admin Innovation is fuelled by a strategic approach to novel ideation. Without a well-defined and comprehensive plan, no brand can continue innovation in response to the changing needs of customers. An innovation strategy acts as a guiding light on the path to thinking differently and adding renewed value to your venture. It essentially includes a set of policy decisions geared towards achieving success among the changed market scenario.
Brands that have crafted a legacy of innovation know the value of such a strategic approach. They understand that innovation is initiated and sustained by environmental and managerial factors as much as by personal talents and skills.
Why is an Innovation Strategy Important?
A holistically comprehensive innovative strategy helps fulfill a number of important aspects of a brand’s operation. Some of the main boons of ideating such a strategy are as follows:
- Clarifying Goals and Priorities
One of the most seminal and primary aims of an innovation strategy relates to its ability of sharpening the brand’s focus on its avowed goals of innovation. By clearly outlining these goals, the path to achieving them becomes easy and streamlined.
- Makes Brands Want to Achieve More
Another significant contribution of an innovation strategy is in terms of making brands aware of the need to maintain a set momentum when it comes to innovating. It is important to have a blueprint for the organization’s approach towards its future of innovation. Once the momentum is lost, it can be very difficult for even the most innovative companies to ideate change.
- Fosters Alignment
When an innovation strategy is implemented across an organization’s floor of operation, it helps foster a sense of alignment among the team members. They are more in tune about how to play their specific parts in the plan instead of blindly following orders, without necessarily understanding the overarching picture.
- Making Long Term Success Possible
To gain competitive advantage in the market, every brand must invest in ideating a well-informed and thoroughly researched plan-of-action. Without this guiding light, attaining long-term success will be impossible for a brand.
Kinds of Innovation strategies
While we have spoken about the importance of innovation strategies, it is equally important to select one that befits the organization’s avowed goals and objectives. While some strategies are based on technology innovation, others may emphasize on business processes. Generally, all innovation strategies can be classed under 4 main categories.
- Routine Innovation
As the name suggests, routine innovation relates to optimizing the existing potentialities of a company. Leaders must ideate innovation strategies that fully exploit the hidden talents, skills, and all other resources of the brand. Such innovations serve the existing clientele of the brand and help satisfy their newly emergent needs. This can include launching a new version of an existing product.
- Disruptive Innovation
This kind of innovation focuses on the creation of a whole new business model, essentially one that challenges the business models of its market competitors. The main goal of such an innovation strategy is to disrupt the existing norms of the market, such that its competitors are also forced to adapt to the new normal thereby changing the way the business as whole was previously conceptualized.
- Radical Innovation
Radical innovation necessitates technological innovation that can fit well within the confines of the brand’s existing business model. Thus, in this kind of innovation, there is no need to usher a holistic overhaul of the brand’s business model, rather innovation can simply be fuelled by leveraging the boons of tech tools.
- Architectural Innovation
This type of innovation strategies are one of the most difficult ones to ideate and follow-through, since they exemplify a combination of both new technological tools as well as the implementation of a new business model.
When thinking about a new business strategy, it is important to acknowledge the boons and banes of selecting a particular approach to innovation. It is quite natural that you may feel a palpable need to innovate, given the constantly changing market scenario. However, do not rush into this domain. Take time to think about a holistic strategy that will guide your quest to innovate. As mentioned above, you can choose from the 4 categories of strategies to find your ideal match vis-à-vis the goals of your organization. Remember to think each step through in quite a thorough manner to be able to achieve success in this highly competitive digital age.
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