What do you do if your business innovation needs a boost?

Here's how to jumpstart it: - Seek Inspiration: Look outside your industry. Attend conferences, connect with startups, or hire external consultants. - Empower Your Team: Create a safe space for brainstorming. Encourage wild ideas and experimentation, even if they seem far-fetched. - Celebrate Calculated Risks: Failure is part of innovation. Celebrate attempts and learnings, even from unsuccessful ideas. - Focus on Customer Needs: Talk directly to your customers. Understand their pain points and unmet needs. - Fuel Creativity: Invest in resources like design thinking workshops, prototyping tools, or access to new technologies.

Why do you need a boost? Figure that out first. Perhaps all you need is something tried and true - but you're arriving for something new and elusive.

‘Business Innovation’ means a lot. Everything in a business – innovation in products, processes etc. In the late 80s and 90s, one of the good examples of business innovation was 3M Corp. It used to have two basic principles and directions for its business heads and one of those was about business innovation. Every business head was responsible for ensuring that 75% of its revenue came in from products which were not older than 4 years. This led to a good tern – ‘intrapreneurship’. The other principle was related to Return on Capital Employed (ROCE). In the present corporate world, driving ‘innovation’ is the responsibility of the Board of Directors. It should be a regular agenda in their meetings and drive the program very closely.

Focus on setting innovation goals that align with long-term sustainability and societal impact. Action Items: 1. Analyze market trends, customer needs, and emerging technologies. 2. Prioritize goals based on growth potential and value creation. 3. Engage stakeholders for alignment and buy-in. 4. Establish clear metrics and milestones. 5. Regularly review and adapt goals to changing conditions. Implement SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) Goal Setting Tata Group's innovative goals align with sustainable growth & societal impact, setting benchmarks in diverse sectors.

To boost business innovation, nurture creativity, collaborate across teams, adopt new technologies, conduct market research, pilot initiatives, invest in training, adapt based on feedback, seek strategic partnerships, and celebrate achievements.

Inspiration for innovation can be found in many places online and offline, but it all starts with curiosity. An easy first step can be taken by doing desk research into emerging technologies, trends and experiments. When more time available, it can be useful, and fun, to go out. See if you can visit events or interesting places on the topics you are interested in. Do not forget to involve other, like colleagues, during this exploration. Having a conversation on the next trends and technologies can be more inspiring than reading another article or watching another video. Try to find and connect with colleagues who share your interests and level of curiosity. This can also be your first step in creating a culture of innovation.

Leverage cutting-edge technologies to enhance products, services, and processes. Action Items: 1. Stay updated on latest trends and best practices. 2. Experiment with different tools and platforms. 3. Assess impact on efficiency, quality, and customer experience. 4. Pilot new technologies in controlled environments. Scale successful implementations for broader impact. Technology Adoption Lifecycle: Helps to anticipate market trends, identify target audiences, and tailor their marketing and product development strategies accordingly. How segments embrace the technology. Reliance Jio revolutionized the telecom industry with 4G technology, transforming connectivity in India. At the same time, it was future ready with 5G capability.

The center focus of business innovation is to keep understanding where customers are going. Consequently it is highly beneficial to engage with them, with their customers and as well with your suppliers. Standing by the motto that “innovation is creativity in action”, redesigning how value is shared along the pathway towards the final customer is the critical mindset. Check out “NEXT: How to innovate from within”

Incorporate customer feedback and co-create solutions for better alignment. Action Items: 1. Conduct surveys, interviews, and co-creation sessions. 2. Launch beta tests and pilots for early validation. 3. Actively listen to customer needs and preferences. 4. Iterate based on feedback and iterate. 5. Foster long-term relationships for ongoing collaboration. Uncover innovation solution with Design thinking. A problem-solving approach that prioritizes empathy, creativity, and experimentation. It involves understanding user needs, generating ideas, prototyping solutions, and iterating based on feedback. Amazon's customer-centric approach drives innovation, co-creating solutions based on user feedback.

Innovation can never be done in siloes. Simple observations can give you amazing insights. Your customers are end users, internal firm employees. Key is to break away for hierarchies. - Understand people's pain-points. Will provide a great clue for him to come up with something innovative - Re-check with them, share your hypothesis, learn from them, get their feedback, re-interate. In this way you can involve your consumers and come up with something innovative that benefits them.

Cultivate an environment that encourages creativity, collaboration, experimentation and learn from failure. Action Items: 1. Establish shared values and beliefs around innovation. 2. Provide resources, incentives, and recognition. 3. Encourage risk-taking and learning from failures. 4. Empower employees to contribute ideas & initiatives. 5. Promote cross-functional collaboration & knowledge sharing. Innovation Culture Assessment evaluates an organization's environment, processes, and attitudes towards innovation, to identify strengths and areas for improvement in fostering innovation. Google's 20% Time policy fosters innovation culture, empowering employees to pursue passion projects.

A culture of innovation is culture that can be cultivated. Corporate culture is dead, build innovation culture instead! Yeahh Protip: Innovation culture encourages new and radical ideas to be discussed. Innovation culture “forces” collaboration between teams. Innovation culture focus on best ideas instead of best job title/seniorities. Innovation culture rewards the right behaviours and punish bad habits. All the best! 😇

Provide training and development opportunities to employees to enhance their innovation skills. Offer workshops, seminars, and online courses focused on creativity, design thinking, and innovation methodologies.

Embrace failures as opportunities for learning and improvement. Action Items: 1. Adopt a growth mindset towards failures. 2. Analyze root causes and lessons learned. 3. Implement corrective actions and improvements. 4. Share insights and best practices with the team. 5. Encourage experimentation and risk-taking. Failure Analysis and Continuous Improvement: A systematic process of identifying the root causes of failures, learning from them, and implementing corrective actions to prevent recurrence, fostering a culture of innovation and driving continuous improvement. Tata factory adopts "fail fast" approach, encouraging rapid experimentation and learning from failures to drive innovation and continuous improvement.

What to do when your business innovation needs a boost? Bring in fresh perspectives, talk to people outside of your regular networks, go to unfamiliar places, step out of your comfort zone, add unusual suspects to the team... Develop a bespoke inspiration program based on both the business objectives and the needs of the team.

In my experience, when your business innovation needs a boost, it indicates that conventional wisdom has crept into your thinking. Your circle of collaborators is homologous. It happens to every organization over time. The boost you need is found in unconventional, uncommon resources. Venture far beyond your peers and industry. Explore new industries, countries, and cultures. Actively engage with these new resources to gain new insights. What may be standard practice for them may be revolutionary for you. To boost your #BusinessInnovation, collaborate with resources in seemingly unrelated environments, and you'll find the double espresso boost you need to propel your company forward. Innovatively!

Protip: I observe companies will do much better in fostering innovation culture had the spend longer time canvassing it. Innovation culture takes time because it is a big change. People are not use to share ideas, now you want them too. What is the appropriate timing span? Range between 12-36 months. Microsoft under Satya Nadella said it took them 36-48 months to see the needle move a little bit. All the best! 🫡