How we innovate and invent is set to change too. With the advent of globalisation and technology, its easier to find someone, somewhere in the world who can solve your problem right now.  The traditional models are evaporating. No longer will we expect to innovate solely on an internal basis. Its just too expensive, narrow minded and loses you a whole bunch of chances.

We are well past the Issac Newton days of solving problems way ahead of the questions and just not telling anybody about them. Innovation has become collaborative. Technology develops at such a speed, organisations and individuals can longer keep up. That combined with the fact that most of us can’t attract and retain the best people in the world makes sole innovation almost null and void.

Thinking that you have all the answers and spending years developing the ‘great idea’ is a little egocentric and albeit gone. Someone has already sorted it. Peer production, open source communities, customer cocreation are all about harnessing the opportunities that bound in from several places. I call it the liquidity of innovation.

Just look at the examples of www.innocentive.com and www.yet2.com in house innovation is no longer enough, we can’t keep up. Our organisations need to turn innovation on its head. Research and development departments in the past were rewarded for getting patents, in the future it will be about assembling the best team to solve the problem.

By not pursuing a solution to our own innovation problems, we are losing out on an abundance of opportunities. Thats one of the reasons why communities and being close to our customers and people is going to be so damn important in the future. As well as being connected across the world too. Most of us act locally which is important, too many of us act multi nationally and not enough globally!

Just finished this book over the weekend. If you are looking to set up your own business, a creative, or just someone interested in removing yourself from the constraints of corporate life, this book is a great read. Loved it.

Hugh just says it as it is. Life is tough, creative freedom hard to find but, all of us have a chance of being able to express ourselves and we are fluffing it if we don’t. Seth Godin comments “A work of art, a brilliant insight, a book that will change your life.” I’m not sure it changed my life, but it is full of grounded wisdom supported with fabulous cartoons! You can catch more of Hugh’s work at www.gapingvoid.com

Innovation simply starts from asking those simple questions. It takes just one person or one company to ask; could we design an implement that cuts paper? Could we invent something that regulates a heart beat? Can we create a machine that will process information faster than humans? Could we fly like a bird?

By questioning what exists already, challenging the status quo, or, the way things are done, we can change the products and services we deliver rapidly. The question isn’t so much how much, but what if!

The two are distinctly different yet we use the two words far too interchangeably. As Professor Levitt said in his book “Marketing for Business Growth” in 1974, “Creativity thinks up new things. Innovation does new things.” He said it a while ago but its still as pertinent now as it ever was.

To our detriment in small business, we do mix the words up in our definition. Small businesses are usually a hot bed of ideas and creativity, it’s what makes them so special yet, quite often, we fail to implement the ideas. Both creativity and innovation are crucial to small business. They are the difference between an average and exceptional one.

Innovation in it’s most basic sense starts with constantly asking the questions about every aspect of your business. In it’s most sophisticated sense, it actually simplifies your business. Whilst creativity will generate lots of initial work, innovation should always make things easier for you, if it doesn’t it is actually complication.

Innovation turns lots of ideas into meaningful action. It asks creativity the question; will this add value? And it’s not just about customer interactions, production efficiency, product development or financial investment. Innovation can work just as easily when improving the way you deal with your people!

Innovation constantly asks these questions:

1. What is preventing us from doing what we talk about doing?

2. What do we need to do to improve and add value to our customer experience/employee experience?

3. What is standing in the way of me (owner) getting what I want from the business?

4. What is the best way to do this?

Not only does it force you to think about improving things, it’s a great way to invigorate a team by getting them involved and engaged with the process. Makes innovation a lot easier to implement too!

It’s a strange word and a perplexing one! On the one hand you need your minimum standard customer service to be consistent right across your business every time you come into contact with a customer. You need your people to consistently come into work each day. You need your marketing tactics to consistently happen throughout the year, yet, the the last thing you want is standard, boring or mediocre activity.

You don’t want repeat business or customer acquisition to remain consistent. You certainly don’t want your people to consistently deliver the same thing year in year out and you don’t want product development to stand still. As usual a difficult balancing act! There is a difference between being consistently average and consistently great!

Perhaps identifying what you want to be consistent in your business through basic standards, a minimum performance level might help. Embed that in your business, make it habitual and ordered, then let your people know where they can concentrate their efforts…..the more creative stuff that makes you great. But don’t let the minimum performance standards run the business or you’ll suck the life out of it. They should be natural, subconsious behaviour. Get that right then you can innovate to being great.

Coherence in marketing is important, consistency is boring. Being creative and reinventing your messaging/story/tune every so often is critical. Sparking ideas and doing things your market place has never done before delivers that differential advantage. 

Few companies can afford to coast nowadays and, at their peril should they choose that particular strategy. Consistency is about delivering similarity, it’s a result of messaging and selling, it’s about being tidy. Coherent is about clear communication, variety in what you have to say and clarity in all the marketing approaches you adopt. You’re ability to be creative when being consistent is severely inhibited but being coherent can allow the ideas to flow.

New ideas compel, they captivate, old ideas simply fade into the distance. Grabbing peoples attention with new information has always worked and if it’s done coherently it can lift you apart and take you to the next level of communicating those important marketing messages. Change isn’t an option, it’s safer to create and execute new ideas now than wait for your competitor to do it first.

Just touching on yesterday’s post relating to creativity. Where does it exist in a small business? Everywhere I guess and in places you least expect. Perhaps in the creative process, those best positioned are the people that are ignorant, young, new to the business and inexperienced . They don’t know how things are supposed to be, they are not blinded by what happens at the moment. They haven’t fallen into the trench of existing beliefs and don’t carry the baggage other people might.

Being new and inexperienced you see things differently, see things other people have failed to notice and they imagine ideas that other people who are narrow, focused and experts just can’t. They don’t know what they are supposed to see, are not organisational captive and, in many respects, haven’t had the life sucked out of them by systems and procedures.

Occasionally, being ignorant is bliss, seeing new ways of doing old things, having a different perspective and thinking about ideas your company has never thought about.

Stimulating creative thinking in a small business is not the most common thing to do. Most entrepreneurs generally have most of the ideas…or do they??? Once a business has grown to a certain size, not all the answers or great innovation will come from the founder. Quite often us small business owners think we are the fountain of all knowledge.

Challenging the people that work in our business is one of our fundamental roles but how many times a day, week, year do we go out of our way to do it. Creating an environment where our people feel they can spark their imagination and then develop their ideas is crucial to future success. Here’s a few ideas off the top of my head….

1. Recruit people who make you feel uncomfortable, people who will challenge you and your customers

2. Always, always recruit happy people and those that have the right attitude. Technical skill can be learned

3. Set some of your people a task of finding new uses for old ideas

4. Give your newest recruit the oldest problem your business has, then give them the time and resources to solve it. Believe me they will

5. Create a culture that rewards success and failure but doesn’t accept inaction

Don’t forget, great ideas come from the creation of dumb, stupid and impractical ones too!