Innovation: The Survival Skill

By Sharon O’Toole

Bestprowrite

What innovation is – And what it isn’t

What a company or an industry does must make a difference for people. Whether you are making smartphones, designing complex systems, providing food, shelter, transportation, entertainment, information, luxuries, or various services, the bottom-line is that you are providing value to your customers.

New innovative ideas or adaptations, large or small, all have one thing in common. While they must provide customer value, they also must actually work and be useful. They must be something that can be replicated. And they must be economically feasible.

But innovation is not just about bells and whistles. It is not just an extension of something that already exists. It is about conceiving of and creating something new or unusual, providing something better or unique to your customers. It must be targeted. It must have a realized value. Innovation is a mystery at times and it is complicated. It can involve a totally new approach or just a small tweak to an existing product or process.

The goal of innovation, while customer focused, is not just altruistic. From the company standpoint, the goal is to gain a competitive advantage over your competition. All innovations have one of these fundamental goals:

• To introduce something new or unique
• To extend the range of existing products (by either adding or streamlining)
• To create, improve, replace or eliminate a process

And by doing these things, to retain current customers and gain new ones. It is not enough just to make a verbal commitment to change, to declare it a priority. You must support it and develop the environment that will not only solve today’s problems but be positioned to handle problems of the future, as yet unseen. An organization that does not consistently strive to and makes progress in adapting to the changing nature of markets will not maintain its current place in its market. It will wither and eventually die.

The Innovative Culture

Innovation is the fundamental source of growth and sustainability in an organization. It takes a concerted effort to establish and maintain an innovative culture. It seems like a simple enough idea, but developing such a culture requires a clear strategy. A truly innovative company is one that has developed a strategy that is relevant to the business but unique in its market.

Organizational leaders might want to innovate. They might want leadership in their industry or market, or even to move into new industries. But they may not know how to develop the strategies and...

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