GE Global Innovation Barometer 2018 reports say globally business leaders claim that 40% of innovations over the past 5 years have had an advantageous effect on their enterprise’s bottom line.

The world of business is a fast-paced environment powered by new technologies, altering client tastes, and other forces. To tackle these changes, business executives need to have a firm hold of the market to perceive opportunities for innovation and reduce potential threats. Innovation must be a consistent business priority for every business, big or small, new or old.

Importance of Innovation in your Business

By definition, innovation is the inception of new possibilities. Without innovation, there is nothing new, and without anything new, there is no progress. If a business enterprise isn’t making any progress, it doesn't stand a chance in the competitive market. However, there's more to innovation than companies seeking just competitive benefit. Innovation is undeniably the sole cause for modern existence. Albeit innovation may have a few undesirable consequences, change is unavoidable. Most importantly, innovation paves way for positive alterations.

Whether you’re a social impact business enterprise or a for-profit organization, there are approaches to how you can implant innovative thinking into your company culture.

• Positive Leadership – Innovation begins with the leadership capabilities of the founder or CEO. Innovative business leaders need to be enthusiastic about their work, show an effective and positive outlook. They must have a clear vision, progressive thinking, and especially, must be willing to embody change. Leaders, across the board, play a key role in fostering innovative organizations.

• Focus on Finding Solution – Among the millions of consumer merchandise that are launched every year, 95 % of them fail. To avoid such a circumstance, inspire your team to pursue new and innovative ideas by concentrating on solving the problems. This is more practical than focusing only on market attributes that may encourage clients to shop for your merchandise.

• Create Room for Innovation – People work their best when they're propelled by inspiration, encouraged to push their limits, and think out of the box. But employees can't try this if they are always under control. Employees must be given the chance to act on their own accord and pursue the thoughts they're passionate about. Moreover, if management successfully nurtures a creative and open path, innovation is bound to happen. According to a survey by PwC’s Innovation Benchmark 2017, 61% of the respondents have adopted open innovation to generate new ideas.

• Build Productive Teams – High-performing teams are the most important building block for business enterprises. You need to build teams that encompass dependability among group members, effective structure, and lucidity of objectives. Additionally, the teams must feel psychologically satisfied which will pave way for open and honest communication.
• Management of Customer Issues – Innovative businesses encourage personnel to take responsibility for issues offered by clients. Most often consumer issues are perceived as problematic and are left to be taken care of by “customer service.” But the fact is that each client issue provides the company with an outstanding opportunity to exhibit real customer service capability and feature huge up-gradation in services or products layout and delivery. Lessons learned from consumer issues must be shared with every worker in the business enterprise to gain maximum knowledge. GE Global Innovation Barometer 2018 claimed 65% of organizations choose to test and perfect the innovation before its launch, for complete customer satisfaction from the start.

• Accept Risks and Failures – One of the best ways to promote creativity and innovation is recognition. Employees desire to be recognized and rewarded for his or her ideas and initiatives, and this exercise in turn can have an incredible payoff for the business enterprise. The most common reason employees don’t showcase their ideas is that they fear failure. They don’t want to get embarrassed or penalized if something goes wrong. Therefore, accept their mistakes and failures, and praise the lessons learned. Ideas may not always work out on the first attempt. Research by McKinsey indicates that 94 % of senior executives agree employees and company culture are the most critical propellers of innovation. Also, in the latest survey of global institutional investors, 67 % stated organizations ought to adopt potentially disruptive tasks that can be volatile and not deliver short-term outcomes.

Organizations with Successful Innovation Plan

• In 2016, PCI (Project Concern International) received Classy Awards and was recognized along with 9 other social impact organizations as one of the most innovative problem-solvers of this era. The enterprise has implemented over one hundred innovations via the method of PCInnovAtion. Besides PCInnovAtion, the enterprise additionally implements a “15% Time Policy,” which permits each team of workers to utilize up to 15 % in their work hours to bring forth innovative ideas.
• Another enterprise that exhibits creativity and innovative aspects in its business structure is Change.org. “To make room for creativity and innovation, leaders must formulate specific, committed teams that are cordoned off to work on new initiatives,” says Founder and CEO of the organization Ben Rattray. He calls them “ring-fenced” projects. who's got the liberty to execute the new goals faster.

In conclusion, the principal motive of innovation is to enhance people’s lives. When it involves dealing with a business, innovation is the key to make any sort of progress.