Is your wood flooring company the next Blockbuster? Not a blockbuster hit. Rather, Blockbuster, the company that owned the video rental market until it was upended by an innovative competitor, Netflix. One thing is for certain: If your company isn’t innovating, all of its products or services eventually become commodities. Or they will be toppled by the next Netflix.
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Is your wood flooring company the next Blockbuster? Not a blockbuster hit. Rather, Blockbuster, the company that owned the video rental market until it was upended by an innovative competitor, Netflix. One thing is for certain: If your company isn’t innovating, all of its products or services eventually become commodities. Or they will be toppled by the next Netflix.
When that happens, you will have no margin left to spend on research and development, new product initiatives or anything else that could provide a competitive advantage. Your customers will start playing you against the competition, and it’s a race to the bottom for further price concessions. By that point, you’re left with reducing costs, overhead or profit—you’re now in a death spiral toward that going-out-of-business curve.
So how do you spark new innovation at a company? What’s more, how do you do it at an already established business?
1. Make innovation part of everyone’s job description
A primary duty for all positions should be to introduce innovative ideas into the company. From the manufacturing floor to the executive door, mandate that the entire organization offer ideas to improve products and services. Incentivize innovative thought by making it part of the performance review process. By doing so, not only do you give kudos and raises to the employees that innovate, but you can also say goodbye to the ones that don’t.
2. Invest in innovation
Train every single employee in the principles of brainstorming and innovation. Hold “innovation fairs,” similar to a science fair. Take your employees on field trips to highly innovative companies outside of your industry.
3. Provide the time to innovate
It isn’t always enough to set the expectation to innovate. You must provide the time for innovation. Encourage your employees to spend 20 percent of their time brainstorming new ideas. You might need to hire more people to cover that 20 percent, but you need to set the expectation that “thinking about things” is really just as important as “building things.”
4. Provide the space to innovate
Allotting spaces for innovation serves two purposes: It provides an assigned area in which to innovate and it shows employees how serious your company is about the process. This can be as simple as an empty cube dedicated for innovative practices, or as involved as an offsite location.
5. Celebrate, recognize and reward innovation
Find ways to celebrate and recognize innovation every chance you get. It has a way of changing workplace culture for the better and reinforcing positive behaviors. Potential rewards include significant cash awards for innovation, professional photos taken of the team marking the achievement, or even making the accomplishment public by taking out a half-page ad in the local newspaper detailing the innovation.
6. Fight fear and resistance
Innovation is no longer an option—it’s a necessity. As you move your business toward more innovative thought, be prepared for some pushback. Be ready to restructure your organization and even cut people loose if you have to. You need to surround new developments with people who believe in innovation. Otherwise you’ll be left with those who’ll do little more than look for flaws.
