Tips to Innovate your Way Out of a Recession
September 23, 2009 -- Today's marketplace challenges impact all consumer products manufacturers. It's normal to insulate during trying times. But faced with fundamental shifts in shopper and consumer behavior, innovation is the key to rapidly adapt to the new world that is upon us. What keeps an organization from taking action? There are three main barriers to innovation in most businesses right now:
- Limited access to subject matter expertise and financial resources likely slows innovation. With budget and staff cuts, access to strategic resources can make a real difference for initiative teams. Why not offer an "Innovation Fund" outside the traditional budgeting process that provides access to subject matter expertise and financial resources to support specific product, service and business model innovations?
- Marketing and Research & Development likely represent different cultures, organizational structures and reward systems in your company. Why not assign a senior leader to instill a more integrated culture, organization, business process and reward system?
- In reacting to marketplace challenges, many organizations have become too focused on the changing workforce (staffing) versus the changing work (processes and required skills). Workforce changes might have come at the expense of the work associated with innovation (for example, developing insights from unstructured content, open innovation with external partners, increased collaboration in non-traditional office situations?) Ensure that the changing workforce aligns with changing work.
Innovation in the marketplace will continue whether you unleash your innovative capabilities or not. Isn't it time to stop insulating and start innovating?
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