Here’s a little quiz for you:
Which statement best represents the definition of Business Innovation?
A. The introduction of new products/services to the market.
B. The product of conventional R&D
C. None of the above
If you guessed C, you’d be correct.
The problem with A and B is that they encourage businesses from similar niches to use similar strategies which is not really innovative at all.
In order for a business to be truly innovative, it must allow its team leadership to expand on the organization’s vision and create new value and not necessarily new things. It is important to note that the best judges of whether an innovation is viable are the customers.
Types of Business Innovation
There are several kinds of business innovations:
- Business Model Innovation: Internally evaluating how your business operates and generates revenue. Often risky, this type of innovation identifies oversaturated markets, low client satisfaction and technological gaps in the market.
- Product Innovation: Designed to improve existing material goods or develop completely new products. Product innovation is by far the most common form of innovation.
- Marketing Innovation: Focuses on the creation of new markets or even increasing existing market shares. Looking at newer and disruptive approaches to engage audiences.
Creativity & Business Innovation: How do you drive exceptional outcomes?
Creativity and Business Innovation go hand in hand and while closely related they are ultimately two very different concepts.
Creativity can be seen as the root of innovation.
CREATIVITY + INNOVATION = BUSINESS SUCCESS
The key difference between the two is that creativity does not culminate with tangible outcomes, it cannot be easily measured. However, innovation can be defined, implemented and measured, once a new idea, method, or product is made.
Therefore, choosing the right leadership, and curating the best team members to cultivate a high performance environment of thinking out of the box and going against established norms can go a long way towards your business growth and success.
Innovation is turning an idea into reality regardless of the
challenges and resistance that might be present.
The Benefits of Creativity in Business Innovation
Creativity is an important component in business and does many things to help an organization reach and exceed its goals.
- Generating novel and innovative ideas to grow your business.
- Engages your audience, enhancing buyer potential and keeping your business top of mind.
- Helps to obtain newer perspectives in terms of streamlining your business processes and effectively resolving financial and operational problems. As such, creativity will enable you to ignore the status quo and venture into new uncharted possibilities.
- Allows conventional solutions to be dropped and newer and versatile options explored through out of the box thinking.
- Problem-solving is at its best when combined with critical thinking by encouraging creative ways to explore unusual solutions for the same issue.
Creativity & Business Innovation in your workforce
Generally the members in your workforce can hold a wealth of untapped ideas. Investing time and fostering a safe workplace environment to tap into this wealth of ideas and creativity within your team, can allow your business to achieve outstanding results and outcomes when it comes to business profitability, financial strength, and decision-making.
By allowing your employees to feel safe to voice their ‘out of the box ideas’, you increase your employee satisfaction, harvest a higher performance rate within the business, which in turn bolsters employee retention. It’s a WIN-WIN for everyone!
How Do You Develop Creativity & Innovation In Your Business?
As a leader, you need to foster and support both innovation and creativity throughout the makeup of your company’s culture and integrate this into the way you design your processes. Oftentimes, the most effective means of sparking creativity and innovation is permitting activities within your organization that deviate from the norm that invariably result in favorable outcomes.
The hardest thing you’ll have to deal with is prompting your team to imagine and develop new visions of what could be possible. By bringing in external influencers, such as mentoring, coaching and exposure to diverse peer group programs can help to spark creativity and new horizons.
From Project Manager to Business Owner, CEO, Entrepreneur and now Executive Coach, if your business is getting stuck in the weeds and needs some creative innovation to push your business growth to higher levels, get in touch with me today. Email me at chris26hardwick@gmail.com.
Meet Chris Hardwick
Executive Business Coach
For over 20 years I've been helping entrepreneurs and business leaders to realize their dreams and achieve success.
As an entrepreneur, world traveler, adventurer, and motivator, I lead by example. My goal is to inspire you with my passion for life, success and happiness.
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