Companies must constantly find new ways to ward off rivals
Dr Jana Matthews | 1 minute read
Key points:
- Keep innovating to stay ahead of rivals.
- Let staff try new ideas, even with mistakes.
- Innovation can be products, pricing, or processes.
Innovation is key to staying competitive
Innovation can be a major driver of growth for companies, but only if they’re adept at capturing new ideas and putting them into practice.
“You need to have new products and services in order to continue growing and responding to your customers’ emerging needs,” says Jana Matthews, Growth Expert and founding director of the Australian Centre for Business Growth.
“If a company isn’t innovating, trying new things, trying new products, understanding what its either current or potentially new customers are needing, then it’s going to get left behind because there’ll be competitors, customers that go elsewhere,” she says.
See our success stories
Innovative organisations had shared responsibility for decision-making and build up what Matthews calls “the muscle of execution and decision-making” among staff.
“People get attracted to the organisations where they can try new things, where they aren’t punished for making mistakes because it isn’t always going to turn out right or as you expected.”
She says she has worked with one CEO who tells staff: “If it ain’t broke, we’re going to fix it anyway, because one of our competitors is going to come after us.”
However, a lot of organisations hold themselves back from innovation because they think it is confined to the tech sector.
Meet our Growth Experts
“If you ask a whole lot of companies, they’ll say, ‘Well, we’re not innovative. We don’t make computers or we don’t do software. That’s where innovation is’, but that’s not true.”
Matthews says innovation can take many forms, such as innovation in costs and pricing, switching to a subscription model rather than a sales model for example, or innovation in the organisation itself, such as letting people work from home rather than in the office.
Discover our Assessment Clinic
She encourages business leaders to foster innovation in their companies.