Many businesses focus their innovative activities on product innovation, which can produce valuable company assets.  In addition to product innovations, businesses should look for ways to streamline business operations by innovating business processes.

Here is an approach to business process innovation:

1. Big Question:  Is the process necessary? The first question to ask when evaluating a business process is whether the process is necessary.  What is the purpose or end result of the process?  Is it still needed – does it provide value to the business?  If not, don’t spend time “optimizing” the process, just eliminate it.
2. Identify the desired result of the process. Ask questions to determine the goal of the process.  Why was the procedure originally developed and what are the desired results of the process?
3. Eliminate continue reading…

Innovation is a popular term these days when discussing business.  A recent business magazine headline stated that today’s businesses must “innovate or perish”.

Innovation in business refers to the introduction of a new product or service – or “a new way of doing something”.  Innovation for business also includes improving an existing product or service to be faster, cheaper, or easier to use.  Valuable innovations can improve an existing product that makes the product more desirable to customers (and potential customers).

Business innovation can be the addition of a new feature or the removal of a feature.  For example, a software product may be improved to add a new “automatic report generating feature” that simplifies the process of creating and printing custom reports for each customer.  This new feature can distinguish continue reading…

Many businesses limit innovative activities to particular individuals or particular departments in the organization.  However, this approach may result in missing valuable innovations that could strengthen the business.

A better approach is to involve people throughout the organization and start building a culture of innovation.  Think of your business as an “innovation team”.  People from different parts of the company and with different job functions can work together as a team for purposes of generating innovations.  Everyone has creative ideas, so everyone should be involved in the process of generating innovations.  Train everyone on the Team how to identify innovative ideas and provide examples of successful innovations (in your business or other organizations) that produced dramatic results for the company.

Schedule innovation contests and structured brainstorming sessions to generate creative ideas.  Celebrate successful innovations that increase revenue, reduce expenses, or strengthen the company’s competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Go put on your “Team Innovation” hat today and start developing an innovation culture in your business.

A baseball team in New York (the Hudson Valley Renegades) is offering free tickets every Monday to iPad owners.  This promotion appears to be in response to a decision by a different major league baseball team in the same area not to allow iPads into their stadium.   To capitalize on the publicity received by the other team, the Hudson Valley Renegades are encouraging fans to bring their iPads to the stadium.  In addition to free tickets every Monday to all iPad owners, the team is providing a support booth to help fans set up various social media services.

This is an innovative marketing approach to attract fans and get some “free advertising” for the team.  I’m not sure what the team is doing on Mondays to interact with the fans that bring iPads, but here are a couple possibilities.  The team could ask the iPad users to tweet during the game using a particular hash tag, then randomly select one of the tweets and give that person a prize.  The team could also send messages (tweets, text messages or emails) to fans at the game providing additional information about the players, statistics for the game, specials at the concessions, etc.

How can you apply similar innovative marketing techniques in your business?

For several weeks, I have been “encouraged” by two business colleagues to host teleseminars that help entrepreneurs and business leaders apply innovation in their business.  I am accepting this “challenge” and committing to host several free teleseminars in the coming weeks.

I have a list of frequently asked questions about innovation as well as a list of questions that business leaders should ask about innovation in their business.  I will be answering these questions in my upcoming teleseminars.  However, I want to be sure I answer the questions of everyone who follows this blog, reads my articles, etc.  So, I am asking you to submit your questions by adding a comment to this post.  I will do my best to answer all questions during one of my teleseminars – dates to be announced soon.  If you would like to receive email notification of these teleseminars (and receive a free copy of my Innovation Excellence report), click here.

Here’s a sample of the questions I will be answering:

• Why does my business need an innovation strategy?
• My business is not a technology-based business, does innovation apply to my company?
• How do I get started with an innovation plan?
• Who in my organization should I include in the innovation process?
• Can my business afford an innovation strategy?

Please submit your innovation questions by adding a comment to this post.

Innovations can expand a company’s existing product line or add new services related to those existing products.  For example, a company may find a new use for their products that lets them expand into a new market, which attracts a new group of customers.  Selling products in multiple markets increases overall sales and reduces the impact on the bottom line if there’s a slow-down in one market.

Other business innovations may add new features to existing products.  One way to identify new features that may boost sales is to review customer feedback, market research and problems identified by market commentators.  If your existing customers are requesting a particular feature, there are likely continue reading…