Growth plan – Innovate or Stagnate?
Innovation is the only way to win – Steve Jobs
You might have heard many corporate giants use the term "Business Innovation".?
Business Innovation: What is it? – Creation of new ideas, processes, or services by using new ideas and methodologies. It involves establishing procedures that enable you to manage idea discovery, development, and implementation in a repeatable, scalable, and sustainable manner.
Why do Corporates choose to innovate?
What are the problems for Corporates to innovate?
Identifying diverse ideas and resources to create new market opportunities
How do we solve these problems?
·?????Collecting ideas from employee
Implementing employee innovation programs to empower employees to share their ideas. Major corporates like Amazon, Panasonic, Intel, and Honda have programs to digitally gather, develop and implement employee ideas. For e.g., Amazon began a challenge to find a new type of customer loyalty that would radically change the retail industry. Employees regardless of their role or title shared their ideas in the digital employee suggestion box. Result – “Amazon Prime”.
·?????Continuous Improvement
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As part of continuous improvement, organizations streamline and enhance their existing products, processes, and services. As a result, you save a lot of money, you're more productive, and your products and services will be stronger. For e.g. DuPont Shenzhen plant was battling to improve employee empowerment and shop floor engagement. As part of its continuous improvement program, DuPont implemented the DPS system. Results –
·?????Open Innovation
Open innovation is similar to employee innovation, except ideas come from external sources, such as customers, partners, or industry experts. The gathering of knowledge and ideas from these resources allows businesses to tap into unheard voices and opinions and drive long-term business growth by constantly assessing and implementing new ideas. For e.g. NASA developed a mathematical algorithm to determine the correct amount of medical supplies for future missions in space. 2.2 lakh developers signed up for NASA's challenge with TopCoder. Results – “2,833 innovative ideas”.
·?????Scouting
Scouting is a strategic form of innovation that involves searching for existing technologies and services to partner with or buy out. If organizations don’t have the resources or time to develop new products, innovation scouting gives businesses the opportunity to stay abreast of market changes. For e.g. Google focuses on acquisitions of technology solutions that solve immediate market concerns and which have future technology potential to stimulate company growth. Results – “Google acquired YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion dollars which generated $28.8 billion dollars in the year 2021 (46% year-on-year growth)”.
Implementing “Business Innovation”
Corporates are now developing business innovation teams with different names like Corporate Strategy/ Development, Open Innovation, R&D, New Business Development, VC/ CVC, Application, etc. These teams have been using traditional methods like in-house/ manual research and customer feedback which are important, but do they provide exhaustive and unbiased information?
Let’s think - Can we have complete confidence in the traditional research process and take business decisions based on these insights?
?Accenture Report says that only 32% of companies are able to realize tangible value from data while only 27% of companies produce insights and recommendations which are highly actionable.
?Corporates need to think beyond traditional methods and use AI automation tools to research and access global/ exhaustive & unbiased data.
P.S. How effective is your business innovation?