Innovation - Critical Success Factor For Business Growth Part I

By M. Isi Eromosele

Innovation is a critical driver for business growth. An organization’s ability to innovate has become an increasingly vital competitive differentiator in today’s fast moving global business environment.

Rapid innovation and increased success in the marketplace depend on having a clear picture of a new product or service’s influence on a company’s profitability, even before resources and funds are invested in its development. This requires the implementation of value driver analysis, which would give you a strong quantitative sign of the likelihood of success for your product or service in your target market.

A culture of innovation promotes enterprise growth. A company that can innovate within its marketplace will gain a sustained competitive advantage over its competitors. In order for innovation to be a truly successful growth strategy, it must be implemented deliberately, with a focus on success.

A company’s top management must define innovation within the context of its business goals. Questions that need to be answered may include:

• Is the primary purpose the company’s innovation implementation to create new products, new markets or the improvement of their current operations?
• What are the economic gains that would result from such innovations?
• Which employee groups are most crucial to the proposed innovation-based strategy?
• Is the innovation implementation going to be incremental or revolutionary?

Another important aspect in implementing innovation is corporate culture. A corporate culture that does not encourage flexible business processes and fluid procedures will ensure that an innovative strategy will fail within the company.

The returns on implementing innovation in any company are not a function of financial investment but depend on the quality of that organization’s innovation process. For it to succeed, innovation efforts must be aligned with a company’s business strategy and its organizational design, systems and structure. Innovation will not succeed in a vacuum. It needs to become an integral part of how the company operates.

One available tool critical to the success of innovation implementation is value driver analysis, which enables a company to quantify the benefits of innovation and assess and compare innovation based activities against those of competing priorities. Additionally, this instrument enables a company to establish a policy for aligning decision making and employee behavior on a sustained basis, helping employees see the distinction between day-to-day activities and innovative ones.

Value driver analysis can also educate top management to see how innovation can support the building of an innovative culture within the company.

The value driver analysis results should be grouped into four organizational areas:

• Technology - Which enabling advanced technologies should be utilized in addressing unmet customer needs?
• Process - Which process activities should be changed to increase efficiency of product development?
• Structure - What structural realignments need to be developed organizationally to increase innovation in how products are delivered?
• People - How would the staff be realigned with an "innovation critical talent" as a core to draw other employees toward creating a culture of innovation?

Multiple people programs may be used to drive innovation-focused decision making and behavior. These include performance management, incentives, career progression, business literacy and leadership actions.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

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