You don’t get to decide what makes your business successful. That’s up to your customers. And here’s what they expect:
- Better
- Cheaper
- Faster
There’s only one way to give them what they want. Every aspect of your company has to be viewed through the innovation lens.
Climate Change
Tomatoes flourish in a hothouse. Innovation flourishes when there are equal levels of trust and humor. You probably don’t need any help with the trust part. But humor?
Workforces see a boost in performance and collaboration when they feel high levels of comfort provided by a shared sense of humor. When’s the last time you heard laughter at your office?
Encourage Washing-Up
Not the hand-washing stuff after going to the restroom. The Roffey Park Management Institute coined a term called “Washing-Up Creativity.” Studies show that inspiration happens away from work. For Archimedes, it was while he was taking a bath. And hence the origin of the term.
Encourage your employees to step away from the office when it’s appropriate. Maybe not to take a bath. A nice walk around the block or a few minutes at a nearby park might do the trick.
Connecting the Dots
Innovation usually happens by making something existing even better. Sony chairman Akio Morita invented the Walkman because he wanted to listen to music while walking between shots on his golf course. The company already made cassette tape players and radios. They just put the two together.
Finished Testing? No You’re Not!
Nothing is ever perfect. At least not instantly. Successful organizations know that iterations lead to improvement. Often those iterations can be a slow process. Skip testing at your own peril.
We can all be grateful that Thomas Edison didn’t give up on testing. He recorded 1,300 test experiments with the filament light bulb before he found the innovative twist that worked. Was he discouraged by all those tests? Edison is said to have observed that he kept going and testing because at least he knew 1,300 ways the light bulb wasn’t going to work.
Good News = Bad News Looked at Differently?
A problem or shortcoming can create the best kind of innovation. Encourage the “Adapt and Adopt” approach when your organization bumps up against an obstacle.
It paid off big-time for Swatch. They realized that the more reliable they make their watches, the less of them people bought. Was improvement going to put them out of business? They adapted by adopting an idea from the fashion industry. Swatch turned their watches into collectable fashion accessories.
Nothing New
We think of technology when we hear the word “innovation.” But it was with us long before we started putting our phones in our pockets instead of having them stuck to a wall.
Innovation isn’t as much a result as it is an approach. You and your customers will experience more of it when you create the appropriate environment for it to flourish.
As a business, this often happens when innovation is applied to that packaging. The product is fine. It’s the presentation that needs tweaking. Customer experience can drive innovation in this area. What are they telling you about their interactions with your product?
We’ll work with you to make sure that our vinyl or poly packaging products meet not only your expectations, but also those of the people who really matter. Your customers.
