Whilst controlling costs within your business and providing
good value for your customers is important, your competitors over time can
replicate your cost base and product offering - leaving you without a competitive advantage.
In other words, you have to find another way to get ahead and stay ahead.
According to
Professor Lawrence Bellamy,
from the Warrington School of Management (University of Chester), innovation
holds the answer…
People love Apple. The
brand recognition, product sales, status and desirability or their products is
global and transcends all levels of society. Apple has enormous research and
development capability with hoards of workers on a quest to deliver outstanding
products. However, do all of the products have unique features? Absolutely not;
Apple products share technical and design features across the range including
the’ look and feel’. The company takes
good ideas and use them time and time again to get the most out of them. After
all, good ideas are expensive and need to be paid back.
Creativity &
Innovation
When thinking about innovation, people sometimes confuse
this with creativity. Whilst these areas may be related they have differing
fundamental purposes. Creativity is about coming up with new ideas, whilst
innovation is often more about taking ideas, which may be pre-existing, and
applying them elsewhere.
Creativity may require costly research and development or a dedicated
creative staff team to deliver the new ideas. Innovation can be used throughout
the organisation by all members of staff to deliver new or improved products,
cost savings, better service or greater customer value. Innovation most of the
time will be about incremental development, rather than breakthrough creation. It’s
not just there for hi-tech companies with huge budgets, but for all
organisations. However, to be successful it needs to be managed.
Dyson vacuum cleaners utilise a ‘cyclonic’ extraction system. Dyson
did not invent this concept; it had been used within industrial dust-extraction
applications for many years previously. Instead, they took the idea and used it
in vacuum cleaners - a new product application. Other manufacturers now also
produce ‘cyclonic’ or vortex extraction based vacuum cleaners. Dyson however
has been so successful in developing and promoting the concept that far fewer
people are now calling their vacuum cleaner a ‘Hoover’.
We all see things in our daily working lives which we think
could be done better. The challenge for any business should be to ensure that
those improvements, whether they are associated with products (which include
all the things we sell i.e. physical goods, services or ideas or knowledge) or
processes (the things we do) are nurtured, considered and put in place in a
cost effective manner. Innovation can work for us not only on the big things
but also importantly on the micro level. If we put together many small
innovations within an organisation then cumulatively they add up to a large
improvement and are difficult for other organisations to copy.
So how do we get our business to be more innovative? Key
areas are:
·
Leadership
of the innovation agenda
·
‘Screening’
project proposals
·
Empowering
people to act
·
Embedding
innovation into the DNA of the organisation
Comparison sites such as Confused.com, GoCompare and Money
Supermaket have been instrumental in changing the way we purchase insurance and
other finance services. Direct Line pioneered the work which made this approach
possible, by moving away from High Street insurance brokers to telephone
applications and expert systems to process the data from insurance quotes.
Comparison sites are a development of this early work and have been
instrumental in helping to make shopping for financial service more visible and
convenient. Now though new types of organisations are being formed which get
consumers together and negotiate deals from insurance companies on behalf of groups
of customers, for better premiums. The industry is gradually changing.
Leadership
Leadership throughout the organisation should recognise and
encourage suggestions made for innovation projects, whether product or process
focused. Leaders should clarify the most important areas of focus: product,
service or cost? Though many projects may be small, any development is a step
in the right direction. Whilst not all projects will be given the ’green light’
without a stream of innovation proposals the company will not generate
sufficient opportunities for the future. Successes should be widely promoted as
the way forward for the company.
Screening
Organisations should not blindly implement all suggestions,
but should go through a supportive screening process.‘ Innovation Champions’
should work with employees to help them put together the project proposals.
Large projects will need to be considered at a senior level; smaller projects
within departments. Try to keep this process to a minimum level of bureaucracy.
Empowering
Some people will put proposals forward which have little or
no expenditure and have limited impact outside of their area of working. If
what they are proposing appears reasonable after a conversation with their
manager then the answer should be ‘yes’. Why put barriers in the way of improvement? For complex projects then some training may
be needed to give people the skills they require in taking proposals forward,
this may involve researching, writing and calculating and project management
skills.
Embedding
Use staff appraisals, budget setting processes, staff awards
and meeting agenda items to reinforce the need for innovation. Arrange for
innovation events periodically to encourage employees to focus upon possible
projects and make it part of the usual way of working across the organisation.
Measure the successes being achieved and report back. Make it part of the
culture of the organisation and an expectation that all will contribute at some
level.
In summary, innovation should be at the heart of the culture
of a company, as it gives the organisation the best chance of long-term
success. It should be built-in and not bolted-on and encompass the whole of the
organisation. Once the innovation culture develops then success will breed success
- accelerating performance improvement. However, management needs to focus
efforts to get this moving… innovation won’t just happen, it needs managing.
Need help with
Innovation?
The University of Chester has up to 15 Business
Innovation Vouchers available, to provide a discount on business services. Each
voucher entitles businesses to one of the following:
£1000 off a project valued
at £5000 or more
£3000 off a project valued
at £10000 or more
Vouchers will be allocated to successful applicants,
usually for small consultancy or technical services projects; but they could
also be used for small research and development contracts.
For
more information please contact The Research & Knowledge Transfer (R&KT)
Office
01244 511481
