Every company needs to have a plan to move forward, but in today’s modern world, moving forward isn’t enough. Businesses need to adapt to remain competitive with their peers—and your customers expect it from you. In order to meet this need, companies are turning to business innovation strategies to push themselves ahead of the competition.
In this article, we will explore what a business innovation strategy is and why you should be working on one for your business right now.
Why Do I Need a Business Innovation Strategy?
Defining the Business Innovation Strategy
A business innovation strategy is a strategy that is centred around advancing your business in an adaptive way.
Innovation is all about bringing your business into the future by changing the way that your team thinks.
Business Innovation strategies rely on implementing new ideas and trying out new projects in an effort to yield the best path for your company’s future — and they can work wonders when used correctly!
The Power of an Innovative Mindset
A major part of your business innovation strategy will be influencing the mindset of your people.
It takes you away from a simple problem and solution focus, to an adaptive focus. As a result, your company will begin to lean on specific areas of innovation — and the areas will often change with time.
The commitment might be to reducing costs or developing new products to suit customer needs.
As you begin to take on a more innovative mindset, new areas for potential innovation will present themselves as well.
When this ball starts rolling, you will find that it is much easier to build an innovative culture that helps you perform better than your competition in every area.
Innovative efforts applied internally and externally will help your company perform more effectively than ever before.
The Importance of Innovation
Let’s be honest, innovation isn’t the hottest word in the business right now. However, in reality, innovation is the way of the future.
Today’s world is focused on technology — and empowered by it.
We are able to implement new ideas better than ever before, and we are doing it quickly.
Modern technology has made idea sharing and communication possible through incredible platforms.
With these developments, digital spaces are being filled with exciting new innovation opportunities that are changing companies forever.
Innovation is not only important because it can yield good results.
While business innovation strategies lead to increased sales or better products, their true power is in the transformation that they offer.
Innovation doesn’t just improve companies.
It rewrites them.
With a business innovation strategy, companies don’t just improve.
They grow in new ways that would have otherwise been missed — and these changes vary on an individual basis.
Every business has something to gain from its own business innovation strategy.
It doesn’t need to be limited to an industry or specific areas of focus.
Over time, the innovative mindset that fills your company will begin to inspire new changes.
That is where the magic happens.
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The Impact a Business Innovation Strategy Can Have
Any time that a company begins creating a business innovation strategy, it will begin with small and simple goals.
Most companies opt for something general, like improving employee engagement or coming up with a new product.
Some companies even have an open platform to allow for idea submissions — and that is where everything starts to change.
Vattenfall is a great example of how new ideas can have a really big impact and drive change positively.
Using idea management software, during an innovation competition Vattenfall received a total of 91 unique ideas, focused on the topic of sustainability.
Of those ideas shared, there were 369 interactions surrounding them.
Giving each idea the necessary time to evolve, a dedicated innovation board subsequently reduced it to a few key ideas.
Finally, a winner emerged – de-icing rotor blades on wind turbines using infrared heat.
This single idea reduced generation losses by 10%, saved the company up to 1 million SEK per turbine and enhanced crucial safety protocols.
The best part is that all of these gains came from a single idea from an employee.
(disclaimer – Vattenfall used our Idea Management Software)
Download the Vattenfall Case Study for FREE
What an Innovation Strategy Could Offer Your Business
Innovation is a new type of business culture, and there is a lot that it can offer when built into your strategy.
Each new idea can bring your company closer to being the best version of itself. Whether that is scaling up to accommodate the needs of customers or improving the way that your company interacts with its customers, business innovation strategies can see these changes through.
It is the process by which you will find the right way forward for your company — and when it works, it really works.
Conclusion
Embracing innovation as a key part of your company strategy is the way of today’s modern business. And, if you are looking to bring your company forward in a way that allows you to stay relevant and continue to grow, a business innovation strategy is a must.
Instead of choosing a singular path to follow, consider opening your mindset and allow your company to look for all of the ways forward.
This will help you to find the right path at the right time.
With this focus, you can certainly help your company to move into the future with confidence.
A confidence that will help to find a better way to suit the needs of your customers.
