Cosmos Community Business Innovation Development.
Business innovation is something that senior managers talk about a lot but don’t necessarily do much about in practice, perhaps with the exception of the odd meeting in which some simple brainstorming might occur, now and again. Even when this happens, the brainstorming may be concerned with a particular problem that needs to be solved and the input may not be that creative or innovative in real terms.
One of the ways to create more interest in and time to be more innovative is to start to think about where a company may want to apply more innovative thinking. In broad terms, this gives a focus to the discussions and helps to create a guiding framework.
Although it is not restricted to these headings, in the list below are eight categories that can provide some very useful context for a business discussion on innovation in particular to occur. Let’s therefore briefly look at each of this one by one:
1. Strategy Innovation
Forward strategy is always a significant realm within which innovative thinking can be applied because it asks individuals to generate options about the possible future direction of a team, department, or whole organization. The types of sub-areas that are often covered here therefore include:
2. Business Model Innovation
A business model is a method by which an organization makes money, such as fee for service, regular subscription, pay upfront, monthly retainer, direct sales, etc.
The types of sub-areas that are often covered here therefore include:
3. Product/Service Innovation
People tend to think about product or service design possibilities most when they think about business innovation but this can be “push” oriented (provide a new design and educate the customer to use it) or “pull” oriented in which underlying customer needs or “pain” is discovered and then drives innovation. The types of sub-areas that are often covered here therefore include:
4. Process Innovation
This innovation tends to be focused on the operational side of a business and how efficient or effective its processes may be at all levels, especially versus competition or best practice. The types of sub-areas that are often covered here therefore include:
5. Marketing Innovation
Marketing innovation (incorporating sales) is focused on the new ways in which products and services can be promoted, including new/different channels to market. The types of sub-areas that are often covered here therefore include:
6. Technology Innovation
Most people are familiar with the often disruptive impact of new technology when it is highly innovative, although some technology is incremental (perhaps only automating a manual process) while other technology is transformational. The types of sub areas that are often covered here therefore include:
7. Supply Chain innovation
As many businesses can now sell their goods and services to the world, managing the supply chain from supplier inputs all the way to the end consumer needs thinking about and innovative thinking. The types of sub-areas that are often covered here therefore include:
8. Organizational/People Innovation
Although people-side innovation may be contained in many of the above categories, innovative approaches can also be applied specifically to the way that people think, behave and work. The types of sub-areas that are often covered here therefore include:
Each of the above realms or categories creates a kind of “conversational scaffolding” for possible innovation to occur. It may therefore be useful to pick just one of these and allow people to focus their attention in this one area (at least at first) so that it concentrates the attention and allows forward action to potentially be taken without spreading execution resources too thinly.
Cosmos Community Specialized in Business Innovation Development, we love to develop businesses and help entrepreneurs achieve their goals.
