Making the Case for Innovation in 4 Key Areas

image courtesy of todd dailey

Sometimes one of the most common problems that IdeaScale customers face is in educating others about the value of innovation. Businesses are often hesitant to invest real resources into an embedded innovation program, but as Herman Wories stated: “Innovation is no longer a competitive advantage: it’s a competitive necessity. In order to keep up, you need to continuously innovate.”

Innovation is not a startling concept, nor is it surprising that companies that invest in innovation tend to do better than those that don’t. It’s just that successful innovation that really ends up generating rewards for a company needs to be backed by real resources: some dedicated employees and some money for implementation and people get nervous about opening up the budget.

However, there are four key areas that can be impacted by innovation with numerous opportunities for returns on investment and they effect an entire organization. That’s why setting aside budget is a matter that should be considered by everyone. Those areas are:

•  Products. Many organizations that introduce a formal innovation program are looking to improve or replace a company offering. The changes can be small, basic alterations (like tweaks to an application’s user interface) or radical (an entirely new product line). This can be for anything that benefits an end user, from tangible products, to mobile applications, to government services and offerings.
•  Processes. Almost every organization can benefit from process suggestions that can impact savings, efficiency, and general operations on the micro or macro level. These suggestions can be small-scale improvements or high-reach changes that benefit an entire country.
•  Governance. Oftentimes, innovation can be about renovating an organization for the purposes of strengthening a position or accelerating company growth. And those changes can also be small-scale or disruptive.
•  And Markets. Innovations can sometimes completely redefine a market or create a new one. Changes here are almost always transformational in either fundamental or novel approaches to problems.

IdeaScale has created the innovation starter kit to help relieve the workload and ensure success for all burgeoning innovation teams no matter what area they are looking to impact.  Download the kit here and let us know if there’s anything else that we should include in future versions of this offer.