Let’s face it, businesses are tired of the mantra to innovate. My clients often tell me that their efforts focused on innovation have produced mediocre results at best. That their people are disillusioned because innovation is disruptive, an extra they have to fit into their “spare” time. They lament that the things other businesses label as innovative seem like incremental improvements. And yet every day, they are challenged: Innovate or Die!
So should we keep at? Or is it time to trash the whole concept of innovation?
Well, I don’t believe we need to throw the baby out with the bath water. Because if done right, there are important benefits to keeping a laser focus on innovation:
- Employees are engaged and empowered, and your business benefits from their insights and creativity
- Customers contribute to and feel ownership for the design of the solutions you create, inspiring loyalty and connection
- More value is delivered to customers, delivering the right solutions at the right time
However, I do believe we need to change the focus of the term “innovation.” What exactly is innovation? To innovate is defined as:
in·no·vate – make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products
The Latin root of innovate is “to renew,” a definition I particularly like because at its heart, that is what innovation delivers – a renewal of your business and your employees. I also like that innovation starts with something already established. It starts with the business you have developed, your investment in your employees and the customer relationships you have nurtured. That foundation is the secret to doing innovation right.
So let’s remove the innovate word from our goal and instead focus on what matters: delivering more value to your customers by leveraging your operational assets. That’s it, plain and simple. And what is exceptional about this goal is that it distinguishes you from all your competitors. No one else has your unique set of assets – your operational capabilities, your employees and partners, your customer value proposition. Your brand!
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How might we use your operational capabilities to deliver more value to your customers? Here are four ways to start:
- Get to know your customers: dive deep into what motivates your customers. What does success mean for them? How can you contribute to their success? Walk a mile in their shoes so that you understand their pain points. If you alleviate those, you have a loyal customer for life. And get them to contribute their ideas for solutions!
- Invest in your people and the ideas will follow: instead of investing in ideas (which frankly, are a dime a dozen), invest in your people. This is where you are unique and should be the source of your market differentiation.
- Continuously improve your operations: focus on your strengths, the things you do better than anyone else. This is your secret sauce, and should be the well you draw from to nurture your growth.
- Develop a culture of problem solvers: build an organizational muscle of designing solutions for clearly defined problems. Setup your employees to be detectives, digging deep into the root of problems and creating lasting solutions instead of band-aides.
Tell us what you think – can we alter our use of the word innovation to focus instead on our customers and creating solutions to the problems they need us to solve?
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