Rapid Innovation, Are You Leading the Charge?

Are you a leader in your industry, blazing a trail of innovation and leaving competitors in your wake?

Or is your competition catching up to you and nimble startups are beginning to disrupt your space?

Here are some common issues that could be stopping you from dominating in the innovation race:

Access to talent

Unless you have a team of full-time specialists covering your every need, it can be tough to get access to the skills you need, when you need them. Hiring contractors or freelancers is time consuming, or risky if you don’t take the time to assess them thoroughly. End result is often using a sub-optimal resource, someone who can ‘do the job’ but isn’t a specialist in that area who takes double the time and costs twice as much. Ouch.

People moving on

Team members moving on are a fact of life in any fast paced industry with low unemployment and lots of opportunities.
Normal staff turnover can be costly if you don’t have great documentation, handover and onboarding processes. High staff turnover only adds insult to injury. After someone leaves you need to go through the whole recruitment process all over again. Writing job ads, advertising, booking interviews, running interviews, technical tests, reference checks, salary negotiation and then onboarding. You could be using this valuable time to innovate, but instead you’re trying to get back to where you already were.

Culture which punishes risk-taking

“The biggest risk is not taking any risk” – Mark Zuckerberg. If all failures are punished in your organisation and your team are afraid to make mistakes you’re on a pathway to stagnation. Appropriate risk taking should be rewarded and celebrated. The only negative failures are ones not aligned with your organisation’s risk profile, and where there are no learnings or insights gained along the way.

Your processes

The productivity of even the best people can be killed with red tape and poor processes. If your team complain about the amount of admin and paperwork required, your processes may be preventing them from achieving their potential. Agile development processes, run in a disciplined way enable teams to deliver at maximum effectiveness, and to learn and improve with every sprint.

Traditional budgeting structures

Traditional budgeting processes involve an investment amount in a known solution and a return on that investment. When you’re innovating however, you don’t know the specific solution, and you don’t know the return (*hint: If you know all of these things you’re not innovating!).

Idea generation

How do you gain exposure to new ideas and technologies? Internal colleagues and the same network you’ve had for years may have got you this far, but external experts can give you an edge to accelerate your growth. Engaging or partnering with specialists and non-competitors who have expertise and knowledge differing from your own can be a great way to generate ideas and identify new opportunities.

What’s holding you back?

If you’d like to accelerate your innovation, we’re here to help you.

About The Author

Sally Yau

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