In today’s competitive in the global marketplace, firms need to be driving effective innovation in their services as well as products. Furthermore, it is necessary for them to innovate rapidly and also, to do it cost-effectively. This need has been there, but its significance has grown over the last few decades. Even during the period of recession, top leadership was focused on growth, and they believed technology to be the main enabler of innovation.
It is found during a survey that more than 3/4th of industry leaders believed that innovation drives efficiencies. It also leads to competitive advantage. And most of them also believe that technology is one way of capturing both. Nearly seventy percent of decision makers surveyed were investing in IT to become more efficient and to reduce costs, while almost half of them were also funneling funds toward growth initiatives leveraging emerging technologies, like social media and wireless devices.
Your Role as a Leader
Once the right skills, strategy and processes are in place to embrace new ideas and initiatives, there is an opportunity for the thought-leaders to leverage technology to enable innovation.
The list technologies that have converged to drive innovation can be long, but summarizing, cloud computing, analytics, social networking, and mobile device based computing are the key fundamentals. These are the technologies that enable new ways to innovate, develop products, interact with crew & clients, team up, and manage data. It observed that firms showing remarkable results demonstrate greater mastery in leveraging these four digital technologies to innovate, plan, measure result and create value.
Excluding these, many other factors show unique impact when applied, also they are complementary in support of creating value and result. Still, to achieve the growth-driven innovation, the values need to be understood. For example, with social media, people can find people others to collaborate and co-create with. Wireless devices enable access to the databases, to applications, and numerous other purposes. Analytics help us to make action-derived meaning and presentation of all the data.
Driving Innovation and Growth
There is a primary factor without which, even the most innovative tech can’t deliver high-value; and that is business strategy and goals. The airtight business plan and a crystal-clear vision of where you want to see the organization are a must, as these factors will help in defining and setting the context for the role development, research, and innovation will play in enabling profitable growth. It will also help to determine the type of innovation wanted and the way you need to organize to effect change.
Innovation can be manifested in multiple ways, but the type of innovation that is needed must be determined. Notably, there are three type of innovations based on industry goals and technology that needs to matched. The first one is Incremental innovations that make small changes to a company’s existing technologies and business models. Next, Breakthrough innovations that make significant changes to either the technology or business model, producing significant growth. And finally, Radical innovations, which take place more rarely, combine technology and business model innovation to create major new industries with exponential growth.
Companies need to build a set up their work culture around innovation and establish appropriate metrics and processes to integrate innovation into the corporate culture. The organisations who were able to apply this research culture and establish the processes, what difference did they apply? Which type of skill sets are needed to drive it and is ultimate responsibly in the company for innovation, how the location of various teams need to be decided and how will they collaborate? And finally, how mechanisms and processes around innovation can be defined?
Getting started with innovation
First and foremost, it is necessary for companies to understand the ways to organize themselves around innovation and define processes to get the best results from innovation. Initially, companies need to consider their strategic imperatives, and ways to make a holistic transformation through process, structure, and people.
Technoception: Innovations used for Innovating
The final step is to identify the innovations and latest technologies that are best-suited to their unique circumstances. Companies who work to improve enterprise productivity, need to reduce complexity and then drive a comparatively agile IT environment. As this environment is an enabler for business growth while using emerging technologies. Notably,
Social networks can be used to collaborate and communicate (internally as well as externally) and to co-create and generate ideas for solutions and service.
Enabling a remote and mobile workforce that can collaborate regardless of time and location can also be done.
Companies can leverage analytics to derive value from connected data and get a comprehensive overview of your information.
Utilizing the cloud technology to optimize your IT are some of the technologies that are adapted widely to for business growth. How companies would create and sustain appropriate executive commitment to execute the innovation program successfully, will depend on the business goals and predictions market scenario, for any particular company.
