How Setting a Continuous Cycle of Innovation in Motion is Crucial for Your Business

What is Innovation as a service? Why should you continue to innovate? Is it an approach or a solution. More often than not, the response would be: that it’s a mix of both. While the former helps you to look at things differently, the latter builds upon the approach incrementally, to implement the solution that you as a company look forward to. For innovation is a real differentiator, human service agencies have worked hard to prove the point and be innovative every day, create new ideas, methods, and products. They try to look at problems differently and come up with solutions which others cannot, and add continuous value for their companies. Innovation is poised to be the most critical component of a successful enterprise.

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Let’s take a quick look to understand what it is all about and know the process, visualize the concept along with the best practices on why innovation is so essential for an organization.

What is Innovation and what it is not

Innovation is an output. It’s when something new is implemented that adds value to the organization.  It comes in all sorts of shape and size, but the best form of innovation is one that adds substantially and sustainably to the top and bottom lines of the P&L. A great idea is a solid foundation for innovation, by itself, but it isn’t worth any unless something is done with it. So is with Invention and investment, while the former has a tradeable value, the latter is only an input.

Therefore, to sustain in this new landscape—between new rivals, demographic shifts, and technological developments—enterprises of various shapes and sizes need to be front-footed and differentiated from competitors. This can’t be any truer than this; we have to move faster, think bigger, and act differently.

Make It Count: Accelerate Growth with Value and Not Just Tech Innovation

From ideation to reality, many digital innovation initiatives either fail to complete or deliver no measurable value out of investments. Therefore prior to investing in any innovation initiatives, there should be quantifiable insights to rationalize the ideas. Many enterprises fail to achieve value out of technology transformation like the Internet of Things, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Cloud computing since they are adopted as individual projects rather than comprehensive platform solution.  Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that the idea generation is insight driven and validated for a successful  digital innovation solution by a structured approach such as:

Discover:

• Initial Idea. An idea is submitted.
• Research & Validation– The innovation team analyzes the concept to understand the type of insight needed and does sufficient research, including focus groups, audits, and end-user studies or interviews, to determine the intent, ability, and determination necessary for this idea.
• Prioritization & Allocation– Provided the idea has merit, meets end-user needs, aligns with the business strategy, and likely to deliver product business value, it moves to the next step.
• Spark Session– The Spark session brings together the entire team: all disciplines, business units, and responsibilities to choose the ideas to develop into full-fledged concepts. The team creates a plan for how each selected idea will be brought to life.

Ideate and Prototype

• Design– We build an initial view of the concept, using human-centered design, leveraging anthropological research insights, and lived knowledge. Sufficient detail is given to put the concept in front of end users, right at the beginning of the process. The current customer journey is reimagined to realize the vision, and key scenarios for the new experience are defined.
• Test and Validate–  Based on lessons learned, we apply new angles to maturing the concept through prototype refinement and iteration. We test each iteration of the concept with users to identify what’s working, and what isn’t. We can then modify the design before deploying the prototype, including adding layers of detail or functionality. This activity repeats until the concept becomes a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
• MVP– Once the concept has become an MVP, we create the tools necessary to begin the final development process, including a product specific governance model, a detailed business case and process, a pilot implementation plan and a product roadmap.

Pilot and Scale

• Launch- Based on the MVP, a pilot is launched to a carefully selected and controlled group of users. This allows for additional real-world testing without the risk of a global launch.
• Operate & Measure –  We measure and track all failures, successes, interactions, transactions, and all other relevant elements of the product pilot. This identifies the aspects of the product with a higher probability of downstream success. It also identifies any issues to address in the next iteration of the product.
• Learn & Respond – Once the current iteration of the product reaches the usage threshold defined in the product roadmap, the iteration is then complete. If the product has met all the goals and requires no further adaptation, it is released. If any further adaptation is needed, we start an additional iteration.  
• Release- The product is released and branches out for larger operating environments, based on the readiness of the most recent iteration. The scale cycles focus on both vertical and horizontal scaling, growing the reach of the product to the entire audience. We use analytics and feedback from the implementation to support future innovation cycles.

Best Practices for Running the Innovation as a Service Value Chain

The lessons learned have been invaluable, and the experience helps to zero in on at least a few best practices for running a successful Innovation Program. For Example:

Use an “Agile Development” Mindset

Agile development orbits around a “build, measure and learn” feedback loop, allowing enterprises to deliver products to users, test results, and iterate again. It also encourages a fast and flexible response to change and emphasizes the continuous testing and iterating of products in the market. Enterprises need to develop innovative programs that adopt these essential principles.

Nurture Outside of the Core Business

Innovation proves to be successful when concepts and solutions are nurtured outside of the core business.

By setting up a development center that operates with no boundaries, innovators gain the freedom to fail. Though the innovation program should leverage inputs from the core business (for example, large data sets), it will accelerate faster with program leads possessing different and established capabilities elsewhere.

Prioritize Diversity

For any innovation program to be successful, it requires a mix of technical, business, and industry skills.

Select individuals to create a talent pool comprised of a diverse set of skills, experience, and expertise. Typically, when we seek candidates for the pool, we seek subject matter experts from a specific industry.

Today’s economy features a convergence of industries, so clients are eager to learn from leaders in other fields. Therefore it is necessary to have diverse personnel selection approach to run the innovation program.

Activate a Two-Pronged Approach

• When approaching new ideas and solutions, it is of utmost importance to  take a two-pronged approach:
• Foundational/Reactive – Focused on revamping or redefining your existing business model and embracing newer/better solutions
• Disruptive/Proactive – Redrawing/blurring industry boundaries to focus on future customer engagements and experience.

Enable Agility with Technology

Developing scalable ideas and concepts requires you to equip your team with the right tools and technologies. Our experience with AWS  technology stack illustrates how business can benefit: through lower costs, higher efficiency, new capabilities, and more.

Meet Customer Needs: why this is a priority?

Customer needs are always changing. On a given day, your customers might exactly need what you have to offer, and the next day, they might seek something else. Innovators can predict changes in the market and provide solutions before people even realize they need them. You cannot meet your customers’ needs on a long-term basis unless you are willing to innovate. If you remain stagnant, your business will eventually flounder. You have to come up with new ideas that excite your customers and meet their needs if you want to have staying power.

Attract the Right Talent to sustain

Talented, innovative people crave to work for innovative companies. You won’t be able to attract someone who could potentially go on to create the next big thing unless your company has a history of creating one. Innovative minds like to be challenged and encouraged to develop regularly. Therefore you need a culture of innovation to recruit the right talent. Innovators from all over will want to work with your brand. You will experience more growth, stand out from the competition, and meet your customers’ needs in ways you never imagined. It’s normal to want to maintain the status quo. Since you assume that it’s worked for you in the past, it will work for you in the future. In reality, the status quo only works for so long, and if you’re going to keep your doors open, you have to innovate. It would help if you took the risks that come with innovation so you can enjoy all of the rewards.

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Conclusion

Being innovative should always be a part of your approach. With creative thinking, problems can be solved differently and strategically. The right innovative techniques can help you save precious time and money, and give you a competitive lead in expanding your business. Significant efficiencies are experienced because of the development and use of new strategies. One way to experience this is when distinctly different ideas come from different minds. Don’t be afraid to surround yourself with people who have ideas that differ from yours. You’ll come up with different concepts and designs that you can pool to achieve a different approach from what has always been done – and that is what you call motivation. Now go get innovative!