bringer of revenue and profit.
To put it simply, here are some effects of creativity and innovation:
Creativity results in:
- Productive thought processes. It pushes the mind to conceive viable ideas when presented with a situation.
- Unique perspectives in handling problems. Creativity allows an individual to discover and examine different angles in approaching challenges.
- A quicker way of doing things. People who are creative manage to recognize methods of getting their tasks done in the fastest ways possible.
- Tailor-fit strategies. Creative employees understand that a one-size-fits-all approach does not work in handling customers, so they devise numerous strategies to encourage loyalty and enhance customer service.
- Additional features, promos, and other techniques can be added to the current products and services of the enterprise. With customer-relevant information, creative people can identify what features and add-ons can boost the relevance and attractiveness of an offering.
Innovation brings:
- Competitive advantage. Your innovation sets you apart from other businesses offering the same line of products and services.
- Economic growth. Modified and improved processes lead to higher productivity and greater output. In turn, more goods and services are produced.
- Stronger customer engagement. Open innovations make use of customer participation, making them feel that their opinions are valued by the company.
- Improved customer experience. As productivity and efficiency are enhanced, customers are served better.
- Business survival. As a result of all the prior effects, the company stays and continues to operate.
Next steps: As Albert Einstein says, “you can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club”. Develop an organizational culture that supports innovation with Accept Mission’s consultancy services.
