It is really simple with innovation, as explained by Woody Allen:

“If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.”

Woody Allen

Innovation spirit and ability is a competitive resource that will propel your business success faster than any other strategy available. The absence of it and a follower’s, the safe-playing mentality is seldom favourably accepted.  Growing and expanding imply some sort of leadership role in your community, your chosen industry or a profession. It also requires a unique set of competencies developed and strengthened over time.

The ability to come up with new ideas and creative strategies in unpredictable and sudden changing markets are qualities of champions and communicate strong governance, distinctive qualities, stability and a long term vision in any business form.

Why people value the culture of innovation?

Establishing a culture of innovation will ensure that new ideas are constantly evolving which transmit strong customers or external orientation. Ideas bring freshness, radicalism, optimism and more than anything inspire for action. There are new approaches, new projects, new methodologies and applications. Effectiveness and productivity increases, the business develops its competitive advantage which is not easily replicable. The bottom line improves once the market perceives product or service to be of premium value and quality.

Innovation and how does an organisation accomplish it?

Well first and foremost through effective collaboration, customers’ satisfaction, focused communication, quality and technological breakthroughs and competency in their chosen area.

Jack Welch, famous GE CEO once stated that if you are not number 1 or 2 in your industry you should not compete. This is more than ever applicable today when times are tough, margins are rapidly declining and marketplace highly sophisticated and educated.

Innovation spirit starts with inspiring Vision when executives and top management communicate what the big picture for the organisation might be as well as what are the strategies for achieving it. They must be willing to promote new ideas brainstorming exercises, open communication, teamwork building, trust, experimentation and be willing to learn from own mistakes.

Today, when margins for errors are so small that people feel overwhelmed and stressed about it, crucial in moving forward, is openness and trustworthiness within a team, inter-departmental synergistic approach and service orientation.

When participation is encouraged, commitment is guaranteed, and innovation is the logical extension. Communication both internal and external controls relationships and everything else from a business perspective, human potential and prosperous future.

What are the major obstacles that prevent organisations from effectively establishing a culture of innovation?

The absence of a clear vision

Some authors point out that major factors determining innovation are the lack of well-communicated vision, the nonexistence of clearly defined purpose and absence of strategical goals.

Micromanagement instead of obsessive innovation

Micromanagement is the second factor where all good intentions are discouraged because people can not see their true priorities and perform tasks and duties that seldom contribute to the best long term interest of the organisation.

Introducing the “silent killer” of entrepreneurial growth and innovation  – The so-called “Comfort zone”

The third one is the time organisation and key employees spent in a so-called “Comfort zone” or “Early success zone”. The problem here is that no one wants to rock the boat when faced with uncertainty. No one wants to be the first one to challenge long-established practices. Without responsibility and action orientation people don’t grow and seldom contribute more than what they are paid for.

No one goes that extra mile where real breakthroughs are possible, where capabilities and strengths are developed. Protecting the status, the unwillingness to change, fear of risk-taking, fear of failure and rejections, bureaucracy, lack of reward and recognition programs and not understanding who their customers really are and how to satisfy their needs are some of the common situations.

Possible cures – exchange of ideas, creative solutions & collaboration

Allowing cross-functional teams to collaborate on a regular basis grants for the exchange of powerful and meaningful ideas, team building and collaboration.   When you include people with different backgrounds, different opinions, years of experiences and diverse skills You usually create synergistic breakthroughs and respectful action momentum.

Empowering and encouraging co-creation and collaboration within your organisation, with ideas and information from different levels will allow your organisation to deliver innovations to the market, faster, structured and smarter.

The market will always reward for fresh and innovative ideas those that are prepared to take risks and go the extra mile.

And the final point

As an Entrepreneur, you will often be in the situation to play against the odds, against the common beliefs and the way out of your comfort zone…

Do not, simply, go with the flow, be open-minded, be unreasonable, be against the common knowledge and wisdom. Encourage your team to contribute more, be the leader of value creation in everything you do, be a catalyst of innovation, maintain momentum and take calculated risks. When you take that extra mile, roads are uncluttered and you don’t have opponents.

Final thought on innovation – competitors become irrelevant when you design both the field of play and rules of the game.