Let’s look at these phases

1. Making Innovation a priority
   Many organizations talk about innovation, however, the actions displayed by their leaders, do not align with that talk, and there is no innovation strategy. Organizations need to have an innovation strategy that aligns with their business strategy. If the business strategy is about market expansion, then how to make it happen more innovatively must be prioritized. To drive the seriousness of innovation and to communicate to the entire organization that innovation is a priority, organizations need to discuss innovation in every meeting – even before the quarterly number are discussed. Also, when the new recruits are hired, or performance evaluations of existing employees is conducted, a suitable dimension (such as curiosity) must be included.
2. Getting the right ideas
   Many companies have a “box for ideas” on their premises, and they encourage their employees to submit ideas to improve their operations or products/services. However, the most rewarding ideas come from your most demanding customers – they will make you think about new products are services They will describe their pain points and will challenge you to solve them. This is where you get the right ideas. It means your sales, marketing and service personnel need to listen & observe more and talk less. Also, they need to be able to tune-in when the customer is describing the pain points. So, if you want to build innovative products, do not talk to your happy customers -they will not be able to give you any innovative ideas.
3. Getting the organization excited about innovation
   Once the ideas are discussed and the ideas are selected (there are many methods available to select the most impactful idea) to work on, the next step is to make sure that people in the organization are excited about it and are willing to contribute. One of the easiest ways to drive innovation thinking in the organization is by creating awareness about innovation benefits through programs and meetings. However, the most effective way is to encourage people to get innovative solutions in their day-to-day work. For example, to solve a problem, a team may brainstorm and come up with a solution. However, this solution may not be the most optimized or the most creative, but companies accept it because it works. Leaders must ask their teams to go back and find more creative solutions. By encouraging people to find innovative solutions and recognizing them for doing so, is one of the best ways to drive innovative thinking. A combination of structured communications, rewards and recognition across the company must be designed carefully to keep the excitement going.
4. Building integrated processes to create right products/services/solutions
   In most cases, new ideas go from marketing directly to R&D -and other departments are not aware of it. This is where the problem starts. When company has an idea that could relieve the pain point of a customer, the key is to involve all business units that are going to contribute to take this idea to reality. It means, not just marketing and R&D, but, engineering, manufacturing, maintenance, procurement, packaging needs to get involved, if needed – Cross-Functional Team (CFTs) must be formed to get the relevant inputs before designing a solution. Companies must use Design Thinking approach to test these ideas from a user- centric perspective as well. (To learn more about Design Thinking approach, please read, https://koinvent.com/design-thinking-services-case-study/). Finally, the processes must be designed in such a way that people from various departments meet at least once a month and share their experiences on innovation initiatives. Brown bag lunches, or monthly meetings are good forms to make this happen.
5. Creating a commercial/business model
   Creating a successful commercial model/ business model is as important or even more important than creating an innovative product or a service. The success of commercial model will decide how successful your offering ultimately becomes. A classic example is Apple’s music player iPod. When iPod was launched, the competitors of Apple were selling Walkman and MP3 players in the market through shops and online stores. Apple allowed people to download songs that they liked and pay only for those songs. This new and innovative way of distributing music allowed company to gain millions of iPod users and increase its revenues multi-fold. Therefore, when companies think about innovation, they should not limit their thinking only to a product, process or a service, but think about a new business model as well.

We believe thinking about these steps will help you take the innovation journey ahead for your organization.

About the Author – Milind Pandit is a senior partner at Koinvent Business Solutions, a company dedicated to Leadership, Technology management and Innovation Training as well as Consulting. At Koinvent, we help leaders think deeper, work smarter and manage better. Milind has an extensive experience in Strategic Thinking, Innovation, Consulting Skills and Business Simulation. If you would like to learn more about Koinvent, please visit www.koinvent.com or send an e-mail to contact@koinvent.com.