Many business leaders have dreams of transforming their business through innovation labs, new processes built around innovation, or developing a new innovation team. They all want to turn their business into the next Apple, however the problem is that many don\u2019t actually know what innovation is.<\/p>\n
Innovation is much more that just creating something new. History will show us that instead, innovation is all about tearing down the existing order of things. This is why many organisations are \u201cinnovation-averse\u201d, as innovation can be a threat to their existence. It\u2019s important that you understand innovation so that you can put together a strategy for your business to move forward. Even if you have no plans to innovate, you can bet that your competitors do. Change is inevitable; the question is whether you are going to lead the change or simply react to it. There are pros and cons to both approaches which we\u2019ll look at in this article.
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The scary thing about innovation is that no-one knows what will be disrupted by new innovation until its released. Sometimes innovation can result in a completely new line of business being created, or it can destroy another line of business completely. The result depends on how your business acknowledges and then reacts to the change.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s extremely hard to create something new without embracing change and sacrificing some of your existing investments. A complete refusal to embrace change altogether is the biggest risk of all. It can be easier to simply reject change as opposed to embracing it. Real innovation involves strong processes and culture, which is supported by visionary management. Unless you\u2019re willing to restructure your business, then you\u2019re not ready for the radical change that comes with innovation. Instead you are better suited to incremental change, known as incrementalism. While you won\u2019t be completely revolutionising your industry, you can still create significant value with small incremental changes.<\/p>\n
Innovation vs Incrementalism<\/strong><\/p>\n More often than not, the innovation that companies want isn\u2019t actually innovation. It\u2019s simply incremental improvements on an already existing process, system, product or service. This is still a form of innovation, and is a good way to generate value while making the most of existing systems. Incrementalism is the best approach for many organisations and is arguably where most of the value we see from organisations comes from. Incrementalism provides a way to make small improvements, which gradually can lead to significant value improvement. If there is a way to achieve your vision through an incremental approach, then it is often the best path to take.<\/p>\n The downside to incrementalism is that the value creation will only work as long as the business unit is stable and doing well. Some markets can stay stable for long periods of time, however change is always inevitable. You can either lead the change or be surprised by it when it occurs. The problems is that many businesses are too slow to adapt and suffer the consequences.<\/p>\n The Various Types of Innovation and the Cost Involved<\/strong><\/p>\n A common misconception is that innovation should always be desired. However in reality, innovation comes with a cost, and that cost is on the rise. When you innovate, you\u2019re inevitably disposing of something else \u2013 products, infrastructure, time \u2013 in the hope that your innovation initiative pays dividends. No-one in their right mind would want to do an organisational restructure just for fun. There are two key reasons to pursue innovation:<\/p>\n Managers and business owners often get pressured into innovation out of fear, or they dive head first into something new because they love a new technology on the market. Regardless of the reason, it\u2019s common for people to move forward with innovation with only a half-baked plan in place, and this often does not end well. The outcome can often depend on the type of innovation you pursue, usually it\u2019s one of the following:<\/p>\n Final Thoughts<\/strong><\/p>\n Innovation is a difficult concept to grasp and many have it misunderstood. Incremental change is often confused with innovation, where a transformational change disrupts an industry. It\u2019s not always clear when or how disruption will occur, so organisations need to put themselves into the position where they can best drive the change, as opposed to reacting to it. It\u2019s important to remember that incrementalism is an overlooked strategy for value creation that many organisations have great success with. Regardless of your approach, it\u2019s important too differentiate yourself by embedding innovation within your management, culture and processes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Many business leaders have dreams of transforming their business through innovation labs, new processes built around innovation, or developing a new innovation team. They all want to turn their business into the next Apple, however the problem is that many don\u2019t actually know what innovation is. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":83825,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[174,180],"class_list":["post-83217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c-level-consultation","tag-business","tag-c-level-consultation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnnyhuntington.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnnyhuntington.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnnyhuntington.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnyhuntington.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnyhuntington.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/johnnyhuntington.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83826,"href":"https:\/\/johnnyhuntington.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83217\/revisions\/83826"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnyhuntington.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnnyhuntington.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnyhuntington.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnyhuntington.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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