January 11, 2015 at 2:06 pm
Whether you have a big company with years of experience behind you, a fast-growing small business, or you are just starting on your path to success, innovation is what will drive your company forward. Companies often forget to take the time and take up trying to come up with some creative and innovative ideas. After all, innovation, whether in intellectual or technical sense of the word, is imperative to getting ahead in business and will distinguish you from other businesses.
1. Peer into the future. Innovative companies, such as Apple and Google, monitor trends that affect the industry today and in the future. Also, innovative thinkers will carefully evaluate the new opportunities to engage with their customers. These companies will also try to foresee the problems that these new trends will cause, and ways to circumvent them.
2. Learn through your mistakes. Learn with purpose and celebrate each failure because it will lead to a new direction of thinking. This will help you improve your products and ideas. That way, you may even come up with ideas that will be ground-breaking and more than just one-time ideas.
3. Invest in research&development. Every company spends money on R&D. Be the company that deliberately invests in experimentation: identify the hypotheses that you’re trying to validate, allocate a reasonable amount of resources to see them through and track what’s gained by the experiment.
4. Engage your customers to innovate. Try a different tactics to get your innovative juices flowing. Start calling few customers every week and ask them questions about your products. Customers will highlight problems, or even offer solutions.
5. Give your employees time to be creative. Instate a day when your employees can work on their “pet projects” – on their ideas for products. Creativity and innovation are often lost in everyday, menial and repetitive tasks – you have to create time for some daydreaming in the office, too.
In the end, when you create something original, don’t forget to protect your ideas and property. Our office will help you decide on the best way to do that, and guide you through the process.
Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/239062
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/239239
https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/openforum/articles/4-tips-to-spark-innovation-in-your-small-business-prasad-thammineni/
