What do you do if your business growth is stagnant despite technological innovation?

1 Assess your value proposition

The first thing you need to do is to evaluate your value proposition. This is the core benefit that your customers get from using your products or services, and the reason why they choose you over your competitors. Technological innovation can enhance your value proposition, but it can also dilute it or make it irrelevant if you lose sight of your customers' needs and preferences. Ask yourself: How does your innovation solve a real problem or create a new opportunity for your customers? How does it differentiate you from your rivals? How do you communicate and deliver it to your target market?

2 Align your innovation strategy

The next thing you need to do is to align your innovation strategy with your business goals and capabilities. This means that you need to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve with your innovation, and how it fits with your overall mission, vision, and values. You also need to have the resources, skills, and processes to execute your innovation projects effectively and efficiently. Ask yourself: What are the objectives and outcomes of your innovation initiatives? How do they support your strategic priorities and competitive advantage? How do you allocate and manage your innovation resources and teams?

3 Engage your stakeholders

The third thing you need to do is to engage your stakeholders in your innovation journey. These are the people who have an interest or influence in your business, such as your customers, employees, partners, suppliers, investors, regulators, and community. They can provide you with valuable feedback, insights, ideas, and support for your innovation efforts, or they can resist, criticize, or sabotage them. Ask yourself: How do you involve and communicate with your stakeholders throughout your innovation process? How do you solicit and respond to their input and feedback? How do you address their concerns and expectations?

4 Experiment and learn

The fourth thing you need to do is to experiment and learn from your innovation activities. This means that you need to adopt a mindset of testing, learning, and adapting your innovation ideas and solutions, rather than assuming that you know what works best. You also need to measure and evaluate your innovation performance and impact, and use the data and insights to improve your innovation practices and outcomes. Ask yourself: How do you design and conduct experiments to validate or invalidate your innovation assumptions and hypotheses? How do you collect and analyze data and insights from your innovation experiments? How do you use the learning to iterate and improve your innovation solutions?

5 Scale and sustain

The fifth thing you need to do is to scale and sustain your innovation results. This means that you need to have a plan and a process to scale up your successful innovation solutions to reach more customers, markets, and regions, and to sustain them over time. You also need to have a culture and a system that supports and rewards innovation across your organization, and that fosters continuous innovation and learning. Ask yourself: How do you identify and select the best innovation solutions to scale up? How do you manage the risks and challenges of scaling up innovation? How do you embed and nurture innovation in your organizational culture and structure?