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How Innovative is your Company?
03 Feb 2021Every company either claims to or wishes to be innovative. Who can blame them? The companies making headlines seem to be on the cutting edge of changing how industries operate. Being innovative isn’t a one-way street, the very same companies need Early adopters to buy into the hype, purchase & further promote the product further.
So what are some of these check boxes? Guy Kawasaki articulates this best in his TedX talk - ‘The Art of Innovation’ and here are some of his top tips that help you identify & drive innovation in your organization.
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Create Meaning - Most businesses today start off to do a task better than its competitor. Innovation rarely stems from beating your competitor. Creating Meaning is addressing a more universal problem / challenge or opportunity.
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Have a mantra - Ignore Mission Statements, they definitely motivated companies for the better half of the 20th century, however most teams will never be able to remember or recite your mission statements. If you can’t recall it, you can’t live it. If you can’t live it, the brand lacks the authenticity it requires to sustain itself.
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Jump the curve - Innovation is not incremental growth, it's leapfrogging the process. Focus on the benefit you are providing rather than the product you are providing.
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Roll the dice - Go out on a limb with the product or service you are providing. Does it serve more than one function. Has your business thought through the context in which your consumer is using your product and accounted for that too?
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Don’t worry, be crappy? It’s ok when you are at the cutting edge to not be perfect. It’s better to release a product, get the feedback necessary to improve it than to wait for an ideal world.
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Polarize People - If your product can evoke emotion, you are on the right path. It doesn’t always have to be good, but it does help ;)
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Niche thyself - Being Unique and Creating Value are the only things helping you shift the needle to innovation. You may have a smaller segment of the market by being niche to a particular industry, however revolutionizing the industry does still make you an innovator in that space.
Talent Acquisition and Culture are additional drivers to innovation as well:
Accenture suggests that it's equally important to nurture an innovation mindset and create a culture of equality to drive innovation.
Six Key Pillars to an Innovation Mindset
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Purpose: Alignment around and support for the purpose of the organization.
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Autonomy: Being shown a clear mandate for change—and being trusted to follow through.
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Resources: Having the tools, time and incentives necessary to innovate.
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Inspiration: Tapping into inspiration from beyond the organization.
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Collaboration: Working with other departments or in fluid, cross-function teams.
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Experimentation & Experimenting with new ideas quickly without fear of failure.
Accenture further stresses that a Culture of Equality showcases an innovation mindset by as much as six times against companies that don't have diversity and equality as a priority.
We are all operating in an increasingly global & fiercely competitive market; gender diversity, equality & innovation are no longer buzz words, but are characteristics of leading companies in this generation.
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Source:
- Guy Kawasaki & ‘The Art of Innovation’
- Accenture: Equality equals Innovation
- Banner Picture by Werner Du plessis
