Answer to Question #241540 in Management for swetha

Question

1. Evaluate and explain the importance of innovation to the success of a business or business organization of your choice

2. How leaders can use OD to assist with strategies to include and promote a culture of innovation?

Answer 1

Number one

Role of innovation in business

Cash flow is obviously key to a company’s growth, but innovation is what allows new revenue streams to flow across a constantly evolving business landscape. 

Staying ahead of disruption

Business innovation means keeping track of the market’s direction in response to potential disruptions or a change in consumer demand. Staying on top of consumer information allows business leaders to respond to trends by using the buy, build and partner model. If a startup is disrupting the market, a company can buy the startup, build it themselves or partner with the startup.

Improving your brand

These days, consumers do their research before buying a product, so having a positive brand reputation is vital. You need to utilize the right digital marketing strategies to boost your online presence; that way, if consumers are looking for key players in your industry, they can find you easily. You also need to establish a reputation for being the best in the market, which means striving for innovation — as well as being environmentally and socially conscious — which may help increase your brand visibility, resulting in more sales.

Increasing efficiency

Having an efficient business model is achievable with tech innovations. When business processes are streamlined with technology, they are less expensive, save time, and more sustainable. These savings can be reinvested into your company's growth or passed on to the customer, offering both an affordable and reliable product. 

Attract and retain top talent

Companies that have a reputation for being innovative also get their pick in recruiting top international talent. Establishing your brand as innovative can encourage top talent to apply and remain committed to your business, giving you a strong competitive edge

Improve sales and customer relationships

Failing to improve your products and services can put you at risk of losing customers to more innovative competitors.

If you invest time and money in innovation, customers will notice and appreciate the extra value you’re bringing them. That should translate into more sales.

You can start with simple steps like regularly surveying customers to identify potential product improvements and setting up an innovation team to spearhead your efforts.

Reduce waste and costs

Innovation can help you reduce waste in your business and leave you better positioned to focus on the long-term goals, rather than always putting out fires.

Innovative BDC clients have implemented operational efficiency changes such as streamlining order processing, eliminating production bottlenecks and reducing machinery and employee idle time.

The goal is to constantly be on the lookout for ways to eliminate waste. That can bring a host of benefits—lower costs, better profit margins, improved customer service and increased competitiveness. An efficiency expert can help you identify such innovations.

Boost your market position

Innovation can help you anticipate market changes more quickly and get ahead of opportunities, so you aren’t forced to react to shifts. It can also help you differentiate yourself from the competition.

Such innovation can come from continuously analyzing market trends, listening to your customers, suppliers and advisors, and studying what competitors are doing in order to spot opportunities and jump on them.

Also, it’s often useful to look at what’s happening in your industry in other countries. You can find fresh ideas for your business by studying what leading companies are doing abroad.

Improve employee relations

An innovative workplace is stimulating for employees. Cultivating pride in your products and a desire for your company to be an industry leader should reduce workplace turnover and boost productivity.

That can, in turn, lead to still more innovation success because employees are often a company’s best source of ideas.

Be sure to listen to them. Ask for their feedback on innovation in all areas of your business, including how to improve products, marketing and efficiency. They can give invaluable insights into ways to innovate, and they will appreciate having your ear

Number two

Don’t be a Culture Chameleon

Organizations benefit from innovation with OD culture interventions that do not mimic other cultural fads. Often, company leaders will leverage jargon without applications of how the values and behaviors are applied by employees on the job. Many organizations want to have cultures similar to Google, Apple, and Amazon; what they fail to realize is that those cultures were grown organically and intentionally designed to create calculated outcomes. Trying to mimic another company’s culture just because it is popular often results in a disappointing outcome. Organizations should delineate what outcomes they desire from a culture, define how culture can create those outcomes, create a roadmap of how to change culture over time, and implement the plan to do so. If you want an innovative culture, then intentionally design your company culture around it.

Use a Total Rewards Philosophy

It is critical that OD leverages rewards and recognition programs to build out a total rewards philosophy that motivate employees to take action on advancing an innovative culture. Incentivize and reward behaviors and accomplishments that encourage or promote modernization and progress.

Some organizations choose to host innovation drives with awards for those with the best ideas. These awards come in forms of extra vacation days or a monetary payout—with the extra ability to lead or participate in the effort to implement their idea if it is chosen. An example of this is at Bank of America, who implemented a “Simplify and Improve” (SIM) program in 2015 to gather ideas from front-line employees on ways they could simplify daily processes. Millions of dollars were earmarked to fund the winning efforts. Dozens of ideas were chosen and turned into projects that sparked innovation, simplified operations, and ultimately saved the bank money in the end. Those who generated the winning ideas were recognized company-wide and rewarded in various manners.

Deploy Diversity

Don’t let the recruiting team be your diversity delivery method. Think about how diversity fuels innovation across the entire employee lifecycle. Those from different backgrounds can bring different perspectives and ideas to the table, creating far more innovative teams than before. Create diversity plans at all levels:

Macro Diversity: system-wide efforts in leadership development, talent succession plans, and diversity recruitment and retention.

Micro Diversity: working with the business units to implement cross functional work teams and leveraging skills and working styles that promote higher job performance.

Encourage Risk Taking

This idea may be contrary to what you normally hear in the workplace; often organizations have so many rules and governance that employees don’t feel they can truly be innovative. We aren’t suggesting that organizations throw their rules out the window—but creating space for employees to take a few risks may result in innovative practices, processes, and idea generation.

Create Innovation Centers of Excellence

Centers of Excellence (COEs) are centralized teams that hold expertise centrally for all lines of business within an organization. In support of this approach, the Center of Excellence is typically staffed with subject matter experts that provide the entire organization with oversight, a body of knowledge, and community which are all focused on creative progress and ingenuity