Peter Quintana, of hgkc, is a strategic partner to BASDA working closely with the senior leadership team on topics covering building resilience, managing teams, leadership and building an innovation culture. His expertise in the field is renowned and BASDA is pleased to share some of his insights with our members in the third of four blogs covering topics that are pertinent for all businesses.
According to research performed by Solverboard, an hgkc partner, there are three root causes of innovation failure:
• Lack of method
• Lack of measurement
• Lack of alignment
But how do you counter these and build a strong, productive innovation culture?
Lack of Method
What this means is that the time dedicated to the innovation process is inconsistent, when a business focuses on innovation when it has time to and not as part of its daily routine. Furthermore, it means that the processes in place are not efficient when it comes to development.
To counter this, businesses can implement a strategy that provides a proven and reliable workflow used to manage and develop innovation.
Lack of Measurement
A business needs to set metrics that are easy to understand and manage, allowing them to measure innovation performance, learn from market experience, and optimise their innovations for ROI.
Setting clear target metrics will show your team what your objectives are. This means that when developing innovation, they will keep these end goals in mind and be able to make alterations and changes in order to succeed.
Lack of Alignment
Ensuring that your business has strategic alignment allows you to prioritise projects that will lead to your objectives. Your vision should align with your strategy and clearly dictate a path that your employees can follow and understand.
Your vision should be aligned with your customer’s needs, and therefore, your innovation will aim to fix the ‘problem’ your target audience face.
Building An Innovation Culture
To build a successful innovation culture consider these eight tips that Google use to help with their innovations:
• x10 thinking – instead of improving things by 10%, make them 10 times better.
• Launch, then listen – after launching a new product, listen to your users and make alterations based on their responses.
• Share everything – share all information openly with your employees. It is essential to collaboration and helps the business run smoothly.
• Hire the right people – restructure your hiring process to ensure it doesn’t just rely on the opinion of one or two people. Implement a reward referral system for your employees so they can recommend other qualified people.
• 70/20/10 model – structure your time so 70% of innovation projects focus solely on the core business, 20% are related to the core business, and 10% have nothing to do with the core business.
• Look everywhere – it is important to establish a work culture where you encourage all your employees to collaborate and share their ideas.
• Use data – test and measure everything. Rely on data to inform decisions, not opinions.
• Focus on users – concentrate on what your users say, want and need. Looking at your competition can lead you down the wrong path, whereas by establishing a loyal community who love what you do, you can’t go wrong.
As we are moving out of the pandemic, we should ask ourselves, what can we do to create a culture where innovation thrives in tomorrow’s world?
A study in 2021, by The Conference Board, found that:
• Improving innovation was the second most important strategic imperative (behind digital transformation).
• The lack of an innovation culture was the fourth biggest obstacle stopping organisations from achieving their objectives (behind COVID-19, lack of talent, and resource constraints).
Interested to Find Out More?
Contact hgkc to discuss a Business Innovation Workshop to develop a shared understanding of how innovation can support your objectives. We will help you to:
• Build an innovative organisation and collaborative culture.
• Create profitable new approaches that meet customer needs better than competitors can.
• Improve the size, shape, and speed of your innovation portfolio.
• Strengthen testing, learning, and scaling skills.
hgkc is a consultancy providing expert advice and strategies that will help you lead better, innovate more, and exit with confidence towards your North Star. If any of our members would like to find out more why not visit the hgkc website, call 0117 332 1002 or email hello@hgkc.co.uk