Whether it is a small, medium, or large business, your company will always need to innovate. Innovations in new or improved products and services, business models, and processes are more than necessary if you want to stay ahead of your competition. So, you need to accelerate innovation in your company.
Personally, I don’t know or have met an entrepreneur who doesn’t want to make his business an innovative business. They already have experience with innovation because their company was born after the innovation process they have implemented. And, now, after several years, everything looks so different. They want to innovate, but in reality, they cannot innovate.
Why? Because the innovation does not happen by itself, or something that will happen regardless of what we want. Innovation will need to be accelerated, or you, as an entrepreneur, will need to accelerate innovation in your small business.
1. Ensure That Innovation Process is Continuous Process in Your Company
The first thing that you will need to check is whether the innovation process is a continuous process in your company. If you want to accelerate innovation in your small business, the innovation process will need to be a never-ending process.
Check process maps and workflow procedures related to your innovation process, or if you still don’t have documented processes in your company, start developing them. If the end of the process is not the beginning of the next process cycle, you will need to make changes.
2. Develop and Integrate Strong Innovative Culture Inside Your Company
You can have greatly designed innovation processes, but if your company doesn’t have a strong innovative culture planted deep into the whole organization, you cannot expect that you will have successful innovations.
If you want to accelerate innovation in your small business, start developing an innovative culture among all organizational members.
Here is a video from TEDxBerkeley where Guy Kawasaki shares his top ten tips for implementing innovation.
3. Develop and Integrate Innovation Systems Into Your Company to Accelerate Innovation
To accelerate innovation, you will need powerful innovation systems on which you and your small business team will rely when it comes to innovation. This means that you will need to develop and integrate systems that will answer the following questions:
- What type of innovations will the company focus its attention on?
- How will the innovation process start?
- How will you collect the innovative ideas, record them, analyze them, and implement them?
- Who is responsible for innovations?
- Who will be the leader of the specific innovation process?
4. Innovation Have Much More Faces Than You Can Imagine Now
When we talk about innovation, we don’t mean only about your company’s innovation in products and services. Innovation can be innovation in processes or innovation in business models additionally to products and services. Also, it can be incremental or radical. Innovation can also be a disruptive innovation.
So, you will face many possibilities for innovations in your company as a usual thing that will need to be used for the future of your small business.
5. Ideas Can Come From Everywhere But, Only One Can Lead the Innovation Process
Yes, the ideas and keeping your innovation ideas pool to be always full are the responsibility of all your team members. But, the leadership of the process will need to be clear. Having ideas means that your company is a creative company. But, creativity doesn’t mean innovation. Ideas will need to be implemented if you want innovation.
A strong leader in the innovation process will accelerate the process of the successful implementation of innovative ideas.
6. You Are the Most Responsible to Accelerate Innovation in Your Small Business
And the last thing that I want to mention here is that you are the most responsible person to accelerate innovation in your company. This is only a reminder for you because nobody else in your small business will have a bigger potential than you to accelerate innovation.
