How to be innovative in business

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There are several different sources of new and innovative ideas available to your business.

Your own staff are likely to have ideas and potential solutions to existing problems which they face on a regular basis. They are often your most valuable asset when looking to innovate.

As well as existing resources within your organisation, it can often be worthwhile involving stakeholders, suppliers, customers, and business contacts in the innovation process, as they are likely to have valuable insights and contributions to make.

Tips for being innovative in your business

  • Research your market and your customers; find out what products or services they want and what they currently cannot get. Concentrate your innovation in these areas.
  • Study the market to spot existing trends and target any that can be exploited.
  • Look at what your competitors are doing. See if you can apply their successful processes to your business, or take advantage of anything they are not doing well (and which you could do better).
  • Consider investing in a dedicated research and development team.
  • Review your existing processes to see if there is anything you could do better.

Capturing new ideas

Regardless of how you choose to generate new ideas for your business, it is important to be organised and to have effective ways to capture and develop them. For example you could organise events, such as workshops, to tease out ideas for specific business areas, and have formal processes to catch, log and evaluate the strength and detail of each one.

Testing new ideas

Finally, it is important to test any idea you decide to develop and make sure it is viable and solves the problem or need it set out to address. This can often be a process of repetition and refinement with small improvements and can take a few goes to get entirely right.

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Last updated
06 March 2013