Innovation, industrial lifeblood.
Moving businesses forward organisationally through incremental output improvements – and competitively – when facing more radical, external disruptive change.
But does innovation offer a certain way out in uncertain economic times?
It’s counter-intuitive to spend loosely when money is tight. Or with so many pressing alternatives to keep an organisation purely in survival mode – let alone pursuing any bottom-line realisation.
And yet, research from earlier disruptions in our industrial past, tell us that indeed spending our way out of a downturn constitutes a positive investment in our future performance. In our survival and prosperity. Our ability to adapt and differentiate.
To do what Kodak could have done intuitively, when market demand so dramatically transformed to digital.
The dilemma of how to adapt organisationally, how to organise and harness innovation processes effectively is a weighty one. Indeed, your whole business model may need to change, to re-invent itself and to prioritise new growth potential outside of its historical core operations.
However, downturns whether caused by direct economic pressures or indirectly, through more social impacts, say from pandemic – act as a touchstone for creativity and inspiration. To create change before it is imposed upon you. An impetus to innovate and take action.
An organisation has a choice and its own unique appetite for risk. Its own evaluative tools to define success or failure. Are the short-term metrics revenue-based, or longer-term goals to ensure survival and influence future social behaviour? Does brand purpose provide tangible, sustainable value?
At The Innovation People we’ve had to think about remote ideation and the inclusive processes which enable productive innovation. There are advantages (as we’ve all realised) to remote collaboration. Getting the right people together, both the decision-makers and the executors – doesn’t have to be within 4 walls. But you do need them both – wherever in the world they may be, to collaborate in real-time, to make test-and-learn oriented decisions and then to activate these new ideas in an agile way.