How Innovation Is Helping Your Business Grow

Being innovative is truly beneficial to your business. However, we can’t let it get us sidetracked from where our focus should honestly be. This is a delicate balancing act that you must seek so that innovation can help your business grow in many of the following ways:

#1 Improve Employee Relations

Creating an innovative workplace will keep your employees feeling stimulated. Equally as important is cultivating pride in your products and a desire for your business to be an industry leader. All these things combined will reduce workplace turnover and boost your company’s productivity. This productivity can result in more innovation success since a company’s best source of ideas is their employees – if you’re willing to listen to them. By asking for their feedback throughout your business, you’ll gain invaluable insights into how to conduct business better.

#2 Increase Workplace Productivity

The use of a small business phone system simplifies the work process for your employees and streamlines various other processes, so you can increase productivity. Most businesses point this out as an important factor because when your staff isn’t bogged down with tons of work they’ll have more time to be more productive. Of course, the newer processes you implement, the more productive your business will be – if they’re implemented properly. This is why you should think of better ways to streamline processes, get rid of what isn’t working, start outsourcing some processes and find programs or workflows that increase productivity.

Some companies have created their own homegrown project tracker system to assign tasks, monitor progress, and prioritize tasks. This is great because then you can rest assured that you’ll meet your company’s specific needs and you can make any updates you need to remain productive. Of course, you’ll need to test this out to see what works best for you.

#3 Solve Impossible Problems

When you find issues that continually arise it’s probably because you’ve came up with a status quo solution instead of a creative answer. By thinking outside the box, you may find a new answer – including better ways to make your products, store your inventory, or ship your products to your customers.

#4 Improve Sales & Customer Relationships

When you don’t work on improving your products and services you risk losing your customers to more innovative competitors. However, when you invest your time and money into innovation people will take notice and show you their appreciation for the increased value by buying more of your products or services. The best way to start this process is by taking regular surveys about how your customers think you could improve on things, then do your best to turn their suggestions into reality.

#5 Showcase Unique Qualities

Creativity and innovation are great ways to make your business stand out from your competition. This can be accomplished by creating a unique brand story, developing a quirky business personality, or partnering with a local nonprofit. Once you’ve created a unique character for your business, it’s time to start marketing it as such. By showcasing your business unique personality you can rest assured customers will remember you better.

#6 Reduce Costs

Being innovative also helps you better position yourself to focus on your long-term goals instead of spending all your time simply extinguishing fires. For instance, implementing operational efficiency changes like streamlining your order processing, eliminating any production bottlenecks you discover, and reducing machinery and employee idle time you’ll enjoy lower costs, better profit margins, improved customer service, and increased competitiveness.

#7 Beat Tough Competitors

When you’re an innovative thinker you’ll stay ahead of your competition. All it takes is a little creativity to find better ways to design products, connect with customers, market your business, and develop promotions. Make sure you don’t simply copy your competitors in hopes of being “innovative.” You must create your own ideas, so your customers take notice and choose to do business with you instead of them.

#8 Boost Your Market Position

To quickly anticipate market changes and get ahead of your competition you must be innovative. This stops you from simply being reactive and lets you differentiate yourself from your competition. The best way to do this is to continually analyze market trends; listen to your customers, suppliers and advisors, and study what your competition is doing (especially your global competitors) so you can easily spot and jump on any opportunities you see.

The Bottom Line On Integrating Your Business

Understanding the advantages of innovation is only the first step. You must continually add innovation to your business. The best way to accomplish this is by first and foremost understanding that you’re not the only one who’s responsible for creative thinking in your company. You must do your best to set aside time weekly, if not daily,to work on generating new ideas and ways of doing things. In doing so you’ll learn how important it is to rely on your employees’ help in this regard.

Make sure you gather your employees’ ideas and encourage them to continually bring more ideas to you. Be supportive here but also stress the importance creativity plays in having a successful business. Transparency works well here because then your employees also know what happened with their previous ideas. When they see them being accepted and used they’ll be more willing to continue coming up with new ones.

Innovation should also be part of your hiring process. Before hiring new employees, talk to them about their previous innovations – things they came up with and how their creative process works. This will help you hire great employees who can contribute to your business’ creativity.

Don’t forget about your customers. Have them review your products or services and the buying process. You never know when they might tell you something that sparks your creativity and helps you improve your business.

Make sure throughout all this you’re prepared to face some failures. Not every idea will work. This shouldn’t scare you from trying new things.

 

_________

Sharing is caring!