What is Business Innovation?
Business innovation is a concept that refers to the continuous improvement in products, services, and processes of a company, significant in such a competitive environment like this where we are today. It is the engine that moves the economy and companies, making them grow. Without innovation, organizations would not have been able to improve their productivity, and consequently, the economy would not have grown in the way it has.
Not surprisingly, throughout history, companies that have wanted to differentiate themselves within their sector have had to apply business innovation techniques in their main production processes to gain or maintain market share. For this reason, business innovation is a fundamental element in many companies and an added value for others, which seek to improve their position in the market. Next, we will tell you more about her.
Types of Business Innovation
Business innovation can be of various kinds, depending on its nature:
Technological Innovation: It corresponds to technical or scientific advancement in technology. An example would be a machine that allows automating various processes.
Organizational Innovation: It refers to how business management is structured. Its objective is to streamline its hierarchy through a much more streamlined structure. As examples, we can speak of a restructuring of human resources that allow employees to rise in a much more adapted to their interests or apply agile methodologies.
Business Innovation: emphasizes the company’s marketing that is, how a product or service is made known and its distribution. Its objective is to ensure that the user perceives its product as the best, the cheapest, and highest quality.
Examples of Business Innovation
There are different areas of the company in which business innovation can apply:
The company’s internal processes, from billing and accounting to customer relations. In this case, business innovation applies through different computer applications that automate processes as much as possible, thereby increasing added value, avoiding human errors, and making workers dedicate themselves to what generates productivity. These applications include ERP and CRM.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), a fashionable topic due to the greater ecological awareness of consumers. Companies are increasingly concerned about sustainability and caring for their customers, introducing more business innovations.
The development of new products or services that align with the changing preferences of consumers. The need identifies, and a solution offer and an element of value.
The work team. It no longer serves only to use people for mechanical processes; It is increasingly important to introduce creativity, counting on collaborators and professionals who carry out specific functions.
Seven essential Characteristics of Innovation
Innovation is all that change that involves a novelty, improvement, solution, simplification, or adaptation of what already exists. It is associated with the idea of progress and well-being.
An innovation can affect technical, material, or even conceptual aspects and generally improves life at a social, economic, cultural, or technological level.
Here we discuss the seven essential Characteristics that all innovation must have.
- Firstly, Innovation is change
- Secondly, Innovation is improvement
- Innovation is solution
- Innovation is simplification
- Also, Innovation is making it easier
- Innovation is adaptability
- And also, Innovation is progress
How to Implement Business Innovation?
Developing an innovative process requires specific skills and abilities on the part of the teams to acquire a series of competitive advantages over the competition. These are not just techniques, but they are also related to creativity and initiative.
That said, there are a series of steps that companies should follow to carry out a correct business innovation process:
Analyze competition and society in general to detect consumer preferences and the activity of other organizations. In this way, somebody can identify new ideas useful for the innovative process.
Carry out an internal analysis of the company since it is useless to promote a business innovation process if it does not align with its culture, politics, and limits.
Encourage creativity conscientiously as another business activity. Creativity is a fundamental element to innovate.
Structure a work team and have a specific department capable of taking advantage of the company’s previous experience to resolve future conflicts.
Design and develop the ideas, fixing the concept of branding, the marketing that will accompany it, or the details of its presence on the web, among many other aspects.
Conclusion
Innovation is configured as a competitive advantage for companies at the microeconomic level. It will have a more positive relationship with higher profit margins since competitiveness and productivity are affected without innovation.