The Innovation Process: 4 Steps for Innovating

Business innovation is the act of introducing something new to a company—whether it’s new products, new markets, a business model, and so on—to reinvigorate the company and promote new value and growth. Innovation is all about business leaders coming up with (or listening to) creative ideas and then using strategic innovation management to implement the new business ideas successfully.

Innovation allows you to move forward. Here are a few reasons innovation matters:

1. 1. Innovation grows your business. Business growth means, ultimately, increasing your profits. If you successfully innovate, you can add value to your company. You can also help your business avoid plauteuing.
2. 2. Innovation helps you take advantage of new technologies. Technology (and especially artificial intelligence) is evolving faster than ever before, which means that there may be new, more efficient technologies to make better products, to offer your services, to market your business, or to track your performance with analytics. By taking advantage of these new technologies for process innovation, you’ll be able to optimize your business and gain a competitive advantage.
3. 3. Innovation keeps you ahead of the competition. With a rapidly changing market, there are more competing businesses than ever before. Innovative thinking can help you predict the market and keep up with customer needs. If your business doesn’t innovate, you’ll watch innovative companies bring new ideas to the marketplace, and you’ll have to scramble to keep up.

The innovation process is a framework for tackling business innovation efforts that will keep your innovation team focused and organized. Here are the main steps for bringing new ideas to life:

1. 1. Idea generation: The innovation process begins with brainstorming. Usually, a company will identify either a need in the market or areas for growth for existing products, production processes, or business plans. Bouncing ideas off team members can help you hone in on what types of innovation will most benefit the company and which are most feasible. If you have a successful product that could better respond to customer needs, consider incremental innovation to gradually improve your product. If you feel that your company needs a more efficient structure, organizational innovation can adjust the distribution of responsibilities among your team. Or if you have a big idea that could shake up the market, undertaking a radical innovation can set your company apart.
2. 2. Screening: At this stage, go over the pros and cons to make sure you have a viable idea before pouring resources into further innovation efforts. Whether you aim to innovate your product development or a new business plan, create an innovation culture among your team members that values transparency and open-mindedness.
3. 3. Research: Once you have settled on an idea, your innovation team should conduct all research, planning, and analysis necessary to put your idea into action. If your innovation strategy involves creating an improved or new product, the goal of this phase is to create a minimum viable product (MVP)—a basic version of your desired product that contains only key features—before pouring significant resources into commercial development. Great innovators in history like Henry Ford and the Wright Brothers relied on this prototyping strategy to bring their ideas to life.
4. 4. Development: The specifics depend on the type of innovation, but this is when innovative ideas take shape. The research phase should provide all information necessary to form a concrete plan for finalizing your product, process, business plan, or other innovation. This is also a good time to seek feedback to identify areas of improvement.

To climb the corporate ladder, you must first learn the fundamentals of leadership and innovation. Discover Rosalind’s approach to change management and agile teams, plus learn how to lead through crisis when you sign up for the MasterClass Annual Membership.