Business innovation is essential for staying ahead of the competition, solving customer problems, and creating value. But how do you manage your time for business innovation when you have so many other tasks and responsibilities? Here are some tips to help you prioritize, plan, and execute your innovation projects.
Before you start any innovation project, you need to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve, why it matters, and how you will measure success. Having SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals will help you focus your efforts, avoid distractions, and track your progress. Write down your goals and review them regularly to keep yourself motivated and aligned.
Setting the goal is important. However, it's critical to ensure that your operational objectives (they may well meet the SMART criteria) do not replace your higher aim. Innovation for the sake of innovation tends to produce dubious, self-serving results. Make sure that your innovation objectives are aligned with the strategic direction of your team, function, and/or company. Being meaningfully ambitious and mindful of your goals sets your business innovation initiatives up for greater success??.
Innovation requires time to research, brainstorm, experiment, and iterate. You can't expect to come up with brilliant ideas or solutions in a few minutes or hours. You need to dedicate some blocks of time for innovation in your calendar, and treat them as important appointments. Ideally, you should schedule time for innovation at least once a week, and avoid interruptions or distractions during that time. You can also use tools like Pomodoro or Timeboxing to manage your time more effectively.
In my experience, scheduling a "Deep Work Time" from the day-to-day does wonders. Deep Work is a skill to develop, on that note: 1. Having that specific time from clarity, 2. Set goals, 3. Distraction-free environment 4. Pomodoro Technique 5. Disconnect notifications You can make significant strides in your innovation projects by dedicating focused, uninterrupted time for them.
Innovation is not a solo activity. You need to involve other people who can provide different perspectives, feedback, and support. Collaboration can help you generate more ideas, validate your assumptions, and improve your outcomes. You can collaborate with your colleagues, customers, partners, or mentors, depending on your project and goals. You can use online platforms, tools, and methods to facilitate collaboration, such as Slack, Zoom, Google Docs, Design Thinking, or Scrum.
Collaboration is important only when there is value to be provided by both parties. It is important to look at what each of the parties bring to the table during innovation activities, this can help bring a win-win scenario where each person is sufficiently motivated to work towards the innovation goal.
Innovation involves taking risks, trying new things, and making mistakes. You can't expect to succeed in every innovation project, but you can learn from your failures. Failures are opportunities to gain insights, feedback, and lessons that can help you improve your innovation process and results. Instead of avoiding or hiding your failures, you should embrace and share them. You should also celebrate your failures as signs of learning and growth, and not as reasons to give up or blame yourself.
Innovation doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. Sometimes, the simplest ideas or solutions can have the biggest impact. You don't need to reinvent the wheel or create something from scratch. You can use existing resources, tools, and methods to innovate faster and cheaper. You can also apply the principle of MVP (minimum viable product) to test your ideas or solutions with real users before investing too much time or money. You should aim to create value for your customers and stakeholders, not complexity for yourself.
We make time for the things that matter. Organizations that lead in the Innovation space make time, resources and tools available to support innovation. Having a clear framework and program to drive your innovation efforts allows you maximise your output effectively.