Why does your business need constant innovation? This article discusses the concept. Innovation in products and processes is considers as a success factor in any business. Large businesses are obviously considered innovation as leading aspect to create a competitive advantage. But in small and medium businesses, innovation is not getting enough consideration as it is in large businesses. Because small and medium businesses have little more ‘time’ than the big businesses to switch between the version upgradations.
This ‘time’ makes some problems. SME businesses often fails to realize the falling number of clients due to this slowness in innovation. Though they are realizing fall in business but often tend to blame the market condition or some other dynamics of business. Failing to identify this will make the problem harder to solve. In today’s economy, change is very apparent and it is very fast. Not just products are improving but an entire industry may make a paradigm shift overnight. Consider the cases of music industry and imaging industry. The same change is happening to healthcare, retail, hospitality etc.; and it will continue to happen to other industries as well. I have two suggestions to SME businesses in this regard.
- Look at the problem not the solution: Every business is supposed to solve a problem. But constantly businessmen fail to identify problem and jumping to act as a solution provider. Failing to understand to problem addressing by the business will lead the business to out of focus. Every entrepreneur should study the problems properly before designing the solutions. This will enable them to constantly innovate their solutions as the organizational capabilities are increasing.
- Differentiate order qualifiers with order winners: Innovation first act as an order winner in a standard business scenario. But eventually it will become an order qualifier. So, if a firm fails to innovate, it means that the business will not have an order winner and all its previous order winners are now became order qualifiers. Every business should have a permeant arrangement for finding new order winners. This facility will ensure that the business in continuously innovating.
Asif Theyyampattil Business Consultants ATBC is supporting the businesses to innovate constantly to keep their pace in the business. At ATBC, we look at businesses in a different point of view to foster innovation efforts in a business. To know more about our efforts to help businesses follow our Facebook page
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