By Anna Chatburn, Marketing Director at The Strategy Group
What are the low hanging fruits of corporate innovation? If you want to spark innovation in your organisation you can start small to form the basis of an innovative culture or boost existing initiatives.
These five pointers are easy and low cost to implement but have real impact.
1) Get out of the building and speak to your customer
Organisations know they need to focus on their customers to keep their offering relevant in today’s market. Happy customers drive a thriving sustainable business. Keep it simple and select some engaged customers, tell them you value their opinion and want to ensure your product or service stays relevant to them. You’ll be surprised how willing they are to tell you their experiences. Tools such as the customer value proposition canvas will help you map out their needs, gains and pains in a structured way. You’ll gain clear view of your customer’s needs to directly feed into your plans and offerings.
2) Draw (yes, draw) an idea and test with a colleague
We often rush to implement new ideas without first testing to see whether anyone likes them, or if they even work as we expect. A first step before deciding to develop an idea is to test it on those around you – colleagues, friends or family can help determine viability. Testing can identify issues or pivots needed before they’re implemented, saving time and money in the long run.
3) Introduce rewards and recognition for innovation in your organisation
Even the most innovative teams can start to get stuck in ‘business as usual’
A monthly innovation prize rewarding the person who shows the most innovation capability keeps innovation front of mind. It’s a relatively low cost incentive that has real impact on everyone’s ways of working.
4) Share innovation lessons learned in weekly meetings
Team meetings can start to become a place for everyone to reel off their to-do lists. Ask each person to reflect on the last week and share what they learned. It helps to foster a reflective culture of learning and progression.
5) Remember, you are not the customer of your products and services
You may think you know your product or service, but you can’t truly understand it until you’ve walked in your customer’s shoes. Try your product or service in different situations and variations. Services can be harder to try than products, but try to emulate the whole customer journey using role play.
Businesses know they need to change approach to stay ahead in today’s market, but they aren’t always sure how to apply new methodologies to traditional structures. We help large corporates apply new methodologies to achieve sustainable innovation.
If you’re ready to take your innovation project to the next level we can help discuss the best next steps to meet your goals.
