Most business owners know they need to innovate to survive in their competitive marketplace.
However, it’s often hard to incorporate innovation into “business as usual”, and owners risk finding themselves in perpetual catch up mode. Incremental innovation can generally be found in three areas:
• Product
• Service
• Process
Alternatively, the invention of a new business model like the low-cost airlines or putting coffee shops in book stores can provide the necessary game-changer that challenges the norm.
‘A common view amongst owner/ managers is that innovation is expensive, difficult and distracts the MD from trying to run a profitable business’ says Malcolm Johnston from The Marketing Centre.
‘Well, no-one pretends that new product/ service/ process development is going to be easy (or cheap) but all companies can introduce innovation as part of their growth strategy.’
Suggestions from Malcolm include:
• Set a clear, specific strategy for innovation
• Build an organisational culture that nurtures new products and processes
• Create effective processes for idea generation and development
• Know how to manage a diverse portfolio of innovations
• Think in advance about how you will scale new business ideas, supporting them with the right level and type of resources.*
If this sounds too daunting to manage alone, fear not as help is at hand!
The Government killed off BusinessLink a long time ago and some will mourn its passing. However, in its place the Government has established the Business Growth Service (BGS) as a one stop shop for business advice and support – specifically targeted at SMEs that have fewer than 250 employees, are based in England and have a turnover under £40m.
There are currently six services on offer:
• Access to finance
• Manufacturing advice
• Leadership and management skills development
• Advice on internationalising your business
• Growth Community
• Growth through Innovation
To date, businesses that have taken advantage of these services are growing 4 times faster than those that have not availed themselves of this support.
Finally, and quite apart from the extra revenue and profit delivered by new products and services, there are tax breaks available for investments in R&D and further tax incentives if you gain Intellectual Property (IP) on your new product or elements of it – known as the Patent Box.
For more information on any of the ideas and options above, please do get in touch with The Marketing Centre.
* “Cracking the code of innovation” by Almquist, Leiman, Rigby and Roth (Bain & Co.) August 2013 Forbes.com