If you observe the top companies in any industry, you’ll notice they all have one thing in common: innovation. You won’t get anywhere by using the same ideas and methods you’ve used in the past, and successful business leaders know that.
In order to grow, you’ll need to get creative and experimental with your business strategies. We asked 15 members of Forbes Coaches Council how companies can work toward being more innovative in various aspects of their business. Follow their advice to start coming up with new ideas that can help you grow toward a more successful future.
1. Learn From Mistakes
Most of the time, before innovation can occur, mistakes have to be made. That, however, is not unique to top companies. Small business can take an active role in using those mistakes to improve products and services. The hard part is to be self-aware to a level that allows for the impartial collection and examination of said data. This is how innovation can happen faster in small business. - Kamyar Shah, World Consulting Group
2. Shift Your Mindset About What 'Won't' Work
Often our ideas are limited by what worked or didn't work in the past. Opening the discussion with the art of inquiry can help shift mindsets and uncover true innovation. Instead of offering that it won't work because of A, B, C or "we've tried it before," shift the line of questioning to: "What must be true for it to work?" - Felicia Lyon, Women Moving Mountains
3. Grant Cultural Permission To Develop Intuition
Innovation is born from the creative mind that allows the inconceivable to be created. For this muscle to strengthen, we need to give ourselves permission to develop our intuition so that new ideas can emerge effortlessly. Linear thinking for outlining strategic and tactical plans is important; however, we must also make room for a different type of cognitive ability to drive innovation. - Carolina Caro, Carolina Caro
4. Frequently Remind Employees Of Their Specific Unique Value
Saying you value employees and spelling out an individual employee's specific, actual value to them, frequently, are two very different acts. The latter is an innovative way to create a workplace culture that inspires employees to actually innovate in their work. Employees that clearly and specifically understand their value feel safe and use multiple disciplines to creatively solve problems. - Elaine Rosenblum, J.D., ProForm U®
5. Grow Your Fan Base
The best way to grow a business is by growing your fan base. Startups and entrepreneurs should do everything they can to grow their client list. You can grow your base through marketing or even buying fans. People cannot buy or use a product or service that they do not know exists. Not having enough fans will sabotage business success. Think about what a fan looks like and how to create them. - Ken Gosnell, CEO Experience
6. Get Comfortable In The Learning Zone
When we are in our learning zone, we are growing, stretching and developing new skills. To innovate, individuals and companies need to push into the learning zone while ensuring they don't become overly stretched. It's a fine balancing act that requires perspective and a high level of self-awareness. - Camille Preston, PhD, PCC, AIM Leadership, LLC
7. Immerse Yourself In Real-World Events
While social media, networking and online learning are powerful ways to stay up with trends, it's true separation from the day-to-day and immersion in physical events that can spark innovation from unexpected places. Without the binds of our workday, our brains are let loose to wander and consider, frequently leading to aha moments that don't even correlate with the topic at hand. - Laura DeCarlo, Career Directors International
8. Draw Inspiration From Competitors
One of my clients had a weekly session of “Let’s be nice to our competitors.” Team members had to bring products from different brands to a meeting. Everybody tried them and looked for factors that made them great. Next step was to search for at least 10 ideas that would make them even better. These were the source of innovation. - Inga Bielińska, Inga Bielinska Coaching Consulting Mentoring
9. Develop Peripheral Vision
Snow always melts on the edges first—meaning, often the most crushing competition emerges on the periphery of a business's operation. By developing the peripheral vision, companies can avoid the embarrassing response, "Oops, I didn't see it coming," anticipate the nature and direction of change in markets and customer needs and invest appropriately in targeted innovation initiatives. - Gaurav Bhalla, Knowledge Kinetics
10. Practice Holistic Thinking
Innovation comes in many shapes, sizes, and forms. You can innovate across processes, workstreams, products, clients and more. Look across the value chain and up and down your organization for opportunities. Creating an innovative company is a marathon, not a sprint. Small innovative actions and outcomes can lead to big transformational innovation. Think holistically, not transactionally. - Faith Fuqua-Purvis, Synergetic Solutions
11. Strive For Process Improvement
Often we think of innovation as introducing something new. However, some of the most effective innovations resulted from changing how we do something we're already doing. Process improvement is a place ripe for the need for innovation. This is also where we can look to other industries for best practices we may not have considered within the bubble of our own and create more differentiation. - Kathi Laughman, The Mackenzie Circle LLC
12. Innovate Your Leadership
Companies often focus on innovating the products and services and continue to be led by people whose thinking is outdated. Leaders need to update how they think and behave as leaders if they are to implement truly sustainable innovations. Effective leaders use current software and tools—why not update your leadership-thinking algorithm when you update your technology? - Maureen Metcalf, Innovative Leadership Institute
13. Encourage Experimentation
In the era of total quality management, we were encouraged to “get it right the first time.” But with innovation, things rarely work out quite as you plan. So managers can ask their team to prototype and test rough concepts, and incorporate user feedback to reiterate and refine their solution. By focusing on “getting it better every time,” you can minimize the fear of failure and encourage continuous enhancement. - Gabriella Goddard, Brainsparker Leadership Academy
14. Study Failures Instead Of 'Best Practices'
When innovating, a common mistake is to abandon one's own creativity and revert to a "best practices" approach. Innovators who follow the best practices can only hope to be second-best, and will likely fare much worse. Know your business and don't pay attention to others, unless you're studying their failures. That's a "worst practices" approach, highly useful in avoiding others' mistakes. - Tom Kolditz, Doerr Institute for New Leaders
15. Keep It Simple
With a never-ending sea of “innovation” to be had, organizations innovate by providing more and more “features.” But these offerings can sometimes be overwhelming in their processes. People are bombarded with this. Whether you have a service or a product, keep it simple. More than two to three steps to deliver your product can and will kill your sale. - Christopher Morga CPCC, InvisiScope Coaching Solutions
