Innovation is the heart and soul of progress and change is inevitable in business. If you want your business to stay above it all, you have to accept it. And if you want it to thrive, you initiate it.
In this article, I go through the approaches industries’ leaders take to enable change. Their methods have created great success, so they’re definitely worth giving a shot.
No matter the size of a company, innovation drives success. See how the world’s biggest disruptors change the business world with their actions.
There are a handful of innovators that seem to run the show in any given industry. These are businesses that aren’t afraid to break out of the norm and focus their efforts on initiating major changes. All other players either follow in their footsteps or lag behind.
As you read this, you’ve probably identified a few names in your head. Apple, Amazon, and Netflix are perfect examples of the movers and shakers that left an indelible mark on their industries.
Contrary to popular belief, innovation doesn’t have to be ground-breaking to set a business apart from the crowd. Often times, a few minor changes in the way things get done can go a long way.
However, when it comes down to it, many businesses struggle to initiate change. Rather than being proactive, they play it safe and follow the leader. This might work for some time, but it’s not viable in the long run.
So, what are the secrets behind an innovator’s success? Is it just the sheer luck of being in the right place at the right time?
Not exactly. Innovation is a focused effort that requires careful planning. To show you what this looks like in practice, let’s take a look at some of the most successful examples.
1. Empowering Your Champions
When creating any innovation program, you should start by identifying your innovation champions. These are the people that have the power to turn a concept into an innovative product or service. Innovative as in introducing a change.
Generally, the search for such individuals starts in the company itself. However, many businesses decide to hire from third party sources if there are no people who could do this in-house.
What’s an innovation champion? Many people mistakenly simplify this to someone who has a vision. But it takes much more than an idea to introduce a game-changing innovation.
Visionaries often think way beyond their business’ limitations. They have big ideas and are willing to do whatever it takes to bring them to fruition. The issue arises when it gets tough to concretise those ideas, which visionaries often can’t do themselves.
This is where implementers come into play. They look at the visionary’s ideas and move the right resources in their direction. They’re often firm leaders and excellent communicators who know how to spread the idea among those who are best-placed to turn it into a reality.
Both visionaries and implementers are innovation champions that you need to empower. When working together, they can bring ground-breaking changes to a business, so you need to give them the encouragement they need to do it.
This requires freedom and resources, which you’ll have to invest in the name of innovation. With the right encouragement, this investment can pay off multifold.
2. Calculated Increases in R&D Spending
Research and Development (R&D) is a major innovation driver. The resources you devote to R&D play a crucial role in your company’s ability to move forward. This can be true for more than tech companies.
If you need an example, look no further than Apple. The tech giant is famous for creativity and innovation, to which it owes its incredible success. Among others, Apple’s calculated increases in R&D spending is the most important initiative. It allows Apple to come up with many out-of-the-box products and services. And not just any products or services but those that the company expects to attract a huge audience.
Over the last 10 years, Apple’s R&D spending jumped from $1 billion to $13 billion. This is what let them expand their product line and penetrate various new markets since 2009.
Instead of licensing its products to partners, Apple has the ‘integrator approach’. It was the first mobile phone manufacturer to have its own hardware and software. Until Google decided to do this as well, Apple was the only smartphone company that covered its entire biosphere alone.
This ensured the kind of cohesiveness that’s one of the main selling points of Apple devices. And it’s only one of the many results of the company’s R&D efforts.
3. 15% Time
Most businesses go out of their way to minimise what they believe to be unproductive time. They give people all kinds of incentives to motivate them to work as hard as they can. While this might have some benefits, it’s in effect a huge creativity killer.
It’s particularly adept at raising the employees’ stress, which can lead to a burnout that can destroy productivity and motivation.
William McKnight of 3M found a perfect way of letting people unwind and unleash their creativity. His idea was to let people spend 15% of their paid worktime doodling, daydreaming, and experimenting with different ideas.
The best thing is, they didn’t even have to think about anything business-related. And yet, it’s produced many innovative ideas and retained the employees’ passion for their work.
Similar to the virtual idea box, this technique encourages people to exercise their imagination. McKnight understood how vital this is to business success, and many businesses have adopted his idea since then.
4. Member Roundtables
The success of your innovation solely depends on how the public perceives it. But how do you know what your customers want? This is one of those questions where the simplest answer is best – just ask them directly.
This is exactly what Zipcar did when they decided to switch from desktop to mobile. The transition was a huge moment in the company’s history that aimed at targeting a new audience to stay relevant in the market.
To do this the right way, Zipcar started hosting regular member roundtables. This gives millennials, their new target audience, a chance to share their experiences with the service. Zipcar uses this feedback to perfect their user experience and ensure that innovation is well-received.
Their efforts resulted in a much deeper knowledge of their core audience. One of their studies revealed the following about Millennials:
- They find it hard to own a car.
- They love their phones.
- They’re passionate about protecting the environment.
- They’re willing to explore alternative forms of transportation
These are only some of the pieces of information that Zipcar relies on to provide exceptional services.
The company’s member roundtables clearly pay off. They now have a deeper understanding of their core audiences wants and needs. This allows them to tailor their offering while also providing insight into the product categories that are ripe for innovation.
5. Reward Learning over punishing failure
The fear of failure is the most powerful force that prevents people from innovating. From shame to the potential costs, there are all kinds of fears that employees feel. A good leader must be able to eliminate this fear and embrace failure as a necessary part of success.
Intuit has a particularly interesting take on this. They not only embrace failure – they reward it. The company hosts award ceremonies that always include a failure award. The award goes to the team that came up with an idea that failed so spectacularly that it also taught the employees some highly valuable lessons.
VP Hugh Molotsi, who leads Intuit Labs, the R&D arm of Intuit, believes that this will help people understand that failure isn’t bad. Instead, it’s completely normal and even expected.
Once your company’s collective mindset goes in this direction, your people will stop fearing innovation. They’ll recognise failure as a necessary component in the process, the result of which is a welcomed increase in fresh ideas.
Break Away from the Norm
Innovation is the heart and soul of progress. No matter how well you might be doing at the moment, the market expects you to do something different every once in a while.
Change is inevitable in the business world. If you want your business to stay above it all, you have to accept it. And if you want it to thrive, you initiate it.
There’s a lot to learn from industries’ leaders when it comes to making disruptive changes. Their methods have created astronomical success, so they’re definitely worth giving a shot.
And don’t be afraid to come up with your own methods of getting people to share their ideas. After all, you know your people the best, so you know what it takes to spark innovative thinking. Sometimes, just a passing thought can turn into a huge success driver. Approach every idea this way, and you’ll likely come across more than a few game-changing ones.
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