So you’ve finally done it – you’ve established your own business. Over time, you have successfully acquired valuable customers, generated awareness of your products or services and developed a team of top-notch employees. With all of these important pieces in place, growth seems to be happening naturally. You’re well on your way to producing significant results.
However, sustaining that growth will be critical to your business’ future. Most of us hope that growth will continue along this organic path; but marketplace changes and competitive forces will inevitably shake things up along the way.
Given these factors, then, how can you develop a strategy that keeps your business growing?
One answer might be to cultivate a culture of innovation. From crafting unique ideas to designing processes that ensure these initiatives are well-executed, smart, sustainable small businesses are quickly making innovation a part of their overall business strategy.
Some Tips for Creating an Innovation Culture
To get you started, we’ve outlined four key strategies for creating an innovative business climate that moves beyond “out of the box” ideas and aims to drive real business growth.
1. Set an example for innovation
Support the idea of “breakthrough” thinking through your words and actions. Breakthroughs not only stimulate rapid growth, they can launch your company into new markets, make you an industry leader, enable rapid growth, and create a high return on investment.
It’s helpful to think of breakthrough innovation along the lines of three core components: people, processes and products. Clearly, product innovation is the most common. Process improvements can also improve the bottom line by keeping cash flow healthy. People innovations may include creative employee programs to increase morale and improve retention.
2. Encourage innovative, creative thinking from your employees
Show your employees that you think of innovation as an ongoing process. Some ideas will work and many won’t. Keep trying.
One idea is to schedule a monthly “creativity forum” to which employees are encouraged to bring one new idea. Emphasize that no ideas are “dumb” – sometimes it takes a group to brainstorm possible uses and benefits to make ideas come alive.
3. Develop methods to the creativity madness
White boarding is a tried and true technique designed to spur organizational creativity. Try white boarding an idea or issue in a public area of the organization, allowing two weeks for employees to contribute ideas to address the issue. Another technique, which could be used in the monthly creativity forum, involves brainstorming. In this case, the entire group passes around a piece of paper to contribute their ideas and add on to others’ ideas.
4. Ask for feedback early and often
Innovation is a collaborative process. First, draw on your own employees—they know the company’s problems and goals best. Next, tap your most valuable customers for their ideas. New processes, products or approaches will affect them first and foremost, so their perspective will not only prove invaluable, it will make them feel like partners in your business’ success.
Most important, be patient. Creativity can’t be hurried. Companies, like any living organism, must become learning organizations that change and adapt to suit their evolving environment.
To read more on this subject try one of these books:
The Ten Faces of Innovation by Thomas Kelley & Jonathan Littman
Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want by Curtis R. Carlson and Willim W. Wilmot
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