US President Barack Obama (L) talks with June Muli, head of Customer
Care at M-Kopa, about solar power during the Power Africa Innovation
Fair, an initiative to increase the number of people with access to
power in sub-Saharan Africa, on July 25, 2015 on the sidelines of the
Global Entrepreneurship Summit at the United Nations Compound in
Nairobi. AFP PHOTO | SAUL LOEB
Companies are constantly vying for talent, but hiring talented
people is only the first step in cultivating a creative and innovative
environment.
Building a workplace where there is a
constant exchange of ideas involves finding the right formula for your
company and culture.
Incorporating innovation in your
business can help you save time and money, and give you the competitive
advantage to grow and adapt your business in the marketplace.
You
cannot force creativity and/or innovation, but the right setting
(entrepreneurial culture, if you like) will put your team in the right
frame of mind to find imaginative solutions. That companies must be
creative to develop innovation is obvious.
Creativity
is a continuous process and is increasingly important, particularly for
businesses operating in markets with multiple opportunities to different
goods and services.
Creativity skills include the
ability to manage diverse matrices of information, suspend judgment as
complexity increases, recall accurately, and recognise patterns of
opportunities. Indeed, creativity is the basis for innovation, which can
be a catalyst for the growth and success of your business.
Businesses that innovate create more efficient work processes and have better productivity and performance.
That
is why innovative first movers destroy incumbents’ market power and
enjoy transient monopoly advantages and abnormal profits, emanating from
rivals’ lagged responses. Competition within the banking industry
provides excellent example here in Kenya; mutatis mutandis of mobile
network operators.
Also, innovation is linked to
successful performance for firms in both the industrial and service
sectors as well as to entire economies, a fact that is well illustrated
by the Top 100 Survey.
So, what are the key steps
towards your business innovation? Firstly, conduct an analysis of the
market environment, your customers’ wants and needs and competitors, and
be open to new ideas and adaptive to change.
Secondly,
develop a strategic, responsive plan, which includes innovation as a
key business process across the entire business. Thirdly, provide
leadership in innovation by training and empowering employees to think
innovatively from the top down.
Inspirational
leadership and motivation is what drives innovation in business. The
fourth point is where you connect with customers and employees to
generate ideas for improving processes, products, and services both
internally and externally.
Last but not least, seek
advice. Utilise available resources, business advisers, grants, and
assistance to drive innovation in your business. This may include
seeking intellectual property protection for commercialisation of ideas.
In
the organisational context, innovation may be linked to positive
changes in efficiency, productivity, quality, competitiveness, and
market share.
However, this must be tempered with the
complementary role of entrepreneurial culture in enabling organisations
to translate innovative activity into tangible performance improvements.
Lastly, successful innovation should be an in-built
part of your business strategy, where you create a culture of
innovation and lead the way in creative thinking and innovative problem
solving. Innovate or die.
Dr Ndung’u is a technology entrepreneur and consultant in innovation. ndungu9197@gmail.com.
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