How Is Your Business Different?

In such a competitive market, innovation is more important than ever and all entrepreneurs and business owners should always be on the lookout for new ideas and inventions that can differentiate them from their competitors.

Innovation has been the unsung hero of our economy the past few years and it is a concept we should embrace, particularly when it comes to strategy planning.

If you’re thinking about starting a business, you need to consider the necessity of your product or service. If people aren’t going to feel as though they need it, it will not succeed. You need to find a way of filling a gap and identifying an issue in the market, which you can then solve through innovation.

To make sure you are staying ahead of the game, one of the first things you need to do is define your USP. It is important to know how you are better than the next chap, how your product or service is leaps and bounds above the rest and when selecting your USP you must consider what your customers will gain, and base your brand around that.

It can be really difficult to establish how you stand out from the crowd, perhaps financially, you aren’t able to match a competitor’s price or pace of production – instead utilise the benefits of innovation.

A famous example of a business effectively taking an innovative approach are the creators of Avis; they understood that as a new business they couldn’t automatically get ahead of their competitors, Hertz, so instead they used this to their advantage and came up with the slogan “We're number two. We try harder” and tripled their market share in just four years.

Now this is an extreme example, not everyone has the audacity to make such a big statement but by thinking outside the box they made a lasting impression on the market, which will always be remembered.

Innovation can be applied to lots of different components of a business such as customer satisfaction, don’t underestimate the value of customer service; this alone can be your USP. Taking an innovative approach to the way you treat your customers can be the be all and end all because ultimately, your success is in their hands.

Many businesses come to a standstill when it comes to scaling further, which is perfect timing to take innovation into consideration. More often than not, there are already creative people with innovative ideas within the business; they just haven’t had the chance to shine. One thing I always encourage businesses to do is embrace an entrepreneurial spirit, communicate to your team that you are open to ideas and you’ll be surprised at the outcome

I may not be the most innovative and creative of people but what I have been able to do is identify the people who are and bring them in to my businesses. Success in business is about two components; it’s where innovation meets commerce and that’s where I play my role. My job is to show my innovative colleagues how to monitories and capitalise on their ideas in order to commercially execute it.