Innovate to Stay Relevant

Success and creativity goes hand in hand; creativity fosters innovation. To be successful in today’s competitive marketplace, organizations must embrace innovation and demonstrate creativity in their thoughts and action. Innovation is all about identifying new ways to add value to the business.

For leaders it is important to not just ask the obvious questions but look deeper and not be afraid to reconsider basic fundamentals about your business, products and services. When you view your business from new perspectives, you can harness ideas from some of the most unlikely sources. Brainstorm ideas, keep in mind that censoring ideas will be a barrier to creativity and sets up limitations that kills innovation and invention. Your objective is to create possibility thinking and not dullsville. Be inspiring and decide on no limit thinking when you are brainstorming alone or with others.

Just giving great customer service does not mean caring for your customers. It is important to get to know your customers and their business as intimately as possible. It is imperative to immerse yourself in the lives of the people you are trying to serve. Focusing on the high-value tasks is of prime importance. You and your teams must know how to prioritize their time, maintain prioritization of activities and actions, and ruthlessly eliminate wasted work by not doing the things that does not matter.

Connecting the dots is crucial by finding ways to bring together concepts, people, services and products. Many great innovations are "mash-ups" of existing ideas.

Finally giving form to your idea as quickly as possible and making a commitment for its realization is vital. Quickly create a prototype and initiate testing it right away. This is the only way to know if you've touched on something truly promising for your business.

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