Innovation means coming up with new ideas. It is generally referred to as creating more effective or modification of processes, ideas, and products. The future success of almost all businesses is tied by how much they emphasize on being innovative. The most powerful companies at the helm can trace their success on innovative changes they made several years back. Also, some companies’ failures can be rooted due to their lack of being innovative especially in this era where technology is forcing all business to be highly innovative or be left in the cold (Dibrell et al, 2014). One company that attributes its success to innovation, is the Amazon to a point that it has been chosen as the most innovative company. Amazon started as a bookstore but embraced the opportunity of the evolving technology and now it is the world largest online retailer. Innovation creates efficiency in work processes and improves the performance and productivity of a company.
Key Steps Toward Business Innovation
Innovation varies from one company to another because they may not be dealing with the same products or services. Even for companies in the same field, they may take different innovative ways which will lead to the success of their companies because innovation is based on creativity. But for innovation to work perfectly, a film is supposed to follow a number of the key steps illustrated below.
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Analysis of the Market Trends
A film should create an innovation department which will be entitled with bringing in new ideas. It should include representatives from all departments of the firm because any new change in any of these departments can change the firm’s performance. This department is then supposed to conduct a thorough analysis of how the market environment is trending, for example, what are the customers’ needs and closely watched how your competitors are faring (Autio et al, 2014).
Being in touch with the customer will help a firm improve on its products and services to the customers’ satisfaction, this will help the company to prevail. Also, analyzing how your competitors are doing helps the company to know where to improve themselves better than their competitors which will make them gain more customers. For example, Amazon has made delivery of good and services to be more efficient and minimized the waiting time, this move has earned them more customers than all their other competitors.
Consult Customers and Employees
If a firm is planning to be successful, it should highly consider consulting customers and employees on how processes, services, and products could be improved. Since the customers are the ones who consume the product or use the services, they have better ideas of how they like them, for example, change of tastes, flavors, etc. so as to feel satisfied. Employees, on the other hand, deal directly with the production of these goods and services. They may have great ideas on how a certain product may be improved to achieve a certain quality or how the company’s process may be improved or changed to increase its efficiency (Dibrell et al, 2014). With such ideas, the innovation team is supposed to compile all the ideas together and discuss them. Getting new ideas from these two entities makes the innovation team’s work easier and more idealistic than what they would have achieved on their own.
Seek Advice
When enrolling in new plans, a firm is supposed not only to consult its stakeholder but also seek advice from those who may have more knowledge about it. Seeking advice helps the firm to recognize the pros and cons of their intended plans and this helps them to gauge how successful the plan can be (Autio et al, 2014). For example, when Amazon decided on engaging in a completely new line of business such a ‘cashless Society: Go’ on its retail shops, it had to seek advice from various agencies on how successful this process would be. Also when establishing new stores abroad, Amazon needed advice from the local expertise on issues such as the culture and taste of customers or the legal requirement of establishing the business. Also, a firm may find the advice of a business advisor very helpful when it is planning on changing or creating a certain process.
Be Adaptive to Change
A firm that is not ready for change is deemed to fail in the future. Customers’ needs keep changing with time. Firms in the current era have been pressured to change their operation by the fast-evolving technology. It has led to the death of many of them which were not ready to adapt to the new environments. For example, most postal corporations that are still surviving in this era of modern technology were those that designed new processes that would allow them to continue on. With the fast decline, sending and receiving of letters, they engaged in other activities such as delivery of goods among other services (Terjesen & Patel, 2017). A firm that is able to adapt quicker than its competitors always have an upper hand in dictating the market.
Development of a Strategic, Responsive Plan
The biggest challenge to any innovation team is that of coming up with a strategic and responsive plan. A plan of such quality is required to have included all possible aspects that would be of great importance in addressing the future of the firm. The plan should include all the details on how it will be conducted and whether it will pay off. It is also supposed to create a clear picture of how such changes will help the film to stay afloat or compete with its rival presently and in the future. The plan should be able to eliminate unforeseen challenges or should be capable of smoothly handling those challenges when they arise (Terjesen & Patel, 2017). Lastly, a good plan should also create room for future changes and this will help in longer survival and profitability of the firm.
Training and Empowering Employees
A firm that is determined of being innovative is supposed to train all its employees from top to down to think innovatively. Working in an environment where everyone has some ideas on how to improve the firm is very advantageous to any senior executive. When all employees are well trained and empowered, it allows smooth flow of new ideas throughout the firm which helps in improving its products and services (Dibrell et al, 2014).
In conclusion, any firm that is planning to be successful should consider innovation as it a core goal. Even if innovation is usually expensive and time-consuming, it is results are great. Any firm should understand that for innovation to be perfectly addressed, it requires teamwork and cannot be achieved by the CEO alone or by a group of senior executives alone but by all employees, and also include the opinion of customers.
References
Autio, E., Kenney, M., Mustar, P., Siegel, D., & Wright, M. (2014). Entrepreneurial innovation: The importance of context. Research Policy , 43 (7), 1097-1108.
Dibrell, C., Craig, J. B., & Neubaum, D. O. (2014). Linking the formal strategic planning process, planning flexibility, and innovativeness to firm performance. Journal of Business Research , 67 (9), 2000-2007.
Terjesen, S., & Patel, P. C. (2017). In search of process innovations: The role of search depth, search breadth, and the industry environment. Journal of Management , 43 (5), 1421-1446.
