Innovation is important in today’s competitive world and the key for a business to thrive and keep improving business value. Such firms as Apple, 3M, Airbnb, General Electric and Philips, among many others, have achieved market leadership and financial gains by following a strong innovation process

Over time, the idea of innovation is changing fast. Today, innovation is not just about finding new products or services, but it also spans such spaces as business ideas and marketing strategies, among others. Successful innovation for a business means discovering new revenue options, optimizing existing channels and generating higher profits that will offer advantage over one’s competitors. It is also believed that innovation must be based on the creation of new value for customers and not just some new products and services and so on.

Innovation goes much beyond idea generation and even involves the evaluation process of such ideas. This allows those not so promising ones to be discarded early on by saving limited resources. Basically, innovation results in value creation by improving one or more aspects of a business ecosystem.

Digitization is also speeding up an organization’s innovation process by offering new roads of experimentation, fast information dissemination and innovations developed using data analytics and knowledge management. It also becomes important to understand the emerging trends and their impact on the business, so that organizations are able to make the required changes and develop suitable solutions that may also trigger innovation.

Aspects of development of innovative enterprise

It starts with making innovation a part of the basic strategy in an organization. Firms, with objectives of entering subsidiary businesses, begin innovating by leveraging their existing facilities in a separate business segment or by acquiring new ones. A case in point is Netflix’s foray into the online streaming industry from its DVD rental service—an instance where a company wants to enter an emerging segment because of untapped consumer needs and innovate value delivery. Airbnb bringing about their new accommodation idea, or the packing industry with global sustainability hopes, have helped manufacturers discover alternative materials that gave us fibre-based packaging materials in place of harmful plastic ones. Instances of companies innovating on both aspects are also found. Scenario planning approaches also play a vital role in enabling firms to predict the future course of customer value creation and innovating offerings.

Technologies Driving Business Innovation

Artificial intelligence

The power of artificial intelligence (AI) is changing almost every industry and sphere of life. And it is one of the most exciting technologies in business innovation today. According to a leading consulting firm, AI is likely to add $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. AI is already providing transformative effects to several industries, such as banking and healthcare to name a few.

High-speed internet We all know that time is money and a key tool for business innovation is something that helps organizations travel faster. High-speed Internet will be of immense help in business innovation and instant data-sharing will help every industry. Businesses will be able to share data between remote facilities almost instantly. For instance, productions can be coordinated by instant data-sharing, like test reports or production templates that are crucial to production facilities. Also, it will be possible to restore a medium-size corporate server almost in an hour, against 28 days earlier.