Harris KhanThe businesses that make it over the long term know how to distinguish themselves through innovation. Companies that can innovate day in and day out are a rare breed, but if you follow some of the principles, your ability to innovate will drastically improve. Repeatedly innovating new products, services and processes require forward thinkers who want to go beyond the box.
Think of a Problem: Solve That Problem
Especially when you can think of a widespread problem, you will learn how no one has improved the product to resolve that issue. Through innovation, your business stands to gain an incredible advantage that no one else can beat. You don’t necessarily need to make a big innovation either. In some cases, you will gain an equal foothold from making small improvements to a product, which add up over the long haul. Some of the ways that people have innovated included:
- Making a product easier to use
- Adding a unique and valuable feature
- Eliminate possible inconveniences
- Introducing new conveniences to the product
Take Advantage of the Online Market
Bringing your products to a global market will drastically improve your sales in some cases. You might consult an SEO consultant on improving your SEO to bring in organic traffic. Good SEO does not require an ad budget. You can further review a guide to learn more about how an SEO consultant can help. Good innovation won’t matter much if you can’t bring in lots of customers.
Create Regular Brainstorms
You must make brainstorming into a regular habit to have a chance at true innovation. Brainstorming anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes will give you a rich collection of ideas that you can pull from to create original new products. If you struggle to self-start, consider subscribing to one, or several, innovation podcasts to teach yourself how to thing like an idea person. If you brainstorm as a group, don’t let the dominant members of the group overtake the voice of everyone else.
You want to hear from everyone because teamwork can make the innovative thoughts even better. One of the problems with team brainstorming comes from the fact that dominant members will often dictate the flow without letting everyone contribute. We can’t forget the purpose of brainstorming, which is to bring about new ideas that we can use. To ensure the most innovation, you may want to use people from different parts of your business to bring in altogether new perspectives.
Allow for the Cross-Pollination of Idea
Do you know how Henry Ford came up with his famous assembly line? He saw the production line at meatpacking plants and decided to use it in the automobile industry. This drastically reduced the assembly time and cost of putting together cars. He reduced the time it took to create one vehicle from over 12 hours to one hour and 33 minutes. All of this came from looking at an unrelated industry and looking for ways to cross-pollinate it with his own industry. Think of things that look unrelated and try to innovate through mashing them together to see what you make from it.
