You can grow your business through innovations which do not have to be directly related to new technologies.
Often when we hear the term innovation we think of the next genius startup’s that will offer us products or services that we cannot live without even though only a few years ago they never existed such as Amazon, smart phones or Uber.
When in fact innovation should be associated to just new ways in which to grow your existing business products and services. We think that thoughts around growth through innovation has become overly complicated most probably due people’s thoughts to the emergence of disruptive technologies and AI. You need to remove the idea that this has to be some space age, extremely costly advancements in technology as it simply isn’t true (obviously if you have the budget for that then great!).
You do not have to come up with new technologies to deliver innovation or growth to your service offerings. You can just introduce new processes, ways of working and targeting new markets to deliver growth to your business.
Below are 6 ways you can bring growth to your business through innovation and if you just spend a few seconds you will probably think of a dozen brands which do each of these.
- Introduce new process
Identify and introduce new ways to cut costs such as with production or supply chain costs. You can introduce new automation to increase efficiencies and speed of production. This can enable you to produce more and probably save money through economies of scale.
- Offer Customers new experiences
If you think of some personal technology stores such as Samsung, Apple and Microsoft stores they try and offer the personal experience when shopping with them, it doesn’t have to be through a store, it can be online interaction or through your advertising. This will enable you to greatly increase customer retention as they will keep coming back for the experience.
- Releasing of new features
If you think again of some of the major technology companies, they gradually release new features in their new models. You may have a dozen new features to sell in your latest product but it may be worth thinking of releasing these over a couple of models and again gaining more continued growth.
- New customers
Exploring new markets is also a new way of innovating your growth. Can you adapt models of products or services to attract other demographics or industries to use your products. Some of the great examples of this are looking at two manufactures of Boeing and Rolls Royce. Rolls Royce have adapted their engines and vehicles from cars to planes to electric submarines and are ever adapting their products to meet the needs of new markets as are Boeing.
- New Offerings
What else can you sell that you do not currently? Don’t just enhance existing products or services can you make new ones? Think what transferable processes and thinking can you offer to a new product? Think of businesses such as Samsung, they have continually adapted to sell products all based on electrical items but for other markets e.g TV’s, home appliances and then mobile smart phones.
- New Product lines
To cater for other markets and customers you may wish to think about releasing a new product line? It could be the same product you already produce but a cheaper or more expensive price point to cater to the needs of other target markets.
Deciding on which way to grow is important and you should take careful consideration of all aspects on how to do it, including understanding the budgets that are required, marketing requirements and the potential return on investment. It is always recommended to seek some external advice on these decisions before proceeding.
