5 Strategy Questions to Ask to Discover WHERE You Need to Innovate

Innovation is all about finding new ways to do things, whether you are implementing a new process, building a culture of innovation, creating innovative products and services, changing your business model, or applying new technologies.

In today’s marketplace, innovation isn’t a “nice to have” – companies that want to remain competitive and outlast their rivals must innovate. Ultimately, innovation allows you to achieve sustainable long-term success.

Here’s how innovation helps your business succeed:

• Encourages growth
• Enables productivity
• Introduces efficiencies
• Enhances performance
• Reduces costs
• Builds new partnerships and relationships
• Promotes customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Improves employee relations (possibly also reducing turnover and helping you retain key employees!)
• Provides flexibility to adapt to rapidly changing global marketplaces

Taken together, these elements improve your profitability and competitiveness.

Innovating may seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be! Innovative ideas can come from many different sources, like your front-line employees, R&D, your external partners, newly available technologies, your customers, and the list goes on. It’s also not necessary for innovation to be a huge paradigm-shifting change in your company, industry, or the way you do business. It can be small, incremental improvements that add up to great effect.

It starts with asking the right questions to understand which areas your organization should focus on.

Ask These 5 Strategic Questions

An article in Harvard Business Review outlines which five questions are key:

1. What are our broad aspirations for our organization and the concrete goals against which we can measure our progress?
2. Across the potential field available to us, where will we choose to play and not play?
3. In our chosen place to play, how will we choose to win against the competitors there?
4. What capabilities must be built and maintained in order to win in our chosen manner?
5. What management systems are necessary to operate these key capabilities?

Innovation isn’t something you do once and then stop; it’s an ongoing process of improvement and refinement to help your company reach its goals. To reap the benefits, innovation and creative thinking should be formalized in your business strategy (if they aren’t already)!

Innovators Alliance is a business-to-business networking group of CEOs committed to driving growth through innovation. Be our guest at one of our upcoming events!

Is your company innovative? Try our Innovator Self-Test. It has only 10 questions and takes less than 2 minutes!

Like this? You might also like:

• New Video! What Is Innovation and What Does Innovators Alliance Do?
• Developing a Culture of Innovation
• Digital Disruption Demands Innovative Business Models