The Immediate & Vital Need for Business Innovation
by Bill Hortz
It is not an exaggeration to say that the world in which you are operating your business today is changing rapidly, exponentially so. There is plenty of writing on the wall that the power and applications of our technology will increase roughly as much in the next three to five years, as it has in the last thirty years: billions of dollars per month funding new tech or tech-enabled companies, the growing sophistication of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics, an imminent integration of virtual/augmented reality systems, and the oncoming wave of the "internet of things.”
Both the business environment and the greater cultural environment around your business will be substantially altered by these accelerated rates of change. This will affect your clients and prospective customers. It will shift their perspectives, expectations, and decision-making; namely whom they will seek out to engage for goods and services in the future. Look around you at the already rapidly changing context in which you are managing your business. This new hyper-changing operating environment is the #1 challenge facing all business leaders today in every industry!
The good news is that under the banner of “innovation,” there exists a proactive business management toolkit of best practices, processes, ways of thinking, and tools (e.g. business model canvas) specifically designed to help you deal head-on with this rapidly changing environment. The innovation mindset behind these practices is focused on the need to create new solutions, new business models, and new ways of thinking about your business. Many innovation resources have been developed over the past two to three decades, fueled by advances in social science, brain/creativity studies, and born from the business need to respond to rapid change. They represent growth and differentiation strategies versus many traditional management practices which support consolidation and efficiency strategies.
Like the six sigma process, but from a very different perspective, innovation processes give you focus and direction when making key business decisions like where to invest your limited time, money, and effort for maximum strategic benefit for your business and clients to thrive in a changing environment. Innovation processes will help you develop a habit of looking for alternative ideas, rather than focusing on the most obvious approaches. During your normal business planning, these tools will force you to ask different sets of far-reaching and challenging questions, in order to discover and challenge the assumptions you have been running with.
If you are a business owner or business leader, if you work for a business, or if you want to take advantage of this rapid rate of change versus being run over by it, it is in your self interest to be fully aware of and to actively explore, better understand, and strategically use elements of this business innovation toolkit. We will continue exploring business innovation in more detail in future articles, especially with a focus on financial services.