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Change is a part
of any business. But there’s a difference between
change and innovation. Innovation is what
separates you from the competition. Simply put,
most companies fail at continuous innovation.
Ultimately, that failure puts many companies out of
business. The key is to understand how incremental
innovation- as opposed to huge change- can benefit your
company.
Innovation
doesn’t have to be ground-breaking- in fact, for most
businesses, trying to achieve big innovation can be
destructive. But consistent, ongoing innovation
can change your business for the
better.
While we
tend to think in terms of radical when we discuss
innovation, it doesn’t need to be. It can simply
be an incremental innovation extending a product you
already offer, like a new color M&M or expanding the
capacity of an MP3 player. Or it could be focusing
inwardly on changes that help you take out costs or
perform tasks more quickly or less expensively. It
can be an adaptive innovation like making your company
easier to do business with, like making it easier to
shop with your company online.
Remember,
as a small business owner- you can’t be good at
everything. Focusing innovation efforts into the areas
in which you have skills is likely the most
benefit. Figure out what your organization is good
at and focus on the things that create value for others-
find the sweet spot where others aren’t playing
yet. There are many different strategies for how
you innovate to handle the things that don’t fall into
the sweet spot; outsource, get rid of low-value things
or even learn to improve on your abilities in a given
area. | 