Understand the Power and Fear that Innovation brings to your Competitors

How do you feel when your competitor brings out a new product or service to rival your business?

'Gut wrenching', describes how I feel about it.

I always think and ask the question:

• Could we have done this better?

• Could we have done this faster?

• Why are we so late to the party with our own product or services?

• Will our customers look at those competitor products now?

• Will our profits and margins be impacted because of this 'innovation' to the market place?

This was a lesson I learnt a long time ago and so became determined to be the one that always found ways of innovating and being the leader in my sector.

To this end there are a number of things as a business leader that you need to address to ensure that you stay ahead and maintain your lead in the market.

1. If you keeping close to customers you will find out about concerns and issues that you may know of a solution or innovation to solve

2. You need to keep close to the regulatory climate to ensure that your product or services are relevant and not obsolete because of an upcoming legislation. My tip - get on the relevant regulatory committee so that you know exactly what your company needs to do to meet new regulations.

3. Partner with Universities and EVEN suppliers who have research facilities to help develop ideas. Maybe even share IP (Intellectual Property) to give you some exclusivity in commercialising the product

4. Create a culture in the organisation where your people are constantly looking to improve activities and to make things better for the customer in the areas of quality, customer service and delivery

5. In addition to the culture, create processes and systems to allow you to take ideas from 'anywhere' in the organisation, screen the ideas and if good, execute the idea to product stage and launch.

Innovation is the one area of the business that will determine whether the business thrives or dies.

Still not convinced. Then I will leave you with this graphic:

This graphic shows the current rate of acquisitions from the top 4 tech companies.

530 companies between them.

Many of them with technologies that were BETTER than that of the tech company.

By acquiring the business, the tech company incorporated the idea into their existing product or eliminated it for good by preventing the innovation going to a rival competitor!

Believe me now!!

Call us if you want to know more about how to apply this simple strategic approach in accelerating the innovation culture in your organisation. Click the link here for more information.