The New Business Essential: ‘Formal’ Innovation

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A recent study has found that 90% of organisations say that innovation is essential for their organisation’s performance. The study, was undertaken by Innovation Excellence (19/3/2015), and authored by Eugene Ivanov and Doug Williams. 72% of the surveyed organisation reported having a formal program

The study found that the most benefit from innovation was for new product/service development (91%). Next came competitiveness (77%), customer satisfaction (75%) and financial targets (72%). Employee morale, at 56%, and market share (58%) were also seen as benefiting from innovation. Even employee retention got a high score, with 52% of all companies saying that innovation helped improve retention.

However, the innovation programs only worked if they were formal. Companies with informal innovation programs did not rate innovation highly for the firm’s success.

The study’s authors, suggest that implementation of a formal innovation program meant two things:

  1. that the company was new to innovation and wanted to make the process work more efficiently
  2. innovation was a fairly high priority for the organisation

We agree

Time, and time again we have seen that despite the best efforts of individuals, innovation is often subsumed by business-as-usual – unless there is a formal innovation program in place. Any such program should start with a strategy for innovation which links innovation to business outcomes, and outlines its key planks.

Does your organisation have an innovation strategy? Your innovation strategy should be short, graphical and accessible – and it should remain a living document that is frequently updated. If you don’t have one, you might want to prioritise the creation of an innovation strategy. 

Organisations without a deliberate programme for innovation – will fall behind and eventually fail – it’s not a matter of ‘if’, but ‘when’. If you’d like to know what an innovation strategy why not take a look at our blog “the 10 must haves for an innovation strategy”. 

Cris Popp has helped many organisations develop their innovation strategies, and go on to make innovation a normal, and frequent part of their business operations. Why not develop a strategy that works for you? Get in touch with Cris to know more about a formal innovation strategy; info@crispopp.com