Innovation is the key to staying ahead of the business curve

25 Feb 2015

Every business needs to start doing more with less in order to reach new clients and make the best of its resources. In today's fast-paced business environment, innovation is the key to avoid falling behind; whether it's creating a new process to save on business expenses or developing a new game-changing product - these are all innovations.

Neville de Lucia

As a business leader, fostering innovation with a team is crucial in order to meet the ever-increasing goals. One of the first steps managers need to take is to ensure that their employees are engaged within the organisation. Managers need to value their employees' talents, be proactive, and foster a positive work environment.

In order for innovative ideas to flow, business leaders and managers need to ensure the below is applied:

Open communication between all employees;

Respect and admiration for individual abilities, qualities or achievements;

Proactive engagement with employees; and

Recognition and acknowledgement for great work.

Sometimes innovative ideas are instant and easily expressed, but, in most cases, innovation can be a tough process with various challenges." In order to ensure innovation resulting in success, the following steps, which will help guide employees in adopting an innovative thought process to reach the goals of the organisation, should be applied.

Increase your innovation success rate by applying these three steps to work through challenges and anticipate pitfalls:

Visualise: Visualise the ideal future, the 'should be' state. Determine the goals of the organisation by creating an image of the desired outcome, a vision of the 'should be' situation. Whether it is a problem to be overcome or an opportunity for improvement, the vision will help you set the course and motivate you to do 'green-light thinking'. As a team exercise when brainstorming innovative ideas, concentrate on quantity vs quality, as this allows idea fluency in the group;

Find the facts: Determine the 'as is' state. Get all of the facts right by determining the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the situation. Once all of the data is collected, analysing it will indicate the causes that should be altered or eliminated in order to solve the challenge; and

Find the challenges and opportunities: If you already know a problem, you can start the innovation process. A creative attitude is needed to meet the challenges head on. Do 'red-light thinking' and figure out the best idea or approach. Get consensus from the team, vote for the best idea, or use the criteria method. Execute the approach using timeframes to monitor the project's achievements, making the performance measurable. Following on from this, share the results of the innovation with team members, management, or shareholders in order to ensure that the successful method is adopted going forward.